MTD Systems announces completion of first phase of monitoring for Tribune Broadcasting's Satellite Distribution System — Now Showing At NAB 2006

Tribune Broadcasting had a vision of centralizing program preparation, quality control, and satellite distribution. It involved a lot of equipment from many manufacturers located in many different sites. In some cases the equipment was bleeding edge, in other cases tried and true. Their engineers working with the manufactures and software designers stitched together a system that accomplished the goals. Early on it was realized that because of the complexity and the far flung locations of the system that something would have to watch over the process from beginning to end, they came to MTD Systems.

"MTD Systems had a framework that allowed them to develop data and error information from diverse equipment and also to integrate existing error reporting into a single system encompassing our various facilities around the country. MTD Systems was an important factor in getting the distribution system operational. Many times it would seem that a problem was in box A in city A and MTD was able to say no, it's in box B in city B. The various manufactures and vendors came to see MTD as an honest broker and it helped facilitate the project. Today the MTD distribution screen is where our operators and engineers go to see what is happening anywhere in the system. Status for each program at each processing step is seen as the material moves around the country, through the system. There is both on screen alerting and messaging to appropriate personnel if there is trouble along the way. We look forward to a continuing relationship with MTD as we enhance the system and move it into other operations."
—Ira Goldstone. Vice President/Chief Technology Officer, Tribune Broadcasting Company

About Tribune Corporation: Tribune is one of the country’s top media companies, with 11 leading daily newspapers, 26 television stations, cable network Superstation WGN, Chicago’s WGN-AM radio and the Chicago Cubs, plus popular news, information and entertainment websites.

About MTD Systems: MTD Systems monitoring products are in use by five of the top ten US Broadcasting companies providing assurance that important on-air systems are on-line and properly operating. For more information visit MTD Systems on the web at: http://www.mtdsystems.com. To request a copy of our in depth white paper email your company name and contact information to whitepaper@mtdsystems.com.

MTD Systems joins our friends at International Datacasting for NAB — Booth C5841. The Tribune Distribution system is built on IDC’s satellite technology and MTD Monitoring.