CORDILLERA COMMUNICATIONS TO CONVERT NEWS AND PRODUCTION AT 11 BROADCAST STATIONS TO PANASONIC DVCPRO P2
TV stations KPAX, KRTV, KOAA, KOVA Will Begin P2 Production This Spring
SECAUCUS, NJ (April 17, 2005) – Panasonic Broadcast announced today at NAB 2005 that Cordillera Communications (Duluth, MN) has begun a total conversion of news, production and promotional operations at its 11 broadcast stations to the DVCPRO P2 solid-state memory recording system.

The group’s initial purchase includes AJ-SPX800 camera packages and AJ-PCD10 drives to be used for production at KPAX-TV (Missoula, MT), KRTV-TV (Great Falls, MT), KOAA-TV (Pueblo, CO) and KVOA-TV (Tucson, AZ). Plans are in place to convert both field acquisition and production at all Cordillera stations to P2 beginning in early 2006. The remaining seven stations are KSBY-TV (San Luis Obispo, CA), KATC-TV (Lafayette, LA), KBZK-TV (Bozeman, MT), KRIS-TV (Corpus Christie, TX), KTVQ-TV (Billings, MT), KXLF-TV (Butte, MT), and WLEX-TV (Lexington, KY). In the majority of their markets, Cordillera stations rank number one for local news programming.

For the past several years, the broadcast group has used Panasonic 25Mbps DVCPRO equipment for newsgathering and 50Mbps DVCPRO50 products for production.

Cordillera Communications Director of Engineering Andy Suk said, “Having made the decision to move the group wholly to tapeless operations, we chose Panasonic P2 based on its elimination of all moving parts. The recording system is the typical point of failure in field cameras, and P2 has no moving mechanisms.”

He continued, “We have had an excellent working relationship with Panasonic throughout our years of using DVCPRO products, and we are looking forward to a similar collaboration with P2.”

Suk said that all editing, for production and news, will be NLE-based. Production operations will use the Leitch VelocityQ system, and news will utilize the Leitch Nexio Newsflash newsroom system.

Panasonic’s DVCPRO P2 series products are fully compatible with DVCPRO, the industry’s standard for digital newsgathering, and provide a seamless migration path to DVCPRO HD. DVCPRO P2 offers nonlinear acquisition and instant access to material, high-speed file transfer, laptop field editing without requirement for proxy videos, and compatibility with off-the-shelf data storage drives for low-cost archiving, while eliminating traditional digitizing and ingesting operations. The DVCPRO P2 system eliminates transports and mechanisms, resulting in a significant maintenance cost-savings because of the absence of any moving parts that can break down or wear out from repetitive use. Moreover, DVCPRO P2 products are resistant to environmental extremes including shock, vibration, cold, dust, moisture and humidity. The P2 card is re-usable up to 100,000 times, allowing a station to substantially reduce its media budget. For more information, visit www.panasonic.com/p2.

About Panasonic Broadcast

Panasonic Broadcast & Television Systems Co. is a leading supplier of broadcast, professional video and presentation products and systems. Panasonic Broadcast is a unit company of Panasonic Corporation of North America. The company is the North American headquarters of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (NYSE: MC) of Japan, and the hub of its U.S. marketing, sales, service and R&D operations For more information on Panasonic Broadcast products, access the company’s web site at www.panasonic.com/broadcast.