Broadcast Solutions, a media systems integration company, has completed a major overhaul of the technical infrastructure and workflows for Rustavi 2, a popular television channel in Tbilisi, Georgia. The project, led by Broadcast Solutions' Ukrainian team, was undertaken as the broadcaster moved to a new headquarters. The goal was to modernize the channel's core platform while ensuring its 24/7 broadcasting and news coverage were not interrupted. The final solution is a hybrid baseband and IT architecture that gives the broadcaster the flexibility it needs.

Rustavi 2, based in the capital Tbilisi, provides news and entertainment content to the nation. Its core infrastructure was reaching end of life, and at the same time the business elected to move to a new headquarters in the city. Broadcast Solutions was asked to design and implement a complete new technical platform, without ever risking 24/7 broadcasting and news coverage.

The Ukrainian office of Broadcast Solutions is made up of former broadcasters, which allowed them to get a real understanding of the goals of Rustavi 2. Then drawing on the knowledge and experience across Broadcast Solutions, the team developed an innovative and carefully tailored solution.

This lay in a hybrid baseband and IT architecture, giving the flexibility required. With live and breaking news coverage production a core requirement, Broadcast Solutions collaborated with Rustavi 2 to develop processes and state-of-the-art workflows built on the Octopus NRCS platform, to enable journalists and editors to get stories on air and online as quickly as possible. Specialists from Broadcast Solutions created customized metadata structures and workflow logic for the project.

Rustavi 2 had an extensive news archive which was not being used to best effect, and central to the project was its modernization and integration. The legacy system had material in multiple formats dating back as long as 14 years on NAS and more than 20 years on LTO-5 tapes. Broadcast Solutions developed processes to get all the material safely digitized, restored and in a common format.

The new archive uses a bespoke asset management platform, developed by Broadcast Solutions and working with the ALTO disk archive from DAC to provide a hierarchical storage platform. ALTO and its unique “sleeping drive” technology provides capacity, scalability and security while minimizing the energy footprint.

The result is a powerful news production resource, with more than half a million stories and sources in a single accessible database. It is fully integrated with the NRCS and with production workflows all the way to playout. It means journalists and editors can easily enrich stories and better inform audiences.

“We saw the opportunity of moving to a new headquarters building as our chance to completely transform the way we work,” said Dudu Kurdegelia, CTO of Rustavi 2. “We found the group from Broadcast Solutions based in Ukraine really helpful and supportive: because they were from a television background they immediately understood what we were trying to achieve and how we wanted to work.

“Together we created a strong technical design, overlayed with new workflows that enable our staff, and particularly our journalists and producers, to work with maximum efficiency while delivering great editorial content,” Kurdegelia said. “We are now much more streamlined, with journalists taking control of their stories from research to broadcast with news-studio automation.

“Last, but very important, Broadcast Solutions planned and delivered hands-on training for journalists, operators and engineers, all organized such that the handover was completed with absolutely no impact on our 24/7 operations,” added Kurdegelia. “The transfer from our old building to the new facility and way of working was completely seamless.”

Illya Tsesarenko, project manager at Broadcast Solutions said “This has been a fascinating project, where we have added real value across the technology, the workflows and the editorial practices. We started by getting a clear, in-depth understanding of what the channel wanted to achieve, and how the staff could best work.

“Thanks to our vendor-agnostic position we were then able to design an infrastructure to underpin the processes we had defined,” Tsesarenko continued. “Moving into a new facility, we could build a cohesive system covering live production, modern newsroom operations, and a new audio/video infrastructure core for the channel. Tightly bound up in the technical design was the operational design, effective work environments, workflows and processes that deliver for the staff and ultimately for the viewers.”

To ensure continuity of all of Rustavi 2’s news and production, planning for the transition, ensuring timely training and a phased implementation was a key part of the project. Work started on site in August 2024, with the baseband infrastructure going online in September. Detailed customization of the asset management architecture and file workflows was completed at the beginning of 2025.