Utah Scientific’s GS-4000 Speeds Up Graphics Displays for Ohio TV Stations

Utah Scientific announced that Ohio’s Hometown Stations (WLIO and WOHL) have installed four GS-4000 master control branding systems to speed workflow and to post graphics more easily for each of its four uniquely branded stations.

WLIO/WOHL serves about 750,000 households in Ohio and Indiana, and is the only station in the nation that broadcasts programming from four of the major U.S. networks — ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox — which means WLIO/WOHL often must display the same information with four different branded looks. The GS-4000 units make it possible to integrate graphics such as side panels, time and temperature inserts, lottery numbers, and crawls onto the screen in a way that’s branded for each network.

“Since we have four stations co-located, the ability to get something done in the least amount of time is very important to us,” said Frederick Vobbe, WLIO’s director of engineering. “Since the GS-4000 has macro capability, we just put data into one unit, and it produces four different graphics for each of our four stations. In the old days it might take 30 seconds or more for the operator on each station to put together a lottery crawl. Now we do that same function in three seconds, for all four stations.”

The GS-4000 units operate through Hometown Stations’ existing Utah Scientific master control switchers, so the master control operators can call up preconfigured pages from memory at the touch of a button.

“We looked at a lot of systems, but the GS-4000 was a good marriage for us because of the way it interfaced with the rest of our system,” said Vobbe. “The Utah Scientific product specialist, Chris Harmon, came here and installed all four machines — and had them running in 40 minutes. We’ve had other products that have taken days to get them configured and working.”

The GS-4000 is a full-featured graphics system designed to support all of the varied requirements for text and graphics in master control branding applications. The GS-4000 supports static logos imported from standard graphic files, as well as animated logos, which are flipbook animations played back in real time. In addition to supporting unlimited static text elements on a scene, the GS-4000 offers a very powerful set of linking tools for presenting text from external data sources including, but not limited to, time and temperature displays and news tickers.

“Utah Scientific for me is the benchmark for what a lot of businesses should be doing with their products and service,” said Vobbe. “They’re the easiest to work with, and their 10-year warranty is by far the best of all the companies I’ve dealt with.”

“I’ve enjoyed a great relationship with Fred for more than 20 years now, and that kind of loyalty is hard to find,” said Tom Harmon, president and CEO of Utah Scientific. “We really appreciate that we can continue to work with Fred and his team of innovators. They’re always looking for new ways to put technology to work so that their unique operation runs more smoothly and efficiently, and we’re pleased that we get to help them do this.”

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