Announced in September 2020 and set up for launch in June 2021, GB News was conceived with the aim of broadcasting a mix of news coverage and opinion-based content.

To achieve such ambitious results, the news channel needed to rely on a leading technology partner, able to create an ecosystem of applications and functionalities to sustain a growing volume of traffic. GB News chose Simplestream to develop and deploy a brand new full set of over-the-top (OTT) services – across multiple platforms – by leveraging proprietary products such as App Platform, and Media Manager as a content management system and orchestration layer.

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In this case study, we analyse:

• How Simplestream built and delivered a full suite of OTT and streaming services, across five platforms, in less than 10 weeks
• The complexity of an ecosystem that comprised several tech partners, and how Simplestream acted as a a vendor-agnostic focal point and system integrator
• How Simplestream managed an ecosystem of on-demand, live video and radio content, to provide wide-ranging playback experience
• The workflows created for pre-, mid-roll, and display advertising, as well as Server-side Ad Insertion (SSAI)
• The enhanced user experience on mobile thanks to the addition of written articles, accessible as they are unfolded on the main GB News website

Thanks to a robust architecture, GB News can provide close to 10,000 hours per year (combining live and on-demand) of news, opinion, and debate, across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

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