MUMBAI: With a view to better servicing its programming and production requirements ESPN Star Sports (ESS) Asia has announced a realignment of its operations across Asia.
In all around 24 redundancies have been created. In place of these new positions have come up. However nine employees who did not feel that the new roles were relevant have moved on. In total ESS employs 600 people across Asia.
Speaking to Indiantelevision.com ESS Asia MD Rik Dovey said, "This is a restructuring exercise based on the programming requirements of our network."
"We see this as a natural process of growth for the company. We are replacing these positions with others that meet our production plan more adequately to continue delivering programming that appeals to our viewers," Dovey pointed out.
However the realignment has not affected ESPN Software India, which employs 100 people. ESS India MD R.C. Venkateish added that Joy Bhattacharya and Kaushik Basu will represent India at ESS' production facilities in Singapore. They will report to Hugh Bevan who is in charge of overseeing production activity.
Narsimhan who won the Harsha Ki Khoj contest earlier this year has moved to Singapore. ESPN Software India director corporate communications and event management group Himanshu Verma said, He anchors capsules on our news shows SportsLine and SportsCenter. As and when his expertise grows he will also help us with local shows. Right now we are working on improving the format of Premier Hockey League, which returns next year.
" We are also excited about our lineup for next weekend when we have the finals of three events - Wimbledon, the Natwest Series, the Confederations Cup as well as Formula One.
Meanwhile, ESS will install Front Porch Digital's DIVArchive software system to power its new archive facility in Singapore. The win further extends the market share lead of Front Porch throughout the Asian broadcast market. The Company now has six DIVArchive customers in Singapore and 27 throughout the Asia Pacific region.
ESS engineering director Andy Rylance said, "We conducted exhaustive analysis and testing of competitive products within the archive management space, and no other provider could match the proven performance and scalability of DIVArchive. Our selection was also influenced by the strong presence of Front Porch in Singapore and throughout Asia. Front Porch's many references from global media leaders was very compelling and its products deliver as promised."
DIVArchive (Distributed Intelligent Versatile Archive) archive management middleware will enable the broadcaster to achieve interoperability between its digital media storage devices, video servers, automation systems, editing systems and digital media workflow applications. The system architecture is based on a combination of software and hardware components, which are integrated to provide a modular solution.
ESS' Seachange server has been configured with 12 terabytes of storage archiving 2,200 hours of online material. The solution is fitted with eight encoders and 28 decoders to support ESS's round-the-clock and round-the-globe sports entertainment feeds. DIVArchive will manage the movement of programming between this large on-line video server and the broadcaster's new StorageTek robotic tape library. The complete system will be controlled by Harris automation.
