Half year review by NETIA's President

During the first half year, NETIA's turnover rose to more than 4 million euros, a growth of over 60% for the same period in 2005. The gross margin grew by over 30%.

Geographical distribution of turnover:

• Europe and Middle East 50%
  

• Africa, an emerging market 20%
  

• Asia Pacific 20%
  

• North America 10%

Significant contracts were signed on both the home and export markets, mostly as the result of winning international calls for bids, strongly positioning Radio-Assist as leader, now commercially available through distribution network in 40 countries.

The launch of new products for the Manreo and Media Logging ranges at the end of 2005 has begun to bear fruit. The new markets for audio and video content management and repurposing touch not only broadcasters themselves but new players from the world of telecommunications, Internet, mobile telephone operators, institutional organisations and other media related organisations.

During the course of this 1st half year, NETIA has purposely striven to obtain customers in each vertical market, testimony to future growth.

Trade show highlights

NAB, AES Paris and Broadcast Asia are behind us now and at each show NETIA has been showing new features and amazing new products including:

• A SMS module which provides a significant way to increase revenue for today's radio stations by using mobile phone platforms as a new way to interactively communicate.

• A new multitrack called Multitrack XT, which is intuitive, flexible, and offers a very rich feature set. It is a simple, ergonomic, reliable tool ideally suited for audio editing and production work. NETIA's Multitrack XT is the only solution capable of mixing both linear and compressed data on a single track.

At the forthcoming IBC show in Amsterdam NETIA will unveil the newest features in its Media Logging range. You will be able to discover content mining applications based on the newest speech and image recognition techniques. Come and see us at booth n° 8.321 in Amsterdam.

What's happening...(RFI, RAI, SRTC, Sporting News, SMU, RTM...)

Radio France Internationale ( RFI) is equipping all 18 of its on-air studios within the "Maison de la radio" in Paris with Air-DDO playout software. Air-DDO is one of several tools available in NETIA's Radio-Assist 7.5^TM range of digital audio software programs, which cover the entire operation of a radio station from production to broadcast.

" RFI was the first radio station to become a customer after we were incorporated, and once again in this exciting digital audio broadcast project, they have entrusted NETIA with the complete playout infrastructure of all of their on-air studios," said Pierre Keiflin, senior vice president for NETIA .

" The wide range of benefits that accompany the Air-DDO and Radio-Assist^TM programs will allow presenters and studio technicians in RFI's on-air studios to focus more on programming content and being creative, and less on the technical issues that often arise during on-air broadcasts."

Each RFI studio will run a playlist simultaneously by deploying two Air-DDO workstations: one will serve as the primary station and the other as a backup. Because both workstations have identical playlists, should a problem arise within the primary station the operator can switch to the second for immediate takeover. This allows RFI studios to achieve optimal security, total reliability, and prevents on-air downtime.

Directly linked to the scheduling workstations, Air-DDO will also keep track of the latest changes made to the playlist in real time, refreshing automatically. To meet developments in music radio networks, the Air-DDO program has been enriched with many DJ functions including drag and drop capabilities, easy-to-use sound cueing, sequence looping, PFL playback on each channel, and automatic sound linking and voice fade.

The database and file servers will receive maximum security through the use of NETIA's DB Share software program, which ensures total database reliability and consistency regardless of circumstance.

The Air-DDO broadcast module is the result of several years of research and focuses as much on the ergonomic level as on the technological.

Spread over two monitor screens, the GUI simultaneously displays four broadcast channels and provides access to the numerous help and preparation tools: cuer, on-air monitoring, playlist modification, recording, and production.

NETIA is delivering a custom-made digital audio archiving system to the Sudanese Radio & Television Corporation (SRTC). The cost-effective platform will help SRTC achieve a flexible and efficient audio archiving workflow, as well as provide reliable storage and asset management for the broadcaster's historical content.

NETIA is joining forces with NOA, its archiving solutions partner, to build an audio archiving system specifically tailored to the needs of SRTC, which has historic recordings in its audio libraries spanning several decades. It would take several years for the broadcaster to transfer the recordings to a reliable digital medium. Non-repairable defects could occur in the meantime. The NETIA/NOA system, which will be integrated into a NETIA production and playout system already in place at SRTC, will give users immediate access to the historical assets.

" NETIA technology is a response to the needs of broadcasters such as SRTC, who require large amounts of content storage at an affordable price point," said Xavier De Vynck, vice president of business development for NETIA. " The NETIA/NOA system will allow SRTC staff to quickly transfer and archive its audio collections on a large scale and in a cost-effective manner." SRTC's system will also embed metadata coming from its database systems. In total, 20,000 open-reel tapes and thousands of CDs and MDs will be digitized in the archiving system, ensuring the safeguarding of the content.

The platform to be delivered is standard, dynamic, and flexible, providing SRTC a future-proof system. The content is stored redundantly on-line on hard disk as well as off-line on DVD, giving SRTC maximum data security. Today's hard disk-based storage technology is technologically and technically a perfect fit for this kind of application. " SRTC's historical content is extremely important for our organization. It's the modern spoken history of our country and must be protected for future generations," said Mohamed Abdelmaged Elsadig, director of engineering at SRTC. " We have a longstanding partnership with NETIA, and once again they have proven they understand perfectly the needs of their customer. For us, it was a natural choice to go with NETIA."

"SRTC's need for efficient, high-quality analog-to-digital transcription is perfectly addressed by the NOA system range," said Jean Christophe Kummer, CEO of NOA. "The historical content in SRTC's library, which features musical and spoken elements, is unique and needs to be conserved for long-term continuity. NOA's tools make this process cost-effective, reliable, and high quality, with thorough tracking of metadata continuity. NOA has proven to be a reliable system provider for the archive market throughout the last six years, especially when business continuity is not always evident in this area."

RAI Radio, which currently employs NETIA's Radio-Assist^TM digital audio software solutions in its Rome-based radio stations, will now use the company's solution in all of its remaining offices and stations across Italy.

The flexibility of NETIA's network structure allows RAI to seamlessly share information between its sites in Rome, and now, throughout the entire country. Locations already equipped with Radio Assist ^TM software include Bolzano, Milan, Naples, and Trieste. Over the next few months, the software will be installed in Aosta, Cagliara, Torino, Trento. In total, Radio Assist will be launched in about 20 regional sites that will each be connected over the WAN to Radio Uno in Rome.

" Since 1998, RAI has counted on NETIA technology for its most critical radio operations," said Pascal Cima, NETIA project manager for RAI. " Today, RAI shows us the complete trust they have in NETIA as they have decided to equip their complete regional network with Radio Assist^TM, which is again a major step forward in their nationwide architecture."

NETIA's software allows RAI to manage station activities simply and efficiently, improve overall productivity, and enhance the quality of on-air programming. Keeping pace with RAI's developmental needs, today more than 300 NETIA systems already installed in the Rome stations have been deployed to manage different production areas within each station, such as the newsroom. RAI stations are interlinked and communicate with each other through high-output channels (optical fiber and leased lines), sharing their sound files as needed. For example, transferring sound files from the Parliament to Radio Uno is triggered directly from the browser of a Radio-Assist ^TM production workstation in the Parliament.

All on-air studios are equipped with NETIA's Playout workstations and the complete RAI system in Rome is secured with NETIA's DBShare and Media Management software programs to ensure total database reliability and consistency, regardless of circumstance.

Sporting News Radio, founded in 2001, has been using NETIA's Radio-Assist^TM all-in-one radio operations package for more than four years to provide listeners at hundreds of stations in the United States, as well as on Armed Forces Radio and XM Satellite Radio, with the latest in sports news. Among the Radio-Assist^TM modules the network utilizes the most are the Feed-In/Feed Plan, Import/Export, and Look Up, along with the Stretch function and Jingle packages.

"We have been using NETIA's Radio-Assist ^TM pretty much since the founding of the network because it provides us an all-in-one software package for operating our network, from acquisition to production to on-air," said Dean Field, director of network engineering, Sporting News Radio. "The inclusiveness of the package makes it infinitely less time-consuming for us to deliver sports news to our listeners quickly."

Sporting News, the umbrella company under which Sporting News Radio operates, started out as a magazine in 1886. After 120 years the magazine is still published, making it the oldest sports publication in the United States. Sporting News has become a major provider of sports news, encompassing a website, an online bookstore, and a radio station, which cover athletics such as college and professional football and basketball, baseball, NASCAR, and golf, and others.

The radio division of Sporting News operates on a 24/7 basis and focuses primarily on news and interviews with players and coaches, although it does occasional sports flashes for active games. Operators at the network, based in Northbrook, Ill., with substations in Boston and Los Angeles, use NETIA's Radio-Assist^TM Feed-In/Feed Plan to record audio from various games and other sources. Its easy-to-use, built-in calendar allows technicians to make a daily schedule of all automatic recordings of any external programs as well as define each recording in advance with the name of the station (if applicable), the date, time, length, and other identifiers. The Look Up module also assists operators in quickly searching and retrieving previous recordings.

Sporting News Radio Network uses the Import module of Radio-Assist^TM primarily to take any incoming audio into its system without having to go through a noise-adding analog record process, and the export module to copy pre-selected sounds of any length, store them within its file system, and export them to those who request them --- usually coaches and players who have been interviewed by the network. As for the Stretch function and Jingle packages, Stretch allows operators to modify the length of a sound to fit into a specific audio spot, while Jingle enables them to pre-set common audio cuts for each show and change them quickly between shows.

About Sporting News Radio and Sporting News:

Sporting News Radio is a 24-hour sports radio network broadcasting live on stations from coast to coast. Hosts include Tony Bruno, Troy Aikman, James Brown, Tim Brando, Arnie Spanier, to name a few. Sporting News Radio also operates Boston's 1510 WWZN The Zone and Los Angeles' 1540 The Ticket KMPC. Sporting News Radio is heard live on AOLRadio.com, SportingNews.com, MSpot.

With the recent sales of its Radio-Assist 7.5^TM digital audio software program to two leading radio broadcasters in Singapore we are rapidly expanding our presence in this country. Singapore Management University's SMU Campus Radio Station, as well as UnionWorks, which operates and manages two radio stations in Singapore, recently took delivery of the NETIA Radio-Assist 7.5^TM systems.

"The sales to Singapore Management University and UnionWorks demonstrate NETIA's increasing success in expanding into the East Asian market," said Xavier de Vynck, vice president, business development at NETIA. "They like our products be they are easy to use and implement and are "future-proof" in the sense that future upgrades to the systems are simple and cost-effective."

Singapore Management University (SMU)'s SMU Campus Radio, a student-run station, chose the Radio-Assist 7.5^TM system because it is a full turnkey radio automation solution that will facilitate the station's operations and make it feasible for any future upgrades to the system.

It is integrating Radio-Assist 7.5^TM into its operations to enhance the capabilities and quality of the recording of its programs. Using the Radio Assist 7.5^TM, students will record, edit and tape its daily program, which will be broadcast and streamed over the SMU's intranet and public address system.

UnionWorks, a joint venture between NTUC Media and SPH Multimedia, operates and manages the WKRZ91.3 FM (English) and UFM 100.3 FM (Chinese) radio stations in Singapore. It chose NETIA's Radio-Assist 7.5^TM because it needed a full turnkey solution for recording, editing, and exporting audio files within the same system, the ability to edit and playback while recording feeds, and the flexibility to export audio files in different formats.

UnionWorks will use the Radio-Assist 7.5^TM to log WKRZ91.3 FM and UFM 100.3FM's programs continuously. Each other's channel will be used to capture two different sources at different times. After digitalization of the feeds or while recording the feeds into the server, the technical departments will play back the audio file for monitoring purposes. The audio file will be edited in the MP3 format and can be exported upon request via email.

Radio Television Malaysia (RTM), the government-owned broadcaster of Malaysia has recently commissioned NETIA to fully refurbish its 11 regional stations with Radio-Assist 7.5^TM, the latest version of the company's content management software. The stations had already been using NETIA Radio-Assist^TM solutions since 2001, and this latest order solidifies NETIA's position as a radio solutions market leader in Malaysia.

"The fact that the regional stations have continually tapped NETIA for radio solutions combined with this latest order demonstrates the trust RTM has in our Radio-Assist ^TM," said NETIA's Vice President of Business Development, Xavier de Vynck. "It shows they are committed to working with us into the future. We are truly gaining a strong foothold in this region."

As one of the largest broadcasters in Malaysia, RTM has 11 regional and eight national radio stations, spread throughout the country, which has a population of about 25 million. They have chosen Radio-Assist^TM because of the range's modularity, which gives them the flexibility of fine-tuning and customizing the system's configurations for each regional station's needs. Also, as many Malaysians speak several different languages and regional dialects, the fact that Radio-Assist^TM can manage multiple languages through one GUI makes it an ideal choice for the regional broadcasters.

The regional stations have been using most of Radio-Assist's modules to help streamline the management of their on-air content. Radio Assist^TM allows RTM to automatically digitize analog files during acquisition, import and export files, access important database files, edit, and plan in the most efficient manner possible.

By taking advantage of Radio-Assist 7.5^TM, the broadcasters will also have access to the Air-DDO module, which allows users to monitor and control on-air operations by simultaneously displaying four broadcast channels over two monitor screens and provides four on-air support tools: a playlist, which displays all the sounds scheduled in chronological order; several air cart stacks that gives users access to a range of various sounds, jingles and stingers; and a hotkey reserved for top-priority items. In addition, the presenter has access to a wide range of ergonomic tools that allows him to control sounds, playlist, and other functions. Presenters can also use the Air-DDO to record, edit, and schedule while on air, and add any metadata into files as needed.

Staffers at the refurbished regional stations will also be using Radio-Assist^TM modules in order to communicate with other IT networks. Primarily, these will comprise the Import and Export modules, which will allow the regional stations' staff to send content via FTP into the servers of the national radio stations.

Owari Toubu Housou, a private C-FM radio station broadcasting out of Seto-shi, Japan, has installed NETIA's Radio-Assist 7.5^TM. range of digital audio software programs to manage all stages of its workflow. The new system has greatly streamlined the way the station acquires, produces, broadcasts and stores programming.

Owari Toubu Housou was looking for an all-in-one radio system that allowed it to edit programs quickly, automate pre-programming tasks such as playlist creation and store music on PC-based audio files. Every stage of their workflow needed management -from acquisition, production and broadcasting--to scheduling and administration.

All of the station's live programs are recorded and re-broadcast. The record function of Radio-Assist 7.5^TM comes especially in handy for this, automatically digitizing analog audio during acquisition. Additionally, a special feature of version 7.5 is that it allows the user to set markers during recording and start editing before the recording is finished.

Training operators on Radio-Assist^TM is a snap. Its design is similar to that of other radio systems, so the learning curve is minimal. Additionally, Radio-Assist^TM automates live-to-air functionalities, minimizing the possibility of programming mistakes or mix-ups. At any time, the user can rework the recording, start it again and even doing several takes.

Product Focus : Media Logging

NETIA's Media Logging meets the increasing demand for mixed audio and video digital monitoring solutions. This range of products allows capture, indexing, transcoding and distribution of content.Media Logging is used to monitor audiovisual content and to repurpose it and is particularly well adapted to Broadcasters, Telecommunications and mobile telephony operators and Internet related companies.

• The Media Logging range integrates a 24/7 automatic capture of audio and video flows and may be permanent or activated in different ways: Date/Time, Image Recognition, external events...

• Captured audio and video items are stored in a secured database where they are then examined, segmented and completed by metadata necessary for their indexing. These metadata are generated automatically or semi-automatically using the mostinnovative and most modern technologies, such as transforming audio into text (Speech-to-Text) or Image Recognition.

• Media Logging may then be interfaced with a text search engine. This ensemble, acting on metadata, can find audio and video blocks dealing with a given subject and present on the server.

• The Media Logging range is entirely developed in an Internet (Web-based) environment. A modular design and user friendly interface make Media Logging perfectly adapted to the needs of Audiovisual and Telecommunications companies who repurpose content, providing substantial gains in productivity and rapidity in provisioning their audio and video content.

• The integration of Media Logging into NETIA's Radio-Assist^TM and Manreo^TM ranges concretises one of the most innovative solutions and guaranties product durability.

Read more : Chronos

Read more : Dragster

NETIA movers and shakers

Mustapha Rezzoug joins the team as Product Director for the Radio-Assist^TM suite of software and is based at NETIA's headquarters, Claret, Southern France."It's extremely exciting to have the opportunity to actively participate in NETIA's strong development, particularly in the very challenging broadcast environment" said Mustapha Rezzoug.

Mustapha, who has a Ph.D. from the LIRMM-University of Montpellier, started his career in the semiconductor and software industries, before co-founding Wany Robotics. There he led the company's international program management and was involved in both technical and commercial aspects.

Abel is based at NETIA's headquarters, Claret, Southern France. Abel was formerly in charge of Special Projects, providing bespoke applications for Radio and Video broadcasters. As Video Product Director he will be concentrating on the Manreo^TM software suite and, as he stated, "It's a great opportunity to be able to actively participate in the growth of this product range, especially when the market is in constant evolution."

Abel has an Engineering Degree in hardware and software development.

NETIA has named ARTEC (Grupo Arte Y Tecnologia S.A. de C.V.) as the company's distributor in Mexico. As part of this new agreement, ARTEC will represent NETIA's range of audio ( Radio-Assist^TM) and video ( Manreo^TM, Media Logging^TM) products through its engineering, sales, and support staff, as well as showcase these product lines at regional trade shows.

"ARTEC is recognized for its ability to integrate innovative technologies in solving complex integration issues for leading Mexican broadcasters, and we're pleased that the company will be backing our products in the very active radio industry across the country," said Xavier de Vynck, vice president of business development at NETIA.

Mexico includes roughly 1,500 radio stations, all of which are facing new federal guidelines for digital broadcasting while also striving to accommodate the convergence of media outlets. This distributor agreement will position NETIA and ARTEC to meet the Mexican broadcasters' growing need for advanced content management and broadcast functionality.

"We have known of NETIA for years now, watching the company's success in Europe's competitive market for digital radio solutions," said Valentin Fernandez Bolland, Director at ARTEC. "We feel that together we can achieve the same success here in Mexico. This country has a long history of relying on radio for all types of communication, and our new relationship with NETIA will enable us to work together in bringing local stations the necessary solutions, support, services, and tools to improve their operations and workflows and enhance the way they do business."

About ARTEC:

From its creation in 1992, ARTEC has grown to become a leader within Mexico's television and video industry. Thanks to its solid infrastructure, ARTEC is able to represent manufacturers from all over the world, bringing new technologies to Mexico and creating solutions to satisfy the demands of its clients. The company is reliable, agile, and efficient, bringing a fresh and dynamic perspective to the country's broadcast market. The company's clients include Mexico's leading producers, filmmakers, and broadcasters. More information about ARTEC and the products and services it offers is available at www.artec.com.mx.

Meet NETIA

IBC:

8 to 12 September at RAI in Amsterdam booth n° 8.321