As part of a major upgrade of the BBC's Broadcasting House facilities in central London, dB Broadcast, one of the U.K.'s largest systems integrators, has chosen to use the Snell Kahuna HD/SD multi-format production switchers.
The newly developed Broadcasting House will host one of the world's largest newsrooms and the Kahuna switchers are being installed in each of the four largest studios at the facility, where they will be used in live news programs and play a key role in the migration to HD operations.
"Within the W1 development, the BBC is creating a centralized focus for its national and international news operations that will bring the World Service and the domestic news service together on one site," said Tom Swan, sales and marketing director for dB Broadcast in a statement.
The Kahunas will see heavy service in three fixed-rig studios and one flexible-rig studio, switching all incoming content and clips for the 24-hour World Service and News Channel broadcasts. In addition to the four Kahunas, the W1 campus will feature two Snell Sirius 850 1152x1152 routers.
"At any one time, more than 10 million people across the U.K. will watch or listen to output from the new Broadcasting House, and every week at least 150 million people worldwide will tune into the World Service broadcasts," said Mark Gardner, sales director, Northern Europe and MEA at Snell. "The fact that the BBC will be using both our switching and routing solutions for such a visible and influential project on the global broadcasting stage speaks volumes for the versatility and reliability of our products, and we are pleased to be involved at such an integral level."
