A Reborn TV Station’s Master Control Move

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Six months ago, a Columbia, S.C., television station was notified that it would lose its affiliation with The CW Network after 5 1/2 years.


The loss of network affiliation would mark a major new chapter in the life of WKTC-63, which began life in 1997 as a UPN affiliate. It would later shift to the WB network, and from 2006-2014 became the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the South Carolina capital.

As of Sept. 30, MyNetworkTV programming is back. But, the station’s branding is all about Columbia. And, to help WKTC on its next chapter in its 22-year history, NVerzion was contracted to help the locally owned station — in a major way.

With shows such as the syndicated The Doctors and Judge Jerry in prime-time, WKTC took a hard look at the future. This focused on the replacement of an aging automation system, in addition to a router and an old multichannel server.

WKTC Chief Engineer David Canfield and GM Stefanie Rein drafted a plan that was budget conscious, while meeting the station’s immediate needs. NVerzion allowed them to sample a Nfinity Video server, while Canfield and Rein finalized their proposal.

In the end, multi-channel server systems controlled with NVerzion’s NControl Automation were put into place and aligned with the WKTC OSI traffic system. A new Utah Scientific router completed the station’s upgrade needs.

The NFinity video server configuration includes a main channel and a backup channel with RAID-N on the primary channel for additional redundancy and content mirroring.

The new system eliminates transcoding, NVerzion says.