In the ongoing struggle in the international broadcast market, one Canadian company which has found a high degree of success – even capturing an Emmy for its efforts – doesn’t produce content but the environments and systems which facilitate production and broadcast.

IMMAD Broadcast Services, based in Markham, Ont., designs, engineers, procures equipment for, installs, implements and tests tv broadcast production, post-production, distribution and transmission systems. One of its latest projects has been assembling three installations for cbs and its coverage of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

The company, a subsidiary of publicly traded AZCAR Technologies, will provide systems integration for the downhill skiing, figure skating and slalom venues, prebuilding and testing systems in Markham before shipping them to Japan, where engineers will install and monitor the setups for the duration of the Games.

immad was similarly involved, on a larger scale, with nbc for the Summer Olympics in Atlanta. The company designed, engineered, integrated and oversaw the Georgia Dome and Olympic Stadium venues, the latter being comprised of four fully equipped production control rooms, with a fifth to integrate the four program feeds.

The success of the broadcast earned two immad engineers, Richard Higgin and Dan Siewars, Technical Team Studio Emmy Awards.

immad guy Rick Basciano says the company’s scope varies by project, ranging from conceptual engineering and designing facilities to nuts-and-bolts detailed engineering and commissioning.

immad handles large installments like designing and implementing systems for new broadcast tv stations, which it did for ytv when the specialty service was created in 1988. The company recently undertook a move for Showcase and an installation for the new History Television specialty and has done work for the CBC Broadcast Centre.

The company also handles dth setups, and was recently awarded a contract for a $35-million overseas dth concern. In 1994, it implemented a turnkey system for u.s. dth provider EchoStar, and this year has another contract to engineer and implement the expansion of EchoStar’s facilities to handle over 300 channels and infrastructure to support EchoStar’s next three satellites, scheduled to launch starting this month.

immad recently purchased New Jersey-based systems integrator East Coast Video Systems, which is handling a $4.5-million studio and broadcast facility for CH41 in New York. Basciano says while the move to digital provided the last major change in the industry, the ongoing challenge now is to anticipate the implementation of digital tv broadcasting and follow developments in advanced and high-definition tv as new facilities are assembled.