NBC affiliated television station WGAL in  Lancaster, PA is delivering its daily weather broadcasts to viewers from the home of its chief meteorologist, Joe Calhoun, with the help of TVU Networks, the market and technology leader in cloud and IP-based live video solutions. With COVID-19 restricting in-studio reporting, the station turned to TVU Grid, an IP-based point-to-multipoint live video distribution solution that uses commodity internet, to provide a professional, remote weather broadcast with studio functionality and capability.

By using TVU Grid’s bi-directional feature, WGAL was able to provide studio capabilities to Calhoun to deliver the weather forecast as if he were live in the studio. The station set up a green screen with graphics and pushed it from master control to Calhoun’s home for presentation while providing video content from his home back to the studio. All of this was accomplished with HD video and low-latency using TVU Grid.

tvu networks
Courtesy of TVU Networks

“The pandemic forced us to start thinking outside the box when it came to remote work,” said Kevin Kalia, Director of Engineering at WGAL. “The secret was sending a broadcast-quality feed of Joe’s weather graphics to him, keying his shot with a switcher at his location, and then sending a program feed back to the station – all with TVU. The whole process was seamless.”

TVU Grid delivers scalable point-to-multipoint switching, routing, and distribution of live video over IP. TVU Grid is used by news agencies and media organisations around the world to share and exchange reliable live broadcast-quality video feeds with virtually no latency. It uses commodity internet to deliver high-quality, low-latency video from one location to many others, providing a cost-effective alternative to traditional fiber and satellite. TVU GridLink provides a video preview from hundreds of news agencies and has embedded rich metadata to help with live content search.