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Here we have some news stories from Westcountry Broadcast.

 HBA Awards and Spring Conference 2008

Westcountry Broadcast were at the Hospital Broadcasting Association's annual awards and spring conference in Leeds on 29th March. A busy exhibition saw many visitors to our stand with a great deal of interest in Audessence audio levellers.

In the evening a superb awards event hosted by Jon Godel of IRN saw our MD Nick Beer on stage presenting the awards for best newcomer and the fantastic news that our friends at Hospital Radio Plymouth not only won Station of the year but one of their long serving members Connal Cather also won the John Whitney award. Congratulations to all awards winners.

Radio Today have a comprehensive gallery of photos from the exhibition and awards ceremony here.

Southend Radio launches in complex built by Westcountry Broadcast

In a project that we have been involved in for over a year and which commenced on site last December, we have built the entire studio complex for the newly launched Southend Radio. Based in a brand new building as close to the sea at Southend as you could get without getting wet and just along from the pier, the new station has the benefits of state of the art studios in a stunning and unique building and with fabulous views over the Thames Estuary.

The facilities include 3 studios and racks room, various offices and a boardroom. The whole station is backed up by a fully automatic generator.

At 8am on Friday 28th March Mikey Porter spoke the first words on air to cheers from the assembled team (see photo). All went smoothly and everyone reflected on a station that has been built and launched in a very short period of time and with great success. http://www.southendradio.com

You can see a video of the launch on Youtube.

Westcountry Broadcast now members of the IABM

We are proud to announce that we have been appointed members of the International Association of Broadcast Manufacturers. From a purely chance initial meeting with CEO Roger Crumpton in Delhi, India in 2006 and his introduction of the IABM to us, we have finally decided to apply for membership following our observations of the organisation's increasing profile and work on behalf of broadcast manufacturers.  We look forward to working with the IABM and benefiting from their experience and resources.

Westcountry Broadcast appointed as Audessence Distributor.

We are delighted to announce that we have reached agreement with Audessence to distribute and integrate their products as part of its on-going process of establishing a diverse range of expert dealers and distributors.  In addition, we will offer Audessence products on a stand-alone basis to enhance the performance of existing studio installations where transparent and accurate level control is fundamental in ensuring the delivery of optimum performance. We will shortly launch a section of our website dedicated to Audessence products. The full range can be viewed by clicking here.

Speaking about the agreement, Westcountry Broadcast's Nick Beer said: "We provide a one-stop shop for broadcasters requiring high quality studio design, installation services and support for new build or refurbishment projects. We believe that the Audessence ALPS audio level controllers, together with their wider product road map will provide us with a range of professional audio processing options to suit the needs of our clients, both now and in the future".

Audessence Sales and Marketing Director, Graham Sloggett, added: "We appreciate Westcountry Broadcast's excellent reputation in the area of studio design and build as well as their understanding of client's audio processing requirements. We're really pleased to have finalised this agreement and we're looking forward to cementing this working relationship both here in the UK and in selected overseas markets".

The first fruits of the new relationship were seen at this year's IBC in Amsterdam when Audessence products were launched on the Westcountry Broadcast stand in the British Pavillion (Radio / Audio Hall Eight - Stand 8:131d). Our picture shows Nick Beer and Graham Sloggett  cementing the agreement.

Another new product range from Westcountry Broadcast

Westcountry Broadcast now resell and integrate the Rose Electronics portfolio of KVM products including switches, extenders and rack mount accessories bringing to you brands such as fcit, Exivision and Rose. Products are available for all remote PC requirements as well as digital signage, video wall and AV applications. Commenting on the agreement, Managing Director Nick Beer said "We have used various KVM products over the years but always considered them as an ancillary product, necessary to complete an installation. We never found particularly favourable pricing or distribution on the products but having tested Rose Electronics' products we were impressed with the quality and business model they offered and so now are happy to not only have a product to integrate in broadcast applications but to be able to offer it to the wider data and AV markets. Rose have a good portfolio of products for the digital signage industry which is clearly a potentially huge market and we will be happy to serve that demand!"

For more information, contact us.

BBC Local Radio takes delivery of Autoplus from Westcountry Broadcast

We are delighted to report that BBC Radio Devon have purchased Autoplus and RITA1 from Westcountry Broadcast. We have worked to provide them with a complementary package to RadioMan which is of course used by all BBC local radio stations for their studio based playout and archiving. BBC Radio Devon had a specific requirement for outside broadcasts and unable to take RadioMan away from the studios they needed a broadcast standard playout system that would import the Radioman audio and database and thus make available their entire library in the OB environment. Autoplus achieves this. Not only that but they asked if we could provide reporting back from Autoplus to Sable, the BBC rights management application package to remove the need to manually transpose the information about audio played. We have also achieved this complete with the facility to record by BBC programme number. See Autoplus in action with the BBC here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/content/image_galleries/devon_county_show_bbc_gallery.shtml?19. If you would like details of the BBC specific facilities within Autoplus, please contact us.