RTE Moves to Avid

TEWKSBURY, Mass. -- Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID) today announced that Irelands public service broadcaster, Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ), is replacing its tape-based production infrastructure with an end-to-end Avid digital workflow. The Dublin-based broadcaster, which operates two television channels – RTÉ One and RTÉ Two – as well as four radio stations, is building its new production workflow around the Avid Interplay™ nonlinear workflow engine, tied to the Avid Unity ISIS® shared-storage system.

RTÉ will employ the new digital workflow to produce and publish a wide variety of content – including news, promotional spots, sports, and long-form programming – to multiple distribution platforms. Given the breadth of the production needs at RTÉ, the company was seeking to deploy a solution capable of streamlining the management of a wide range of media assets, across a complex set of concurrent workflows. In addition, RTÉ sought to make it easier for production teams to work collaboratively with all media assets on a shared network. The digital upgrade, which RTÉ expects to complete in fall 2007, will deliver significant time and cost savings, allowing the broadcaster to produce a greater number of high quality programs.

“We wanted more than to simply transition from a tape-based to a digital production workflow, so we chose the Avid Interplay system because we hoped that it would help transform our way of doing things in television,” said John Hunt, director of operations at RTÉ Television. “Our workflows are complex and need the powerful and agile technology that Avid Interplay promises. The aim is to improve our overall productivity in comparison to the tape-based operation so we can produce more efficient and even better programming. We look forward to continuing to work with Avid to explore the opportunities that Interplay promises to open up across the production spectrum.”

Avid Technology Inc.