During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic last year, Channel 9 staff in Sydney were kept busy moving from their historic Willoughby site where they had been for 60 years to the network's new home in North Sydney.

November 20th, 2020, marked the final day of broadcast before the move to state-of-the-art HQ that includes a large number of highly specialist spaces to support Nine Entertainment Co's broadcasting function, including a 400sqm data centre, six studio spaces, radio and podcast facilities, eight control rooms and a multitude of editing suites.

The purpose-built studios place Channel 9 at the forefront of the industry, not just in Australia, but across the world. The investment in new technologies for the studios includes a full package of studio lighting from Show Technology.

Channel 9's Head of Lighting Andrew Veitch started on the new studio fit-outs last April saying it was hard work as the rest of his crew were still working at the Willoughby base.

“Fortunately I then had Paul Collison and Tom Johns join me for three weeks and we conquered heaps - with help from Show Technology's Vince Haddad too!” commented Andrew.

There's not a lot of power in North Sydney to run large studios so an all-LED rig was essential and with that proviso in hand, Andrew surveyed many companies and huge amounts of gear. Ultimately, it came down to price and what was offered for that price and whilst there were a couple of other companies that came close in price, they could not offer an entire suite of studio lights the way that PROLIGHTS can.

Consequently, a PROLIGHTS complete package of 205 x EclPanel TWC, 6 x EclPanel TWCJr, 119 x EclFresnel Jr, 20 x EclFresnel 2K and 79 x EclMiniFresnel FC were installed throughout the studios.

“Its way easier to run one brand rather than multiple brands,” added Andrew. “Plus, Show Technology could deliver on time and they always offer excellent backup.”

When discussing the EclPanel TWC, Andrew said he is impressed by their output, the built-in macros and the colour temperature. He also liked that Show Technology had the barndoors, 8 way chamber egg crates and 60degree honeycomb for them in stock with the intensifiers landing soon.

“It was a no brainer choosing PROLIGHTS,” he said. “We're only running these lights between 40% and 50% so they'll last a long time. We've just purchased some of the smaller EclPanel Jr to update the A Current Affair studio.”

Andrew added that all of the PROLIGHTS' Fresnels are great and perfect for their application.

“We've had no dramas with them at all,” he remarked. “We put them all up, chucked in a DMX number, made sure they were in the correct mode and away we went. Simple.”

(written by Show Technology)