Antenna Group On-air with Etere Automation

ANTENNA Group was created in 1988, when its President, Mr. Minos X. Kyriakou, made the first step in the communications field, by establishing the innovative radio station ANT1 FM 97.2.

ANT1 Television, founded a year later, was soon placed on the top of the ratings scales - a leading place it rightfully holds until this day. In Cyprus, the ANTENNA Group has established a co-operation with the television station ANT1 TV Cyprus and the radio station ANTENNA FM Cyprus. Actually, Antenna Group is one of major broadcasting groups in Greece, owning many TV stations - in Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Cyprus – many radio stations and an editorial group. And for last, but not least, they own a school for Radio & TV engineers and journalists. History between the two companies, Italian Etere and Greek ANTENNA GROUP, begins when, in 2002, the broadcast division of the group chooses Etere for the play-out of four TV station. They are ANT1 the terrestrial station (one of the biggest Greek channels with the highest share in the country) and other 3 are satellite stations: ANTENNA Gold, ANTENNA Sat and ANTENNA Pacific. The basic necessity of the client was to have the maximum security and protection for their On-air. That for, besides the famous Etere Automation play-out software, Etere Clone’s advanced technology was added to the system. With it, the redundancy is complete: two automation controllers that broadcast two identical copies of the same play-list synchronized in frame, without any extra operations. In case the On-air operator needs to modify the play-list, both Main Automation and Clone Automation will be automatically modified. The Clone process checks out if the Main Automation works correctly; and in case of a problem, the Clone takes over the control of all devices and continues the broadcast. The fast commutation guarantees that not a single event will be lost. The client was stunned by this architecture, because nobody before Etere has ever been able to guarantee so much safety and easiness when using this really economical software. Michael Dallas, Antenna Group’s Broadcast Manager had something to say about this:
“Etere software is flexible and suits our needs for broadcasting. It has a friendly user interface, easy to understand the basic operations so each operator can start using it from the very first moment. It is a multi-playing software; up to 4 channels are playing with ETERE software and can cope with the things that we want to do. The support customers is good, we have asked for many things to be changed and came to our specific needs and almost everything has been done. The operators after the first 4 months did not want to change it and return to the previous one.” And more, Michael Dallas announced the next launch of new TV channels: “We are planning to launch three more Pay TV channels in the near future. ANTENNA TV, ANTENNA Gold, ANTENNA Satellite and ANTENNA Pacific, that have been already playing from the SeaChange Server with Etere Automation, and these new channels will be added to the server and automated by Etere. Till now we are pleased with ETERE Automation and we are scheduling to upgrade to the latest SQL version by the end of the year. The program has totally improved our workflow and its user friendly GUI and simplicity has gained the operators. The cost of purchasing Etere Automation and the facilities that are offered for that price are the main advantages compared with the competitors. Secondly, the recommendation of SeaChange for Etere Automation played also a significant role to our decision.” It’s been less than a year since the installation of the DBF version, Antenna Group decided to migrate the entire system to the SQL version. Since they’ve been using Etere SQL the entire play-out system increased its speed (SQL tests have confirmed the speed increase of cca. 20:1) and data safety; besides, now they can easily manage huge archives. After the good success of the installation of the Greek sister, also Antenna TV Cyprus decided to provide its system with the famous software Etere. Etere occupies hips of the management and creation of the complete scheduling of the channel and the total commercials management with Etere Traffic. Actually, Etere is installing the play-out for the 5th channel in Greece. Sign of the big relationship of the two companies and the big reliability that only the serious companies can offer.