FOR-A delivers Charisma’s First post-COVID Studio

Charisma has production capabilities across the Middle East, and works with international broadcasters like NBC Universal, Warner Brothers, ViacomCBS. As the COVID lockdown eased, the company needed to ramp up productions very quickly, and looked to expand. 

It elected to build a new facility in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to cope with the unprecedented demand for entertainment and events. Since the studios had to go live quickly, and the project had limited manpower, Charisma needed a strong, trusted, local technology partner. Charisma brought in Ideas Concepts as a system integrator who has experience in fast-track project delivery. 

“Internally we went through a detailed exercise to explore the best possible options,” said Aiman Al-Ziyoud, CEO of Charisma Group. “The timescale was the most challenging factor we faced. Although we had numerous dealings with all the industry’s top players, we opted for a solution from FOR-A.” 

The production system installed at the new Charisma facility includes the FOR-A HVS-2000 production switcher, MFR-3000 router, FA-9600 multi-purpose audio and video processor, ClassX dual channel graphics generator and InSight production servers. FOR-A also provided monitors and sync pulse generators from LEADER.   

“Through detailed discussions with the Charisma team, we understood their clear vision of what they want to achieve now and how they will expand it in the future, including the prospect of scaling to 4k Ultra HD” said Khalid Sweidan, senior sales manager of FOR-A in the Middle East. “As a result, we were able to realise their vision with a system that guarantees efficiency, reliability, time savings and exceptional quality.” 

FOR-A, Ideas Concept and Charisma engineers worked collaboratively on installation, commissioning and training. The system was completed within 60 days and went live on 1 September 2021. Since then, the studio is in use for as much as 12 hours a day to meet the ever-growing demand for Charisma-produced content from the major broadcasters in the region, including MBC, Saudi Broadcast Authority (SBA), Rotana and Dubai Media Inc. 

“It has been a great pleasure to work with the Charisma team in Saudi Arabia during these challenging times,” said Khalid Sweidan. “They have been extremely co-operative before, during and after the installation. We are all proud of our work on this remarkable production facility, delivered in a very tight timeframe.”