Chyron: Ushering in the Next Generation of Storytelling

Live broadcasts are traditionally produced either in brick and mortar control rooms or OB trucks. This requires a huge investment in equipment that cannot scale and requires staff to all be in one location. To this end, broadcasters have been interested in the same flexibility that other industries enjoy from SaaS cloud-based solutions. This interest was further accelerated due to the pandemic that mandated work-from-home arrangements and no travel to live events.

This is where Chyron steps in.

Since Chyron first invented digital graphics for live broadcast in the 1960s, broadcasters have increasingly embraced the opportunity to enhance their stories with graphics and other live production tools. The company’s PRIME Platform allows clients to deploy almost any live production functionality seamlessly. Broadcast designers and operators can use this platform to create and play not only graphical overlays, but also populate large video walls of any aspect ratio, generate photo-realistic 3D augmented reality elements, and generate content for presenter-driven touchscreens.

One of Chyron’s immediate responses to the pandemic was to further ramp up the development of flexible, scalable solutions that could be implemented either on-premises or in the cloud. To this end, Chyron has had dozens of product releases, including four releases of the PRIME Platform with the introduction of new modules for switching, automation, and edge (viewer controlled) graphics.

“One of our core values is customer-centricity. We listen to our customers and pay close attention to what is going on in the world and even think about who our potential customers might be,” says Ariel Garcia, the president and CEO of Chyron.

Chyron is actively exploring how to offer more accessible, easy-to-use solutions for smaller schools and universities, niche sports, individual sportscasters, esports, houses of worship, corporations, and even individual streamers. To this end, the company has ensured that many of its products can be purchased via subscription, lowering the barrier to entry. Soon, Chyron will release LIVE, a brand new browser-based product that brings core production functionalities into a single and easy-to-use interface. Further, they also provide free, online, comprehensive training at Chyron Academy.

While many major news outlets use Chyron’s products in variety of ways, the company is especially proud of a project that several of news outlets worked on cooperatively. In April of 2020, Nexstar, Sinclair, and Quincy Media began to source and aggregate the current U.S. statistics on the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) down to the county level. Working with Chyron, the competing broadcast groups united to ensure that local broadcasters nationwide could provide viewers with the information they needed to understand the pandemic. The company could aggregate and organize this data, along with information from leading health organizations, to support more accurate and timely updates at the national, state, and local levels. The collected and aggregated data could be delivered to viewers via Chyron’s NewsTicker, which leverages the powerful data management capabilities of PRIME graphics.

For sports coverage, Chyron provides Paint – a robust illustrated replay tool, VP for placing virtual content tied to a specific location in live video such as down lines or virtual advertising, and Click Effects for venue control. Chyron works actively with its sister brands, Tracab and Hego, providing AI-driven tracking data and operators who understand high-level sports production. Notable recent projects providing data, illustrated replay, graphics and services include La Liga, Sporting Kansas City, and many others.

Over the years, Chyron has helped numerous clients. “In technology and in business, change is inevitable. Change can be intimidating, but it also represents opportunity. By always having an emphasis on developing the next best thing for our customer, Chyron prepares for the future,” concludes Garcia.