Ascent Media Sells Playout Business To Encompass

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Dec 8, 2010 2:42 PM, By David Austerberry

Ascent Media has concluded to sell the calm placement business of its auxiliary Ascent Media Group to Encompass Digital Media for roughly $113 million. This is segment of the company's new plan of cashing in properties with the settled goal of seeking for new investments that should find a larger gain to shareholders. The firm right away retains usually the systems formation division, but it continues to search for vital alternatives for this business unit.

The Encompass contract is approaching to shut in the initial entertain of 2011 and is theme to authorization by the FCC, the Singapore authorities and consent by Ascent Media's stockholders.

Encompass operates two of the largest eccentric announce services in the United States, in Los Angeles and Atlanta. The attend to Ascent adds outsourced network fad services to satellite, line and pay-per-view programming networks by services located in the United States, UK and Singapore.

The merger will meant that there are right away two service providers with a footprint that includes the United States, Europe and Asia, the other being GlobeCast . Singapore has emerged as a leading heart for media businesses casing the Asian region, inclusive India and the Asia-Pacific countries. As calm creators, mainly Hollywood studios, quit to file-based distribution, Encompass will be well-placed to rise the business already built up by Ascent Media.

Bill Tillson, Encompass boss and COO, and CEO Simon Bax proposed Encompass 3 years ago with the goal of focusing on the network fad business. "This deal is a best fit for our existing assets," Tillson said. In the United States, existing Encompass operations add services is to leading network together with line channels, local TV stations "and things around the transformation of digital files to VOD, iTunes or VUDU, all connected to the libraries prisoner for 24/7 playout," he said.

A couple of years ago, it could take up to a year for a local-language chronicle of Hollywood programming to air; that timescale as right away been marked down to a matter of days in a few cases. And, this increase in speed of calm placement can usually come about with global, file-based calm placement services. "With the Internet, having a check between the indicate a TV uncover front wherever and when it front everywhere is no longer viable," Tillson said.

The UK and Singapore operations of Ascent supply services for Encompass' existing U.S. customers, adding to the synergy of the acquisition. "We offer a one-stop emporium that can takeover their files and apportion their files opposite the world," Tillson said. This model is already working in the United States, where Encompass ingests, trims and high quality checks syndicated programming, and then distributes to the many playout channels it operates for broadcasters. This allows the economies of scale: feast once, QC once and playout many times.

Encompass does not wish to come in the post business, but it will go on to run a tiny amend trickery at its Singapore base, that does correspondence modifying to encounter the needs of the many not similar regulators opposite the Middle East region, together with for promo creation and interstitial media. "This is segment of the service for duct origination," Tillson said. The UK and Singapore bases will moreover supply denunciation versioning for those markets.

Aside from the tentative formation of the Ascent business, Encompass continues to rise playout outsourcing in the United States and expects to announce several deals in the forthcoming months with hire groups wanting to pierce to the central-casting model. The company is adding 25,000 sq ft to the Atlanta trickery solely for that purpose. By outsourcing, stations prevent the funds output to ascent to HD and can gain from descend working cost even though the economies of scale that Encompass can offer. "This allows hire to concentration on what they do best: headlines and sports for their local market," Tillson said.

As segment of the deal, Encompass gains a considerable teleport in Singapore with a footprint opposite Asia. In Los Angeles, its existing trickery was land-locked and couldn't be expanded; the merger adds the heavenly body trickery in Burbank, CA. On the East Coast, Encompass gains a considerable trickery in Stamford, CT. The full U.S. heavenly body coverage moreover allows the company to offer thorough DR facilities.

The merger is a burly denote of the changes in modern announce operations. Content is being changed hurriedly opposite the world from the indicate of creation to delivery to a universal audience. At the national level, stations are outsourcing chief manage operations to concentration on local module origination. All this is usually probable as files reinstate videotape, and those files are changed between announce centers by essential element and heavenly body networks. Looking back, videotape enabled the delivery of live programs opposite time zones, but it finally became a imprisonment on the enlargement of announce operations.