Malaysian Broadcaster, Astro Signs a 3-year Contract to use the Associated Press' Electronic News Production System (ENPS), Implemented and Supported by Techtel

Malaysia’s leading content and consumer company in the TV, over-the-top (“OTT”), radio, digital and commerce space, Astro Malaysia Holdings Berhad (“Astro”) has recently renewed its contract to use the Associated Press' electronic news production system (ENPS) for another three years to manage its broadcast content with multiplatform Mobile functionality - implemented and supported by a Singapore-based systems integrator, Techtel (S.E.A).

The combined strength of Astro’s Pay-TV and subscription-free TV service, allows the broadcaster to serve over 23 million individuals in 5.7 million households, or 77% of Malaysian households. The award-winning broadcaster has won Gold in the Media Networks category at the Putra Brand Awards for nine consecutive years from 2010 to 2018, the Malaysian Marketer of the Year award in 2016, and accolades at the IDC Digital Transformation Awards for Malaysia in 2017 and 2018.

Their ENPS installation in Malaysia supports more than 40 reporters, writers, editors and producers using 28 workstations. Astro’s local four-in-one Channel, Astro Arena uses ENPS to produce 24/7 sports programs featuring live local sports, a comprehensive 7-day-a-week coverage of local and international sports news, informative magazine and interactive viewer involvement - all in the native Malay language.

The deployed 8.2 version of ENPS also supports Mobile functionality through a web based client to facilitate journalists’ remote and field work. Apart from speed, among the advantages is the ability to send the first photos or video from a breaking story back to the newsroom already integrated into a regular AP ENPS story. Attaching media to the story is as straightforward as uploading media to a phone message, Twitter or Facebook. Once the media in ENPS Mobile story is embedded, it is ready to be integrated to production systems in the newsroom.

 “AP ENPS enables a seamless daily newsroom workflow by bringing together text, video and image elements that can be centrally published and distributed. Furthermore, the ENPS Mobile functionality allows Astro Arena to deliver sports stories instantaneously - directly from field to their newsroom” said Susan Lim, Territory Manager for SEA at Techtel.

Astro has been using AP ENPS for over 12 years and joins a list of Techtel’s ENPS users in Asia-Pacific, including Kompas TV, Fox Sports, SKY News, Channel 9, ABC News and many others.