Media-focused consulting- and technology service Qvest have completed an upgrade of the Channel 9 station in Melbourne with the news, sports and post-production environments and playout infrastructure were completely renewed.

After a similar remodeling of news, sports, and post-production at Channel 9’s Sydney headquarters, the Nine Network extended its collaboration with Qvest. The project has also included training all newsroom and production staff on the new tools and workflows.

A particular focus of this project was to align workflows and technology between Nine in Sydney and Melbourne. Melbourne is now able to be used as a Disaster Recovery facility, and operations can be switched over from one to the other site due to aligned tools, workflows and processes.

The defined and implemented technologies and workflows aim to meet all the security criteria of a major broadcaster, as well as an agile production environment for news and sports to respond quickly to current events and needs, including content production for multiple linear and digital touchpoints. The project’s design choices were guided by two key priorities: ensuring a robust solution capable of reliably delivering all major events like the Australian Open and the Olympic Games, while also selecting the most streamlined and cost-effective facilities and tools.

Geoff Sparke, the Director of Broadcast Operations at Channel 9 (pictured above) said:

“With Qvest we have found the ideal long-term partner who brings international expertise and supplier knowledge to the Australian market. The project in Melbourne was a successful continuation of this partnership, and it was clear that Qvest would handle the planning, procurement, commissioning and support of the entire Nine production system at both sites to our full satisfaction.”

As with the upgrade to Sydney, the current adjustment was implemented for Nine with the support of vendor partners Avid, EVS and Woody.