Harris Corporation Selected to Provide Prime New Zealand With Powerful End-to-End Airtime Sales-Through-Automation System

SYDNEY, Australia, June 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Harris Software Systems Asia Pacific, an operation of Harris Corporation's Broadcast Communications Division, today announced that Prime New Zealand has purchased a complete airtime sales, programme management, automation and digital asset management system. The end-to-end solution, which will provide highly efficient and dynamic management of sales and on-air operation, includes the Harris Landmark airtime sales system, the Vision Programme Management system, Harris Automation, and Invenio(R) digital asset management.

Prime Television New Zealand Ltd., a national, free-to-air UHF network, began broadcasting in New Zealand on August 30, 1998, and is also available on Sky Satellite. The Prime schedule is a mixture of general entertainment, lifestyle, and drama and comedy, sourced overseas primarily from Australia and the United States. While Prime screens some classic TV series, the majority of peak time programming is new to New Zealand, unseen on any other network. Prime's head offices are located in a dedicated broadcasting facility in Albany, North Auckland, and sales offices are based in Hamilton, Tauranga, Hawkes Bay, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.

In February 2002, Prime entered into a joint venture with Australia's leading broadcaster, the Nine Network. The joint venture enabled Prime to access Nine's programming, and to gain leverage from Nine's positioning in the international television market. Prime began to offer first-run movies and series from the U.S. with programmes from Australia. In a determined demographic-broadening strategy, Prime provided new opportunities to viewers and advertisers alike, which led to large expansion for the broadcaster and the outgrowing of their existing Equinox sales and management system, eventually prompting the search for a new complete solution mid-2003.

"We needed a system that would allow us to manage our sales and on-air operation more dynamically and make us even more competitive in the New Zealand market," said Gerry Smith, general manager of Engineering and IT for the Prime Group. "It became very clear that we needed a complete system that was powerful in its functionality for sales and flexible for programme management. That's when we approached Harris with a view to the Landmark- Vision solution. Once we were happy with these two components, we began negotiations with Harris' distributor, Magna Systems, for an automation and digital asset management solution. After careful review, we committed to a migration path initially using the Harris ADC 100 automation system and then moving to a full H-Class(TM) Automation system with Invenio digital asset management to complete our requirements."

Landmark is the advanced and established total solution for the management and execution of complex media, airtime and sponsorships campaigns and also allows the management of annual airtime client contracts. With a proven history of meeting the needs of multi-channel operators, networks and regional sales houses, Landmark provides total control over the available inventory to ensure effective break utilisation to fulfill advertising agency targets while maximising revenue.

The Vision programme management system combines planning, rights management and scheduling within one workflow-oriented solution. The comprehensive scheduling engine provides the tools to create single- or multi- channel presentation schedules combining programme content, interstitials, commercials and promotions into a single frame-accurate playlist. The interactive graphical user interface uses drag-and-drop techniques to create and replicate schedules rapidly, and has built-in wizards for the generation of complex templates and presentation structures.

The ADC automation system fully automates the dubbing, management and playout of program material from video disks and VTRs, and supports a full range of GPI controlled devices with a sophisticated suite of features that automatically manages difficult, complex tasks permitting new revenue and additional operations savings. ADC provides a rich feature set, including resource allocation and serial communication modules to maximize resources.

H-Class(TM) automation is a powerful workflow management solution designed by broadcasters for broadcasters to streamline ingest-to-air operations throughout the broadcaster's enterprise. H-Class(TM) brings together everything needed to automate labor-intensive processes, eliminate duplication, originate live productions outside of Master Control, and share media seamlessly. H-Class(TM) automation also offers powerful new capabilities such as digital media ingest and gives the interconnections needed to link local or remote news, production and traffic departments with ingest-to-air operations.

Invenio media asset management (MAM) is comprised of media management and content management product suites. The media management products form an intuitive bridge between the H-Class(TM) automation and MAM, specializing on ingest that can be customized to suit dynamic workflows. The content management products focus on the traditional approach to MAM, which enables the search and browse, cataloging and archiving of rich media.

"Landmark, Vision, H-Class(TM) and Invenio(R) present a strong integration and migration path to Prime, and Harris offered us an established headquarters in Sydney, localized support, more resources and a big commitment to customer service," said Prime's Smith.

"We have been working alongside Prime since the business was launched in 1998," said Joe Khodeir, president of Harris Software Systems Asia Pacific. "Their decision to select us to continue to work with them as they develop and grow their business is very gratifying and a great example of Prime's faith in our commitment to their business. It is also a great example of the Harris commitment, since its acquisition of Encoda, to integrate all of its products more tightly."

About Harris Broadcast Communications Division

Harris Broadcast Communications Division is one of four divisions within Harris Corporation, an international communications equipment company focused on providing assured communications(TM) products, systems and services for government and commercial customers in more than 150 countries. One of the world's leading suppliers of broadcast technology, Harris Broadcast Communications Division offers a full range of solutions that support the digital delivery, automation and management of audio, video and data. For more information, visit http://www.broadcast.harris.com/ .