This story perfectly aligns with our belief at Ross: we hire people for their creativity, intelligence, and initiative. They are not just cogs in a bureaucratic machine. This philosophy led me to include a unique clause in the 91ÌÒÉ« Code of Ethics over 25 years ago: 

“We will go above and beyond in times of crisis. If there’s no one to authorize the required action in times of company or customer crisis – do what you know in your heart is right. (You may rent helicopters if necessary.)” 

This statement is more than just words; it’s a part of our culture: 

• In the onboarding package for every new hire 
• Displayed in every 91ÌÒÉ« office building 
• Featured at our trade show meeting rooms 
• Shared on our website 

And in all these years, guess how many times it’s been abused? Zero. But the number of remarkable stories of customer success it has produced? Countless. 

Our culture trusts our people to do the right thing in a crisis, and they never disappoint. Here’s an example that illustrates this beautifully: 

A few years back, a Director of Engineering from a large television station group shared an incident with me. He noticed someone in a Ross jacket boarding the same flight as him, turning left to go into First Class seating. He thought, “I guess that’s how Ross spends all the money we give them — flying in style!”

Later that day, he arrived at one of his TV stations to find his Chief Engineer waiting nervously by the front entrance — but not for him. As he stepped out, the Chief Engineer rushed out of the building, straight past him to the taxi arriving behind, and wrenched the door open.  

Inside the taxi was the same Ross employee from the plane, clasping a small box on their lap. Without hesitation, the Chief Engineer ripped the box from the startled occupant’s hands and sprinted back inside the studio, yelling over his shoulder, “I’ll be back in a minute. This box is going to save our newscast! The only way Ross could get it to us in time was by hand carrying it on the last seat on the plane!”  

Later, the director told me, “David, I will never doubt your company again.” 

The most beautiful part of this story? It was the first time I had heard about it. Our team members took the initiative, solved a crisis without waiting for layers of approval, and significantly impacted our customer. This is the essence of 91ÌÒɫ’s culture – empowering our people to act when it matters most. 

This approach has been the cornerstone of 91ÌÒɫ’s success. We don’t just provide state-of-the-art technology; we foster a culture where every team member feels empowered to act decisively and innovatively for the benefit of our customers. 

As we celebrate our achievements and look toward the future, I’m proud of the culture we’ve built at 91ÌÒÉ«. It’s a culture where trust, initiative, and going above and beyond for our customers are not just encouraged, but embedded in everything we do.

Here’s to many more years of innovation, empowerment, and exceptional customer service. 

The post Helicopter Heroes: Empowering Extraordinary Customer Service appeared first on 91ÌÒÉ«.

This was the day my father, John Ross, embarked on a journey to design the company’s first video switcher. It was a journey that started with just himself, a dream, and an old aircraft. 

Some of you may know that Ross’s seed capital came from selling an old Taylorcraft L2 aircraft built to train pilots for WW2. As the story goes, my father sold the aircraft for $3500, and with a matching bank loan and personal savings of $500, 91ÌÒÉ« began. However, the significance of that aircraft extends far beyond its monetary value. 

His experience restoring it was crucial in bolstering my father’s confidence to launch and grow his new company. 

A Big Dream and a Bigger Restoration 

In 1971, the fabric on the aircraft’s wings was found to be no longer airworthy. My father decided to take the plane home to restore it but quickly found (to his horror) that he had been flying an aircraft that was literally falling apart. The wooden structure was rotten through and through. It could have come apart in the air and killed him at any point — it just wasn’t his time to go. 

Perhaps worse still, the restoration was now going to be a mammoth project.  

Undeterred, my father embarked on an 18-month journey. He had an experienced mentor to guide him, but the restoration still took over 1800 hours, which he worked tirelessly alongside his full-time job. 

Dad says he “ate that elephant, one bite at a time.” 

An Education in Entrepreneurship  

Through this, Dad learned what he describes as crucial skills for any entrepreneur: 

• Minimize the cost of a project 
• Keep it on schedule 
• Do things well 
• Understand the principles, objectives, and obstacles from the beginning to avoid wasting time or redoing things later. 

The only time I ever heard my father swear was the third time in a row the replacement windshield cracked as he tried to bend it to shape. I think he also learned patience on this project! 

Perhaps most importantly, Dad learned that he could do almost anything with enough planning and unwavering determination. That belief was the cornerstone on which 91ÌÒÉ« was built. 

The proceeds from the sale of that aircraft — and the lessons learned restoring it — set my father up for the next challenge. He spent 1974 crafting 91ÌÒÉ«’s first product, which was a resounding success and set the stage for our future innovations and growth.  

50 Years of Innovation and GritÌęÌę

It’s fascinating to think that our journey started in the family home at 461 Oakville Drive – the same address listed in our first switcher ad under the name “Ross Broadcast Products.” 91ÌÒÉ« was always the intended name, but a bureaucrat initially turned it down. Dad’s persistence again paid off, as a few years later, the company was successfully renamed 91ÌÒÉ«. 

As we celebrate our 50th anniversary, I reflect on these humble beginnings with immense gratitude. Thanks to my father’s vision and relentless determination, 91ÌÒÉ« has grown into the company it is today.  

Thank you, Dad. Your legacy has not only shaped the video production industry but has also profoundly impacted the lives of so many people. 

Here’s to 50 more years of innovation and determination! 

The post A Dream Takes Flight: A Story of Restoration, Risk, and Resilience   appeared first on 91ÌÒÉ«.

We’re launching a new Ross look in advance of our potential IPO opportunity!

What, what? IPO?? Correct. When I was 50 I promised our employee and family shareholders that we’d go public before I turned 60. (looks at calendar) Oh, I’m 58! I’d better get on that!

When I talk to people about Ross going public, to be honest I usually hear more concern than enthusiasm. That’s totally understandable because our industry has had some inconsistent experiences with some great companies that went public, turned away from customers, and became financial instruments.

In all my dealings with the financial banking types, I’ve been very clear that Ross is NOT going down that path. Being laser focused on customer success has been at the core of our DNA, and at the core of our success. Why would anyone want to mess that up? (that’s a post in itself
)

This is where Ross is very different. We’re 100% family and employee owned. With our IPO plans we will “invite” public investors to participate in part our success, but I personally will still have complete voting control over the company. In technical terms, there’s “super voting” shares involved that ensure that as long as I work at Ross, I can’t be fired! I love what we do for our customers and I’m not going anywhere.

So, the new brand. You’ll notice that the logo is now in black or white and the customer-focused art is in color. Get it? Our focus is on the customer. Also, I think our team’s come up with a beautiful and sophisticated look that better matches who Ross is today.

But – say it isn’t so! No RED Ross logo? Don’t despair. When we’re not highlighting our customers, like on our buildings and other “durable” items, the familiar red Ross lives on. We haven’t changed THAT much.

I hope you like it.

Learn More

For more information on the new brand platform, check out our .

The post 91ÌÒÉ«’s New Look: Potential IPO Opportunity & Customer-Focused Branding appeared first on 91ÌÒÉ«.

Ross has a reputation in the industry for being a people-oriented business. I’m always a little baffled when people draw distinctions between companies and their workforce, because any company is simply a group of people drawn together by a common purpose. All companies are the sum of their employees, and I’ve consistently said that the secret to business success is ‘hire great people and don’t piss them off’! My father feels the same way, and when he founded 91ÌÒÉ« he (and his team) created our famous Code of Ethics – a set of guiding principles that inform how we approach our work and run our business. It’s available on our web site, it’s on the walls of all of our offices and you’ll even see it printed on our trade show booths. A quick glance at its nine clauses reaffirms that we put people first.

That being the case, our decision back in March to withdraw from the proposed NAB Show in Las Vegas was natural, although certainly not easy. At the time, the organizers were still intent on running the event, and I simply could not see the sense in exposing our employees, partners and customers to the risks associated with 100,000 people in a convention hall, regardless of whether they would even turn up or not. Everyone at Ross loves attending trade shows – it’s always great to get face time with our customers, talk to them about our latest solutions and discuss how we can solve their problems – but people’s wellbeing and security have to come first, and we withdrew from NAB Show with sadness but also safe in the knowledge that it was the correct thing to do. Of course, the event was then cancelled a few short days later and we’ve since seen the remainder of 2020 industry events tumble like dominos as the pandemic has gripped and seems stubbornly unwilling to let us get back to the way things were before. At the time of writing, the CABSAT event in the Middle East scheduled for October looks unlikely to take place and there are also doubts about the SATIS show in Paris in November. CES – the world’s largest exhibition in Las Vegas in January 2021 – has already confirmed that the show will not take place and will be entirely virtual.

So where does this leave companies like Ross who are continuing to innovate and want to share the fruits of that labor with the wider world? Back in March we (just like many other companies) decided to move our NAB Show efforts online, with a comprehensive ten-week series of webinars and presentations designed to share our latest product launches and news with the live production community. With national lockdowns now being replaced with ad hoc regional and local restrictions and social distancing measures still in force, the trend of working from home isn’t likely to change any time soon, and so we’ve made the decision to follow a similar path for the autumn of this year with a second series of online presentations and webinars. This is admittedly a gamble for us insofar as the world may now be suffering from ‘webinar fatigue’, but IBC recently unveiled their virtual ‘Showcase’ event for September 2020, and it seems fair to suggest that the virtual element of tradeshows will be part of our landscape long after 2020.

I was recently asked about the future of tradeshows and I made the prediction that events will now have to adopt a hybrid approach, comprising both physical and virtual elements. This makes a lot of sense. We have an impressive (and growing!) number of visitors to our booth every year at both NAB Show and IBC, but a great many people are not able to participate in these events and we still want to be able to communicate with them. There’s also an argument that some tradeshows have become a little bloated and don’t actually deliver impressive return on investment from the standpoint of new customer acquisition, so the increasing emphasis on the virtual side of shows will hopefully coincide with a renewed focus on the fitness for purpose of the physical offering – IBC’ s announcement that the 2021 show will be four days instead of five was warmly welcomed at Ross (we believe it should have happened years ago!) and we like the idea of leaner and more tightly focused events. Another important point is that the pandemic has dramatically affected everyone’s international travel habits. With many world leaders calling for the post-pandemic normal to be greener and kinder to the environment, there is a possibility that the large flagship international exhibitions and shows will diminish in importance as people decide to travel less and support their own regional or national events instead. This could provide a much-needed shot in the arm to events like CABSAT in Dubai and Moscow’s NATEXPO, and also help boost the profile of London’s Media Production & Technology Show, SATIS in Paris, Spain’s alternating BIT and BITAM events and South Africa’s biennial MediaTech expo. While some readers (exhibitors?) might groan at the prospect of an increase in the number of shows on the calendar, there might be something to be said for NAB Show and IBC being a little smaller in size and footprint – they’re expensive and complex events, and it might be healthier if manufacturers spread their product launch cycles out a little more evenly across the year rather than having so much activity oriented around the ‘big two’.

My lack of crystal ball obviously hampers my ability to make any predictions for 2021 and beyond. I would love to be bullish and optimistic, suggesting we’ll all be sitting around in Vegas next April pondering what a freakish anomaly 2020 was, but I fear we’re in this for the longer haul. IBC’s organizers are already talking about a reduced footfall in 2021 and I’m sure similar conversations will be taking place around NAB’s (socially distanced) boardroom table. Social distancing and mask-wearing are likely to remain with us well into next year and that obviously has to impact how tradeshows are organized and attended – all the more reason why the virtual side of these shows will continue to grow in size and importance. The pandemic is also impacting the kind of solutions that Ross and our contemporaries are developing. If the last six months have shown us anything, it’s that world events can be catalysts that drive change. Remote production was already a trend in live production, but social distancing and working from home have turbocharged this as content creators have sought to keep working and remain productive without having all of the studio gallery tools in hand. Earlier this year Ross launched a cloudbased production portal that works with any internet browser, and the timing was serendipitous to say the least. Similarly, interest in virtual studio solutions has increased as the live production industry seeks to bring people together onscreen but keep them apart physically. In the studio, camera robotics solutions and production automation have both seen a big spike in interest as broadcasters seek to manage their productions with a smaller crew and keep the number of employees present to a safe minimum level. My instincts tell me that these kinds of solutions will continue to grow in popularity and prevalence. Cloud-based solutions, virtualization and IP are now firmly top of the agenda when we speak with customers, and it’s fair to suggest that the industry will see a slew of new products being launched over the next twelve months to cater for the strange new world that we are living in. Will the new normal be better than the old normal? Will it be more efficient but less sociable, or will we manage to find a balance that meets both needs? Only time will tell


I would normally sign off any article about future trends by saying ‘we look forward to seeing you on our booth at a tradeshow soon’ but that is obviously not possible in the current situation. I’ll therefore end simply by wishing you, your families and colleagues a safe and healthy final quarter of 2020. Business has been tough for a great many companies in this industry and profits will reflect that. Ross may be fortunate to be bucking the trend, but we should all continue to focus on what’s important and put people first.

The post Normal Isn’t Normal, But Can It Be Better
? appeared first on 91ÌÒÉ«.

How did you get started in the media tech industry?
I suppose I was born into it. My father founded 91ÌÒÉ« when I was nine years old. I still remember him in the basement of our house working at a drafting light table designing circuit boards in the evenings as we all watched TV together as a family. My father is an electrical engineer and I was one of Canada’s first computer engineering graduates. When I graduated, I wanted to work for NASA as a first choice. My mother said, “You’ve hurt your father by not wanting to join the business”. I responded, “But he’s told me dozens of times that I was on my own and had to find my own way in life.” My mom said, “You didn’t believe him, did you?!” And so, I joined a small 91ÌÒÉ« that had about 25 employees and set about doing something with it.

How has it changed since you started your career?
Well, I’ve seen us go from analogue to digital, to HD, to 3G, to 12G, IP and now Cloud. I suppose it’s changed a little bit. The workflows have changed quite a bit as well, rooms full of operators pressing buttons in live news has shifted to one person with a mouse running automation solutions like OverDrive. Servers have replaced tape. Independent TV stations around the world have been replaced with giant groups. It’s been quite the ride.

If you could change one thing about the media tech industry, what would it be?
Not a lot. I like how our industry is as high-tech as other IT industries but smaller and friendlier. It’s easier to know who all the major players are and develop real relationships, but it’s big enough to get some reasonable scale and develop cool products. Okay, maybe we can change one thing. It would be nice if we stopped doing standard definition everywhere in the world. Seriously, that can go away any time now!

How inclusive do you think the industry is, and how can we make it more inclusive?
It’s not inclusive enough – no industry is ever inclusive enough. We can always do better. To make it more inclusive we just need to be ever more understanding and creative – I recently saw some wonderful unisex bathroom labels at Sky in the UK for example that made me smile. We also need to get more women to enter the technical side of things which is a massive challenge for society to support at every level.

How do we encourage young people that media technology is the career for them?
I think they simply need to be more aware of our industry as an option. In the past year we started reaching out to the local universities and with surprisingly little effort became co-op employer of the year for Canada’s capital city of Ottawa. We also started offering tours to students and they’d come in groups of 20 or 30 totally stunned by how cool our industry is behind the scenes. Now with Covid-19, the schools are asking us to continue with virtual tours. Our industry is amazing – that makes getting their attention and appreciation so much easier.

Where do you think the industry will go next?
Next, our industry will go in every direction at once. We’re going to see HD last for a very long time, but UHD and HDR will have a solid place as well. SDI, and 12G SDI will last longer than anyone imagined, and IP will gain broader appeal and get ever easier to use while becoming more cost-effective. On-prem facilities will continue to exist for strategic and economic reasons, and Cloud will pick up steam (pun possibly intended). We will see traditional broadcasters evolve and adapt to changing personalised viewing habits, and we’ll see new and interesting content creators appear, much like esports has.

What’s the biggest topic of discussion in your area of the industry?
A month ago, it would have been the technical merits of different approaches to SDI, IP, virtualisation and Cloud. Today, it’s about the lack of content that’s being created in venues and the lack of sports and live events for the broadcasters to air. We’re all wondering about which customers and suppliers will be here next year and how different the world will be at that time.

What should the industry be talking about that it isn’t at the moment?
We need to figure out how to hold our people and infrastructure together to come out the other side of Covid-19 as intact as possible. The freelancers are going to find other work in other industries, the teams and venues are going to struggle to stay solvent, the broadcasters have paid for rights to air events that don’t exist, the suppliers suddenly have excess capacity that needs to be protected for the future. I hope we continue to innovate as an industry working together to solve these challenges because it’s more apparent than ever before that we all need each other.

The post David Ross Talks NASA Aspirations and Why He’s Ready to Say Goodbye to SD appeared first on 91ÌÒÉ«.

Students are Learning Ross DashBoard.
The University of Ottawa just had their Design Days Competition where students learned how to create control and workflow solutions using Ross DashBoard. 

We Pay Students in the 75th Percentile. 
We pay our students generously and give them great job experiences. Last term we had 21 tech students working in our R&D facilities in Ottawa alone. Many of those accept our job offers upon graduation and hit the ground running in amazing 91ÌÒÉ« careers.

Students are Learning Ross Technology Everywhere. 
The last time I checked, Ross XPression Graphics are are now taught in over 900 schools around the world. Carbonite, Inception, XPression, DashBoard – they’re everywhere!

Students are are big part of 91ÌÒɫ’s future. Many thanks to everyone at Ross making this happen!

The post The Importance of Students to the Future of 91ÌÒÉ« appeared first on 91ÌÒÉ«.

Hi David,

I just found the attached financial statement from Grass Valley for the first 3 months of 1969.

It had been originally sent to me by Doctor Hare, the founder of GVG, with whom I had been on good terms for the previous 4 years, having met him at NAB 1965, held in the Conrad Hilton hotel basement garage in Chicago. He and his wife had a single table with white tablecloth and a few DA’s. You could see all of the exhibits at NAB in less than 1/2 hour!

It had been found in my old filing cabinet in the CDL building, long after I left and the building was occupied by the young Miranda, and they preserved it!

I found this today on the internet while looking for any reference to Central Dynamics. It was on a blog which referred to the amalgamation of GVG and Miranda 5 years ago, then showed this document. There was a comment on the irony of the new takeover, seeing that GVG had been a competitor of CDL and ex-CDL employees had formed Miranda.

The document has an initialled comment from my boss Arland Boland to whom I had sent a copy. It also refers to great success with their entry into the switcher business.

Dad

The post Historic Letter from the Founder of Grass Valley appeared first on 91ÌÒÉ«.

We have something called an ESOP, an “Employee Stock Ownership Program”. The goal of the program is to give every employee a chance to benefit from the success of the company – and for employees to care and act like owners. I can tell you, this has been a HUGE success for our company and our customers!

The powerful combination of family and employee ownership has significantly contributed to 91ÌÒɫ’s enviable growth – 27 consecutive record years with an average growth of about 17% per year. All of this without any external investment. Our growth has been 100% driven by more and more customers buying our products, and our desire to reinvest everything back into the company.

Being family owned as well as private has allowed us to play the long game.

We’re not focused on the next quarter or cash extraction, but instead on our customers. At Ross, we have countless examples of times when our people have gone above and beyond the call of duty to help our customers, and our support team is consistently ranked as one of the best in the business. This isn’t by accident – we’ve carefully built a company that makes this happen because it’s part of our DNA.

91ÌÒÉ« isn’t for sale. We get offers all the time, but that’s just not something that interests us. When you organize a company to grow instead of to sell, you have more strategic options. For example, you can supply what the industry needs instead of sticking to a single strategy dictated by investors. 

We know that broadcast is a conservative industry overall. Many customers continue to plan for SDI and HD investments. We’re there for them. At the same time, there are also customers who are looking to us to be at the leading edge of UHD, HDR, and IP. We’re there as well. We believe it’s important to serve all our customers and strategically smart not to bet on the rate of change of the expected transitions.

Time after time, I hear customers calling for a different kind of relationship with industry vendors based on longer-term partnership, and I believe that the long-term stability of Ross is well suited for this kind of relationship. The more often I hear these calls, the more convinced I become that the Ross approach – employ great people, make great products and deliver incredible service – is the right formula for sustainable success.       

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