24.11.02
Avid Announces $3.9 Million Sale to Broadcasting Giant TV Azteca |
(Tewksbury, MA, November 2002) - Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID) has announced the $3.9 million sale of Avid® news and postproduction solutions to Mexico City-based TV Azteca, one of the largest producers and broadcasters of Spanish-language television programming in the world. TV Azteca will implement Avid solutions across its Entertainment and Novella operations, and its News operations will adopt Avid&';s complete broadcast workflow, including solutions for direct media ingest, journalist collaboration, simultaneous real-time editing, newsroom production, asset management, and play-to-air.
"This purchase of Avid&';s technology is important for TV Azteca and our relentless pursuit of excellence in broadcasting," said Ignacio Suarez, vice president of News at TV Azteca. "Avid&';s solutions will help us implement dramatic cost savings and efficiencies across our entire broadcasting operation. They will also allow us to improve the overall quality of our programming and the speed with which we can deliver our news and other timely content to viewers across Mexico and beyond."
"We&';re pleased that TV Azteca has chosen Avid Technology to help realize its vision of a tapeless broadcast news and production environment," said Adam Taylor, vice president of Americas Sales Operations. "We believe TV Azteca&';s commitment to Avid validates that our strategy for providing nonlinear technology to broadcast organizations is working. Avid delivers digital media production and distribution technology that is well integrated, robust, and proven to work, and the leaders in this market are taking notice. For a broadcaster of the size and importance of TV Azteca, there&';s just too much at stake to accept anything less than proof positive."
The TV Azteca sale is built around three Avid Unity™ shared media environments, one for each of the broadcaster&';s News, Entertainment and Novella operations. These shared media environments will support anywhere from seven to 50 simultaneous clients, and each workgroup will have dedicated direct-ingest into Avid Unity, editing, and play-to-air capabilities. The sale also includes multiple Avid iNEWS™, PortServer Pro, Avid AirSPACE™, and Digidesign® Pro Tools® systems, ultimately giving TV Azteca a highly flexible, collaborative workflow within and across its operations. In total, this workflow encompasses acquisition, editing, newsroom computer system automation, and news distribution to ongoing asset management.
The sale to TV Azteca now brings the total number of end-to-end Avid nonlinear news production environments, either installed or underway, to 53.
About TV Azteca
TV Azteca is one of the largest producers of Spanish language television programming in the world, operating two national television networks, Azteca 13 and Azteca 7, through more than 300 owned-and-operated stations located throughout Mexico. TV Azteca also operates a national broadcast television network in El Salvador. TV Azteca affiliates include Azteca America Network, a new broadcast television network focused on the rapidly growing US Hispanic market; Unefon, a Mexican mobile telephony operator focused on the mass market; and Todito.com, an Internet portal for North American Spanish speakers.
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