Megahertz Moves e.tv to New Broadcast Facility

Megahertz Moves e.tv to New Broadcast Facility
September 8, 2014 Meriam Khan

[08 September 2014]

Megahertz provides all technical design, integration and project management to move leading independent South African broadcaster

Megahertz Ltd, a leading systems integrator and mobile broadcast production specialist, has won a contract to manage the relocation of South African free to air broadcaster e.tv. The station has been in its original location in Longkloof Studio’s in Cape Town since it first went on air 16 years ago. Now it is moving to a larger space in a purpose built facility in Roeland Park, about 2km away.

Megahertz has been involved with e.tv since its launch in 1998. More recently, it designed a completely new file-based workflow infrastructure for its channel expansion project in 2010. This infrastructure, based around a Pebble Beach Automation System and Omneon Spectrum servers from Harmonic, will be transferred to the new site.

Roeland Park will be home to the transmission facilities for eight channels managed by e.tv, and the facility being built by Megahertz will include space for future expansion. Also to be transferred will be the operations of three existing studios, again allowing for expansion in the future. The centre will also include creative and editing facilities, and ingest and delivery services.

“We have had a partnership with Megahertz since our beginnings as a station,” said Dave Stewart, Group Head of Engineering at e.tv. “We know they can keep tight control of a project and deliver what they promise – when we went tapeless for transmission we had less than four months to design, install, test and train the team, but the project was flawless.

“We’ve given them another tough challenge with this project,” he added. “We have to move not just operations but equipment, while keeping our studios and our eight channels on air. Megahertz has always taken the time to understand our business and really dig deeply into what we are trying to achieve. I look forward to working closely with the team on this exciting project.”

Jon Flay, Managing Director of Megahertz said, “Knowing the company and the people so well obviously helps, but the reason that Megahertz can win contracts like this is that we handle so much of the project in-house. Having direct control right down to the fabrication of the technical furniture means we can provide a design, install and implementation service and promise critical deadlines with a great deal of confidence.”

Currently design work and planning for the transition is under way. Building work will be sufficiently advanced for Megahertz to get access to the site in January 2015, with the move completed and all services on air from Roeland Park by the middle of the year.

Megahertz will be discussing its systems integration and build capabilities at IBC2014 (12 – 16 September) on stand 11.F20.