Blackbird Forte Increases TownNews.com Expansion of Coverage

Forbidden Technologies has announced that TownNews.com has significantly expanded its partnership with Blackbird in the US market.

Blackbird Forte will be used extensively by one of TownNews.com’s major partners to deliver news content across multiple platforms to towns and cities in 11 states across the US. At the heart of the integration is Blackbird, believed by the Board to be the only codec specifically designed for manipulating video in the cloud.

Blackbird gives TownNews.com’s partner the freedom to rapidly access, navigate, and manipulate content no matter their location. They can then deliver stories with control using Blackbird Forte’s browser-based enrichment, editorial, and publishing tools.

Forbidden has agreed a significant six-digit two-year deal with TownNews.com for the licensing of Blackbird for use in this media broadcast infrastructure.

In 2018 TownNews.com acquired Field59 which had been a customer of Forbidden since 2008. TownNews.com provides over 1,700 newspaper, broadcast, and magazine publications in the US with web, print, mobile, and social media services and solutions. TownNews.com’s integration of Blackbird provides its customers with a powerful editing suite for rapid and remote manipulation of video content in the cloud.

Forbidden CEO, Ian McDonough says:“This expansion of Forbidden and TownNews.com’s partnership is a very exciting development for both companies. This rollout is the first true execution of Forbidden’s OEM strategy for Blackbird. Blackbird will be a key part of the infrastructure across US news channels in 11 states. This is a key step in taking Blackbird deployment to a whole new scale. Our recent fundraising allows us to execute and support partnerships of this size to a world class standard.”

TownNews.com CEO, Brad Ward says: “Blackbird Forte gives our customers powerful cloud-based video editing capabilities that they can’t get anywhere else. We look forward to continuing to expand our relationship with Forbidden Technologies for a long time to come.”