U.S. Department of State chooses Blackbird

Posted: 02/10/2019

2nd October 2019, Washington DC and London – Blackbird plc (AIM: BIRD), developer and seller of the patented market-leading cloud video editing platform Blackbird, announces that it has been chosen by the U.S. Department of State for video production, including the publishing of fast turnaround digital news to its own and other online news outlets. The contract awarded to Aperture Solutions Group, Blackbird’s U.S. partner, is for one year with multi-year extension options. The contract value is a six-figure U.S. dollar amount each year of the contract.

The U.S. Department of State’s video and production teams will be able to use Blackbird to rapidly clip, edit and publish news broadcast seconds after live to its social channels including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, as well as delivering longer form content to its own website and other digital news outlets. Working across multiple U.S. based sites, production teams will also be able to instantly access videos kept in Blackbird format from the department’s archive for the repurposing of content across its social and other online channels. Blackbird will be replacing both SnappyTV and traditional on-premise editing systems.

Ian McDonough, CEO of Blackbird, said: “We are delighted to win this publicly competed tender from such a high-profile international customer. As a large-scale non-traditional video broadcaster who is expanding their output, the U.S. Department of State had the entire plethora of available technology and more traditional tools to choose from. They have chosen Blackbird because, simply put, we can do things that no other cloud video platform is able to do. We can deliver unparalleled speed, high quality, full interoperability and scalability which is ideal for both large and small teams alike. The deployment of Blackbird is designed to raise the quality of output and drive engagement as well as internal productivity.”

Blackbird is the world’s only video editing platform developed from the ground up specifically for the cloud. Delivering unbeatable speed, scalability and quality of editing tools and video output, Blackbird is accessed through any browser, easy to learn and needs only limited bandwidth to use.  Blackbird delivers significant productivity and efficiency benefits to any enterprise-level organisation working with video.

Blackbird drives major awareness, engagement and reach for brands in the sports, esports, news, entertainment, enterprise and public sectors. Customers include IMG, Deltatre, MSG Networks, NRL, Peloton, TownNews and A+E Networks.

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