Wednesday, October 28, 2009

WNYC Radio Rolls Out Innovative Radio Program with ViewCast Streaming Solution

ViewCast Corporation announced that WNYC, America’s most listened-to public radio station, has selected ViewCast’s Niagara GoStream SURF portable encoding system for the station’s newly-opened The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space. The Greene Space is a state-of-the-art, multi-media performance space and broadcast studio that presents live broadcasts and tapings of WNYC’s signature programs. In addition, music concerts and festivals, audio theater, literary readings, art exhibits, political debates, symposia, town hall meetings and other exciting civic and cultural events are presented in the space. Most shows from The Greene Space are webcast live and archived in real time in Adobe Flash formats via the Niagara GoStream SURF. Many programs are also made available as video-on-demand (VOD) via the WNYC website.

“With the opening of The Greene Space, thousands of visitors each year are welcomed inside WNYC to experience great radio as it is created,” said Indira Etwaroo, Executive Producer of The Greene Space. “Technology allows millions more to connect to great content by stream, and in many cases download, audio and video of our live events. This is why it was so important to outfit the space with a cutting-edge digital audio and video production system.

“We tried to configure a PC-based encoder, but the machine time and labor for encoding via software, particularly for VOD, was both difficult and expensive,” said Bill Porter, President of Whitehorse Productions, Inc. and consultant to The Greene Space, who managed the ViewCast implementation for WNYC. “ViewCast’s Niagara GoStream SURF was a cost-effective, turnkey solution to provide reliable, real-time, live streaming of video programs and performances, plus VOD turnaround by next morning.“

“WNYC’s The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space is a model of innovation and a testament to the advanced capabilities that ViewCast’s streaming media technology can facilitate for today’s forward-looking content providers,” said David Stoner, President and CEO, ViewCast. “Our plug-and-play, professional-grade Niagara streaming media systems ensure exceptional ease of use, video quality and reliability for sophisticated broadcast applications such as WNYC’s The Greene Space, enabling high-performance video capture and streaming for both live and on-demand content.“

ViewCast’s Niagara streaming media appliances are designed to deliver the quality, features and ease-of-use convenience that professional broadcasters demand. They are pre-configured, plug-and-play solutions that enable users to quickly capture and broadcast premium quality audio and video in multiple formats and at multiple bit rates - all simultaneously. Plus they are powered by ViewCast’s award-winning Osprey technology, guaranteeing exceptional quality and reliability.