CBC / Radio-Canada Moves into a New
Era of Media
How the National Public Broadcaster Is Leading the Way with Its New All-IP Production Hub in Montreal
By Michael Raine
BROADCAST CENTRE IN THE NEW MAISON DE RADIO-CANADA
In
April 2017 , following approval from the Treasury Board of Canada , it became official — CBC / Radio-Canada ’ s Montreal operations would move to a brand new , 420,000-sq . -ft., state-of-the-art facility . The exciting part for the tech geeks out there , though this wouldn ’ t be revealed until later , was that this opened the door for a major technological leap forward . With construction completed in 2020 and the move of shows and operations currently nearing completion , CBC / Radio-Canada is now one of the first public broadcasters in the world to be powered almost entirely by Internet Protocol ( IP ) technology . This , of course , brings infinitely more flexibility to its production and distribution workflows across radio , television , and digital .
Interestingly , when construction began in the summer of 2017 on the new building – which sits at René-Lévesque Boulevard and Papineau Avenue , and just east of the old Maison de Radio-Canada – a key component of the broadcaster ’ s technical plans hadn ’ t yet become a reality . That is , the suite of standards for sending digital media over an IP network hadn ’ t been released . Nonetheless , the technical teams at CBC / Radio-Canada were heavily involved in its development and confident that these new
SMPTE standards were the networking solution they needed . Thankfully , the new standard , SMPTE ST 2110 and its four parts — -10 , -20 , -21 , and -30 — were released on Nov . 27 , 2017 . It now forms the technical backbone of the new Maison de Radio-Canada and the company ’ s plans for modernizing workflows and media distribution across Canada .
“ When the project started , we were at a point where I think the decision had to be made between the new and old technology . We ’ re audio , but we ’ re also TV , and the [ old ] technology was HD SDI , like all of our other stations . So , we could choose between going with the old technology , knowing that within a couple of years standards would change and we would probably have to update and change everything within a pretty short span of years , or we could look at the new standards coming in , which was ST 2110 – and AES67 was also already there – and just go IP-based ,” explains Patrice Dumont , Montreal-based project engineer at CBC / Radio-Canada . “ So , the decision was just made that we should go with something that is going to last longer , and which is most likely going to provide us with more flexibility , long-term scalability , and future-proofing . Before , if we would have had to change from a whole facility in HD SDI to some other technology , then historically , we would have had to change all the equipment , all the cabling , and all the backbone infrastructure . Whereas , with an IP-based infrastructure , maybe you have to change the SFPs in your switches , but all the fibre that you run through the building is still going to be usable and you maybe just have to adapt your switches .”
Importantly , too , adds Philippe St-Pierre , the facility ’ s project lead for spectrum engineering , the company is working towards full redundancy between its two main production hubs in Toronto and Montreal and moving to an all-IP network will enable that .
“ There are always many , many projects going on in all the [ CBC / Radio-Canada ] production centres to replace equipment , to bring parts of new technologies into the video and audio across the country , but it ’ s not every day that you have the opportunity to look at the whole picture and try to position yourself for the next decades to come . I think to build a completely new facility like we are doing in Montreal , it ’ s a good opportunity to make a major shift into the next decades for CBC / Radio-Canada ,” adds St-Pierre . “ Of course , the audio is driven a little bit by the video side , so when they make a decision to better position themselves in the video world , we follow suit ,
32 PROFESSIONAL SOUND