Among the cable TV properties owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group is the Tennis Channel.
With cord-cutting an omnipresent concern, the company led by Chris Ripley has just taken its first steps in bringing the network’s content — or, at least some version of it — to a free, ad-supported medium.
Call it a FAST break for the Tennis Channel, thanks to tech partner Amagi.
Sinclair Broadcast Group has given birth to T2, a new offering exclusive to the increasingly popular Free Ad-supported Streaming TV (FAST) platform.
For starters, T2 arrived in March as a preview of sorts, exclusively on Samsung TV Plus.
Tennis Channel is using Amagi CLOUDPORT, a cloud-based channel playout platform that offers broadcast-grade quality. Sinclair is also using Amagi’s content scheduling services, Master Control Room (MCR) services, and Amagi LIVE, a UHD-ready, cloud-based live orchestration platform for orchestrating broadcast-grade live content on the go.
“The experience of launching our first FAST channel for tennis in the United States with Amagi has been enriching,” said Andy Reif, Senior Vice President of Tennis Channel International. “The Live-to-VOD functionality from Amagi is extremely valuable to us as it allows effortless switching between live and recorded content. Further, Amagi LIVE supports industry-standard advanced graphics templates, native graphics, HTML, and singular.live. The user experience this delivers is wonderful for tennis fans and we’re excited to bring the sport to a whole new audience.”
Amagi, led by co-founder Srinivasan KA, says the FAST Channel extends a two-year relationship with Tennis Channel punctuated by the launch of channels in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and India.
