Founded in 1996

Tightrope is
the Pioneer of

Web-centric broadcast automation
and digital signage systems

1996

Founded

Tightrope Media Systems was founded in 1996 by JJ Parker and Andrew Starks.

First Products

The first two products created by Tightrope was AxisTV and Axis MC, video bulletin board and media retrieval software for schools.

1997

2000

Cablecast

Cablecast, introduced then as AxisCS, was created to help PEG TV stations manage their schedule and automation better. This was in the days of VHS tapes and composite video.

Video Servers

To serve our PEG customers better we created some of the first digital video servers for television playback.

2001

2005

Signage Boom

With flat-screen LCD prices dropping, digital signage became an industry! Carousel was a stable, mature product in a market that was taking off.

ZEPLAY

Leveraging our early video server expertise, we created an instant replay server for live sporting events. Today ZEPLAY lives on an an independent company.

2008

2013

Growing

Tightrope went through many growing pains as we brought the company from a scrappy startup to a mature, growing company.

Modernizing PEG

After we brought our PEG customers through upgrades from SD to HD broadcast we continued to help modernize their operations with new internet-based video delivery.

2015

2018

Carousel Cloud

The latest evolution in our long history in digital signage, Carousel Cloud boasts deep enterprise CMS features with the ease of deployment of a SaaS product.

PEGMedia

Continuing with the mission of supporting local community media. Cablecast took over running and maintaining the content sharing platform for PEG Channels. Discover new content for your channels & share shows with stations nationwide

2021

2022

Beyond Signge

Carousel introduces express players and Carousel Daily to extend the reach of traditional on-the-wall digital signage to other playback and personal devices.

MediaScribe

Continuting our core values of transparency. MediaScribe provides transcription and accessibility for government meetings. This helps our customers make live meetings more accessible to residents by providing realtime text transcriptions and translations.

2024