Dutch regional broadcaster West goes on air with Ross's OverDrive

Using OverDrive, Ross Video's automated production control platform, has allowed West to simplify and automate workflows.

West, a Dutch broadcaster covering the western Netherlands from The Hague with a potential audience of 1.5 million viewers, has opted for OverDrive's solution. Ross Video to go on air.

With 80 employees, West prides itself on delivering fresh, immediate content to the local communities it serves.

Since joining the broadcaster's management team a year ago, Wiljan Pongers, Head of Technology at West, realized that more live content was necessary. "West had a news, sports, traffic style, but had gradually moved to edited products due to the cost efficiencies offered. However, we have a strong focus on the community and want to be close to our viewers. For me, that meant getting on the air quickly with video content and being able to update the content throughout the day live," highlights Pongers.

As a regional channel, adjusting the budget is always a priority. "Flexibility is a big issue for us here. We use the same studio for news, sports and traffic content and the biggest challenge for us has been simplifying workflows and keeping price under control but maintaining the flexibility we need. Technology, especially when it comes to automation, has helped us enormously," he adds.

Having worked at RTV NH and AT5 in the Netherlands, Pongers was already familiar with Ross Video's range of solutions.

"OverDrive, Ross Video's automated production control platform, allows you to simplify and automate workflows, giving us very consistent, repeatable and profitable results. It's pretty impressive to think that we could run a live news program with just one person in the studio and one person in front of the camera if we really needed to."

By choosing OverDrive and Ross's Xpression graphics suite, Wiljan Pongers has managed to take Wwest to a new level of production.

The Ross OverDrive solution has traditionally been associated with Ross mixers. However, the new version released in 2014 opened the platform to multiple mixer brands. Despite this, West was inclined to install a Carbonite mixer from Ross.
Now, Pongers is exploring the possibilities of integrating social networks with channel content as well as the use of virtual studio applications.

“We already work with Ross's Xpression graphics suite and I'm interested in how we could augment our offering with virtual elements and combine this with robotic cameras to provide even more dynamic and creative content,” he says.