Grass Valley names former Vizrt exec as new CEO

Grass Valley has hired former Vizrt executive Andrew Cross as its CEO.

At Vizrt, he was president of global research and development over all product development across all three of the company’s brands — Vizrt, NewTek and NDI.

Prior to his R&D role at Vizrt, Cross was CEO of NewTek until it was acquired by Vizrt.

As CEO of Grass Valley, Cross will lead the company through the next phase to power the digital transformation of its customers and support them as it transitions to the future of media and entertainment through IP, software and cloud based technologies.

“Andrew is an experienced senior leader with deep industry knowledge and a track record of successfully taking media technology businesses into the new era of software-centric, cloud-based video technology,” said Louis Hernandez Jr., executive chairman of Grass Valley in a statement. “I’m excited to have Andrew join at this transformative time for the company and industry. I look forward to his direction and leadership of Grass Valley alongside the excellent executive leadership team already in place.”

Cross will lead the Grass Valley team as it realizes its GV Media Universe vision. The GVMU is a digitally connected community that enables media companies to combine on-premise, hybrid and public cloud technologies to build live production environments while adapting to future demands.

By making GVMU open to others, the goal is to help accelerate the next major industry transition for all vendors.

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Cross brings a wealth of real life experience to the task.

While at NewTek, he led the company to pioneer the use of software-based video technologies to build the first real-time integrated live production systems. This created a new generation of live video production and fueled the internet live streaming revolution, allowing corporations, education, government, web-streamers and houses of worship to deliver video to their audience.

Cross went on to drive the creation of NDI which has become the largest IP video standard for live video production, in use by thousands of companies and hundreds of millions of users.

“I am honored to be joining Grass Valley at such an exciting time. Our mission is to be the leader in the transition towards software-based technologies – both on-prem and as media companies move into the cloud.” said Cross in the same statement. “My personal drive has always been to use technology to innovate within the video industry, allowing more people to produce more video; there is no better time for me than this next step to join the most influential and respected company in the industry.”