Avid Scores Major Avid EveryWhere Win with Sinclair Partners

For the past few years Avid has been singing the Avid Everywhere mantra. An all encompassing strategy that puts Avid as the foundation and cornerstone for cloud based, enterprise wide content creation, collaboration, media management, storage, archiving and monetization. This new 10-year deal with Sinclair standardizing all 64 of its TV News stations gives Avid a big win for the Avid Everywhere strategy and can become the poster child for their MediaCentral Platform.

BURLINGTON, MASS.– Sinclair is taking cross-station workflow into the cloud by standardizing on Avid MediaCentral, the centerpiece of the Avid Everywhere cloud platform. Sinclair will employ MediaCentral in its nationwide network of 64 local news-producint TV stations. This, according to the vendor. Avid said the agreement represents a record-setting contract that will see it deliver advanced end-to-end newsroom production and content management technology under a 10-year comprehensive agreement that addresses Sinclair’s business needs, and in the process, replaces legacy technology from other vendors. “Moving to a common production platform across all of our news markets provides us the platform to create a content-sharing news community across Sinclair, increasing efficiency and productivity,” said Scott Livingston, vice president of News for Sinclair Broadcast Group. “Having defined and more frequent technology upgrade cycles will enable us to keep our newsrooms current across the enterprise and allow us to respond to rapid changes like new digital distribution models in a more cost-effective way.” Powered by the MediaCentral Platform, the next-generation IP-based workflow for Sinclair’s news-producing stations will feature Avid’s Artist Suite, Storage Suite and Media Suite technology with third-party and custom workflow integrations. Avid Professional Services and Training teams will provide project and fleet management, commissioning, workflow consulting, and a comprehensive training curriculum. Avid’s Customer Care team will deliver a tailored 24/7 support program across the enterprise. Avid noted that operating efficiency is a major pressure point for media companies, as rapidly evolving technology and audience behavior make staying at the forefront of technology essential. Sinclair expects to realize meaningful economic benefits through this agreement. Del Parks, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Sinclair said, “Sinclair has always been at the forefront of industry-changing events and technological advances, and this agreement with Avid is another example of that. Avid’s forward-thinking approach to technology acquisition, deployment and support delivers the agility and scalability we need to deliver a higher value product to all of our news markets.” Sinclair Chief Financial Officer Christopher S. Ripley also weighed in: “The unique commercial model Avid is applying—along with the enterprisewide platform approach—allows us to operate in a more cost effective and capital efficient way, yet remain technologically forward in a manner that makes sense for our business today and in the future.” Louis Hernandez, Jr., chairman, president and CEO of Avid, said, “We are very proud to be working with Sinclair, who is well-known as a technology innovator in the media space. We couldn’t think of a better partner with whom to launch this groundbreaking managed services deployment model.” Avid shares rose more than 17 percent when the deal was announced. John W. Frederick, executive vice president and chief financial and administrative officer for Avid, said the company expects the contract to have “a material positive impact on our bookings for the fourth quarter, and may lead to updated 2015 bookings guidance or pre-release in early January 2016.”