TV 2 is a publicly owned television station based in Odense, Denmark, and has five subsidiary stations including TV 2 News, Denmark's first 24-hour news channel (launched on 1 December 2006). TV 2 has about 1,000 employees and a revenue of 1.9 billion DKK (2006). The station has been a full active member of the European Broadcasting Union since 1990.

TV2 installed the Mosart news automation system in 2007, converting to it from an entirely manual gallery. TV2 was the second station to install Mosart, and since then the Mosart system has gained rapid acceptance in Europe at premier broadcasters including BBC, Sky Meteo in Italy, YLE in Finland and N24 in Germany.

According to Morten Brandstrup, Head of Production at TV2 News, one of the main reasons Mosart was chosen by TV2 was to make its news operations more flexible, reliable, and efficient: “The manual workflow we had involved eight or nine people in the output of the show. There was a lot of button-pressing, and it was very labour-intensive and prone to error, particularly in graphics. We wanted to create a smooth workflow, with a relaxed working atmosphere in the gallery. And for a 24-hour news service, it just wasn’t possible to continue operating it manually.”

When searching for an automation system, TV2 looked at what was available from other manufacturers, but settled on Mosart because “we could see from the way it is designed, and the way it works, that it was made by producers. That’s very important for us – the people who made Mosart are very familiar with production workflow, the pressures operators are under when they are on-air.”

For Morten, it’s the predicability and security Mosart gives TV2’s news operation that is the big advantage. “We have around twenty different ways of doing a news item on-air, and once the Mosart templates are set up for each of those ways, you are guaranteed that everything will happen correctly each time, with the graphics, audio, video, DVEs and so on all working the way you expect.”

One of the key advantages of the Mosart system is its ability to work with any studio infrastructure, without being limited or tied to particular switchers, mixers or other equipment. TV2‘s operation uses an iNews system, three VizRT graphics systems (driving full-screen, overlay, and studio monitor displays), a Studer audio mixer, and a Grass Valley vision mixer. When TV2 migrated its news operation to work with Mosart, there was little need to make changes to the station’s existing setup, but the additional capabilities built in to Mosart led TV2’s team to opt for remote-controllable cameras, and an upgraded audio mixer. These changes allowed TV2’s producers to use Mosart to achieve control over the entire studio operation.

“That’s what Mosart means to me, as a producer,” says Nicki Sorensen. “I can now control everything that happens during a show. If I decide to change something during the show, I don’t have to ask everyone if they are aware of that change, because everything is connected through the Mosart system. If I change the order of the stories in the rundown, Mosart keeps the audio, video, graphics all in sync.”

“With the manual operation, we had a producer, an editor, an assistant, sound engineer, graphics operator, and an operator for live feeds. Now we are just two in the gallery – the producer, and an assistant responsible for audio and live feeds. This means changes can be made securely, and much more quickly, giving a lot more flexibility in operation. We have fewer people in the gallery, but better production standards. We have cut down the silly errors that used to occur for example from using four video servers and always needing to tell the audio operator which one to use. Now the producer doesn’t need to care which server it is, because Mosart knows. And with fewer people, you get fewer mistakes.”

Mosart’s use of templates to set up customised automation workflows is the key to easy on-air operation. As one of TV2’s super-users, Nicki is responsible for editing the templates, but once he has set them up, the other producers do not need to know anything about how they work. “We have a different template for each camera, for each live feed, for each DVE, and so on. I do all the changes to those templates, but the important thing is that if I make changes to the templates, the other producers don't have to do anything different: they continue to use the same commands – it’s Mosart that controls the equipment in a different way.”

“It's not difficult to edit the templates, and I edit them frequently to make changes in our workflow. For example, we might change to a different set of DVEs for an event like the European Championships in Hamburg, and so for those I will create a different template which we use for coverage of that event, which is added to the standard templates used for the rest of the news.”

The power of template-based operation does not restrict the flexibility of the system or prevent last-minute changes: “I can always do something differently live on Mosart if I want. If camera 1 is specified from iNews, I can always choose camera 2 instantly from Mosart. You can set up keyboard shortcuts for almost everything.”

Mosart’s design is rooted in the experience of professional producers, and this contributes to a well thought-out working environment for the producer. One aspect that Nicki particularly appreciates is the timing displays: “A big benefit of the Mosart system is that we have multiple timing displays with different countdowns ? for the whole show; for each story; for the video servers; displays of current time and end time; and the displays update appropriately whenever we change something in Mosart.”

“We’ve had the system for three years in continuous use now,” says Morten. “It’s been highly reliable, and the staff finds it very easy to use. Nicki was one of two super-users trained initially by Mosart, and the super-users then trained the other producers. We have about seventeen users of the system in all.”

“The installation was very smooth and trouble-free, and we had a setup period of about three to four weeks – a very short time. Support from the manufacturer has been excellent too.”

“For TV2, using Mosart gives us many advantages, and it means we work very differently now as an organization. We used to use half of our staff on programme output, but Mosart has let us reduce that to around ten percent, which means that more of our staff can be out in the field, getting the news and reporting. That makes us a better news operation altogether.”