SABC calls for dira!

SOUTH AFRICA: The South Africa Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) has completed the initial phases of its radio production and playout and music rotation software upgrade. The project will see the national broadcaster roll out Scisys’ dira! as well as MusicMaster, which is distributed in the region by OnAir, across 19 channels.

‘SABC did a thorough evaluation of the existing systems on the market, and Scisys delivered the most convincing offer,’ said Dennis Herold, SABC’s general manager radio broadcast facilities. ‘Besides the technical requirements, Scisys’ experience with large systems was of great importance to us in choosing them.’

SABC’s new solution will integrate with third-party systems for newsroom integration and advertisement/spot scheduling and playout. More than 700 workstations will access the complete system, with more than 1,500 users working in 19 languages.

The contract for the project was awarded to Scisys in the summer of 2016 and the first stage was a proof of concept system to ensure that all technical and workflow requirements could be fulfilled. This was set up at the broadcaster’s Radio Park in Johannesburg and succeeded in the acceptance test in September.

‘This involves some 19 channels in 16 locations – we have a large organisation with a great variety of workflows – therefore it was necessary to test if dira! could fulfill all the requirements,’ explained Kersan Kistan, manager at RBF Digital SABC. ‘The proof of concept system proved that it is absolutely up to the task. We are now looking forward for the actual roll out.’

Following the successful test, the second phase of the project was to roll out the music rotation software, MusicMaster, to 14 of SABC’s channels, located in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Polokwane. This stage was completed by the end of January 2017 with 14 stations now successfully on air.

The next phase, which gets underway in March, will see the installation of dira! at five channels at SABC in Johannesburg. Once completed, the production and playout solution will be rolled out to 15 regional locations across South Africa.

‘We are very proud that SABC has chosen dira! as their new radio production and playout system and very much welcome this very famous African broadcaster into the family of highly satisfied customers,’ concluded Dr Willi Pieper, director Scisys Deutschland GmbH.

www.musicmaster.com
www.onair.de
www.sabc.co.za
www.scisys.de