VG Streamlines Remote Guest Integration With QuickLink StudioCall™

NORWAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2025 – Originally founded in 1945 as a traditional newspaper, VG, a cooperating brand of Schibsted Media, has become Norway’s primary news destination, as well as its largest online media house and provider of news, sports and entertainment. With great dedication to its audience, VG currently produces multiple podcasts, in addition to several live broadcasts of all genres, racking up around a million streams daily on web TV (online and demand).

A large aspect of VG’s broadcasts consists of the incorporation of live remote guests, from reporters to experts. To make this process as seamless as possible for the end-users and the production team, VG relies on QuickLink StudioCall™, a powerful solution for incorporating the highest-quality remote guests using virtually any device.

“In hectic situations, like breaking news, having a simple solution to connect reporters and experts without too much effort for the producers, is the key to success,” says Andreas Røen Pettersen, Technical Producer, VG. “The reason we chose QuickLink for our live news operation was the simplicity it provides not only for the team, but for our end-users too.”

With QuickLink’s StudioCall, VG can easily deploy invitations to remote guests via SMS, WhatsApp, Email or by shareable link. Once connected, the VG operators have full operational control of virtual rooms and device settings from a central web-based portal, accessible from any global location. Using the intuitive remote management controls, VG’s operators can conveniently pre-screen, control and manage its remote guests, including camera/microphone/speakers selection, resolution, audio mode/gain and more.

Before incorporating StudioCall, adding guests to a livestream proved to be much more complicated for VG. “We would have to use some kind of video conference call app, which was a troublesome process,” says Pål Hansen, Head of Operations, Schibsted Media TV Ops Norway. “These struggles immediately vanished with QuickLink StudioCall in place.”

In addition to its ease-of-use, StudioCall has provided VG with the ability to incorporate multiple guests at once, while maintaining a limited footprint. “With QuickLink StudioCall, we can have several guests ready to join our news stream/broadcast with only one output from the QuickLink server to the vision switcher,” Pettersen explains.

Furthermore, the VG team has found StudioCall to be a great addition to its arsenal of solutions. “StudioCall fits so nicely with the rest of our production technology,” adds Hansen. “Beyond that, the QuickLink team has been extremely easy to communicate with, and is always open to any and all feedback, which makes for a great company.”

For those looking for added platform flexibility, QuickLink StudioEdge™, launched at IBC Show 2024, is a ground-breaking, multi-platform remote guest solution supporting the introduction of StudioCall, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Skype callers in a single solution. StudioEdge additionally allows the optimization of remote guest video and audio through powerful AI-technology powered by NVIDIA.