The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) has awarded a contract to SCISYS Deutschland GmbH’ Media & Broadcast division in the summer of 2016. The scope of this contract is to roll out the dira! Radio production and playout product suite, including the music rotation software by SCISYS partner MusicMaster / ON AIR, to all of SABC’s commercial, non-commercial and local radio networks. A total of 19 channels will replace their existing systems from Dalet and RCS to dira! systems.
Being one of the largest radio systems in Africa, the implementation was planned to happen in several stages:
First, SCISYS has set up a “Proof-of-Concept’ (POC) System to ensure that all technical and workflow requirements can be fulfilled by the system. This POC system was set up in Johannesburg at SABC’s Radio Park and succeeded in the acceptance test in September.
Kersan Kistan, manager at RBF Digital SABC, said: “This involves some 19 channels in 16 locations – we have a large organization with a great variety of workflows – therefore it was necessary to test if dira! can fulfill all the requirements. The POC system proved that dira! is absolutely up to the task. We are now looking forward for the actual roll out.’
The second phase was just finished: – the roll out of the music rotation software, MusicMaster, to 14 of SABC’s channels, located on Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Polokwane. Since the end of January 2017 all 14 channels are successful on air.
The following phase, starting in March 2017, will be the implementation of dira! at 5 channels at SABC in Johannesburg. Once completed, the dira! System will be rolled out to 15 regional locations across South Africa.
The new system will integrate with third-party systems for newsroom integration and advertisement/spot scheduling and playout. More than 700 workstations will access the complete system, with more than 1500 users working in 19 languages.
Dennis Herold, general manager Radio Broadcast Facilities, said: “SABC did a thorough evaluation of the existing systems on the market, and SCISYS delivered the most convincing offer. Beside the technical requirements, SCISYS’ experience with large systems was of great importance to us in choosing them.’
Dr. Willi Pieper, director SCISYS Deutschland GmbH declares: “We are very proud that SABC has chosen dira! as their new radio production and playout system and very much welcome this very famous African broadcaster into the dira! family of highly satisfied customers.”
