Former Grass Valley president Lopez returns

Lopez left his role as president at Grass Valley in January 2018 to become chief executive of ChyronHego. He is leaving that company to return to Grass Valley as its new senior vice president of live production.

In his new role, Lopez will be responsible for accelerating innovation across key strategic areas, such as remote production, IP-connected live workflows and virtualised media workflows. His area of responsibility includes Grass Valley’s content creation solutions such as cameras, production switchers and replay plus production management solutions including production asset management tools, production automation and editing.

Commenting on his return to Grass Valley, Lopez said, “The content creation sector has never been more dynamic with a growing need to efficiently create and deliver higher volumes of professionally produced content to a larger number of viewing platforms.

“As they adapt to changing market dynamics, customers will have to lean on trusted partners to help them transition to agile business and operational models that leverage the cloud and burgeoning SaaS pay-per-use models. Grass Valley’s integrated and powerful best-of-breed product portfolio is strongly positioned to meet the shifting needs of the market and there is no better partner out there - serving the needs of the live production space for over 60 years.”

The former Grass Valley and Miranda Technologies president returns at a key time in the company’s history. Earlier this year, it was sold by Belden to private equity firm Black Dragon Capital, led by former Avid CEO Louis Hernandez.

In an exclusive interview with IBC365, Grass Valley president Tim Shoulders – who succeeded Lopez in the role – said the sale by Belden would allow refocus its investment into flexible, cloud-based workflows without dramatically shifting its core strategy.

• Read more: Tim Shoulders on Grass Valley’s sale to Black Dragon

On the return of Lopez, Shoulders said: “Live production, and the efficient management of media resources, is central to Grass Valley’s DNA. As we continue to drive leadership in helping media organizations build success and deliver compelling content, we are delighted to welcome Marco back to the Grass Valley family. His expertise and direct experience in the content creation side of the industry will be invaluable in delivering our customers the innovations that will help them thrive in our continually changing landscape.”

• Read more: Analysis of Grass Valley’s future