The Vatican Media Center Consolidates in the Days of Digital Convergence
A new step has just been taken in the reform of the Vatican media: the audio and video control centers have merged. From now on, digital signals will be sent to and received from the entire world in one single location.
This is an important step in the reform of the Holy See’s media, whose goal is to realize a “digital convergence”, as Amedeo Lomonaco explained in the Italian issue of Vatican Media on June 6, 2018.
The control center of what used to be Vatican Radio, located in the Leo XIII building, has been closed: programs are now broadcasted from Vatican Media’s main control room on the Via del Pellegrino.
“The former control center was the heart of Vatican Radio,” recalls Stefano d’Agostini, coordinator of the Productions Department of the pope’s media. “The programs were broadcasted from there by the emitters of Santa-Maria-di-Galeria to the frequency modulation and satellites.”
The digital convergence of the audio and video departments “also helps to unify the staff with the creation of a single structure,” explained Francesco Masci, the director of the technical department of the Communications Office, seeing this as more of a “true collaboration.”
The short-wave radio – sometimes the only way of making the voice of the Church heard in dictatorships or countries in the throes of war – was threatened by the reform, but it has been decided to maintain it, simply limiting it to the geographical zones experiencing these difficult situations.
The historic Leo XIII building will become the Holy See’s new media production center.
Sources: Vatican Media / La Croix / FSSPX.News – 6/14/2018
