Neuchatel, Switzerland, February 2010…In today’s Web-connected world, the boundaries that define local and global have blurred almost beyond recognition. Where worldwide reach was once the exclusive domain of multinational broadcasters, now even the most local news is only a mouse click away.

Canal Alpha is one regional broadcaster taking full advantage of this newly leveled playing field. The channel’s reach extends well beyond the 300,000 or so local viewers in the French-speaking cantons of Neuchatel and Jura, broadcasting local and regional news and features worldwide via the power of the internet. Despite a compact facility and limited staff, Canal Alpha’s productions rival the big boys in terms of quality, thanks to a well-designed system for content creation and dissemination, centered around Apple’s Final Cut and ToolsOnAir’s Broadcast Suite.

“We work with small teams of two or three journalists and producers, and our philosophy is to keep our workflow as simple as possible,” explains Canal Alpha’s Marcello Del Zio. “Our teams upload to a central file server, and we use ToolsOnAir’s just:play to build and maintain a daily playlist.”

The fast-paced news gathering environment is well served by just:play’s timeline-based interface, says Del Zio. “We share our resources with a local print-based newspaper, and broadcast live streaming as well as video on demand, so it’s important for us to be able to make last-minute changes. just:play uses a really simple drag-and-drop interface, and it also allows us to integrate an RRS feed, so we can overlay graphics with a news crawl and weather readout, all in real time. And we can build and maintain our playlist from anywhere on the network, rather than having to be right in front of the playout server.”

Maintaining a streamlined workflow is becoming even more important as Canal Alpha expands, says Del Zio. “We’re building a second just:play system presently, so we can customize our content for our different cantons. We’re also putting together a system using just:live, and looking at two more using just:in, so we can apply the same workflow to our news gathering functions.”

Del Zio also gives high marks to ToolsOnAir’s support. “They’re very responsive, and they really pay attention to our needs and our suggestions,” he says. “For small broadcasters like us, that level of support is as important as the tools themselves.”