Battling the cost crunch
Feb 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Scott Blair
Frame Grab
TV watching is up in the third quarter of 2008
Time-shifted TV viewing increased 34.5 percent in 2008 from 2007.
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With today's focus on the economy, broadcasters and media facility managers are looking for ways to stretch revenue while reducing operating expenses. Advertising revenues are shrinking, and the competition for those dollars is increasing. While this is not a new story, it is even more prominent today. Broadcasters are pressured to do more with less without any loss in product quality. In addition, they're expected to maintain and even advance the competitive advantage within the marketplace.
Benefits of automation
News automation is a useful tool in helping broadcasters with the cost-crunch dilemma. While automation doesn't replace an entire control room of people, it can enable a smaller staff to execute live news programming efficiently. With the right features, an automated (one-touch control) or semi-automated (production-assist) newscast looks better to the viewer, because fewer hands are touching each individual show element. Also, repetitive tasks and sequences are handled by automation. In short, errors are reduced, and the look and feel of the programming is more consistent.
Without news automation, the playout of news clips is accomplished by a staff member who loads cassettes into a stack of playout machines and another staff member who rolls each machine. To play out graphics without automation, the operator obtains a list of graphics needed for each show, organizes the graphics according to that list, and then loads and plays out each graphic when called upon to do so. In this workflow, two to three people manipulate show content within the broadcast of the newscast, whereas in a file-based workflow, these tasks could be accomplished with automation.
Automation 101
Automation systems for news broadcasts are not a new concept. However, until recently, only larger broadcasters had steadily adopted the technology to improve and streamline their workflow. Small- and midsize news stations and broadcasters are now seeing the value of these systems, as they offer a quick ROI.
News automation is simply a system or platform of systems that controls various news production devices, such as the video switcher, the audio console, video servers, graphics devices and robotic cameras. The automation is linked to the newsroom computer system (NRCS) through the newscast rundown.
There are two basic classes of news automation. The first is full automation or as it is sometimes referred to as one-touch control, and the other is production-assist automation. Midsize and smaller broadcasters who are not in the market for or cannot fit a large automation system into the budget find that production-assist solutions are scalable to meet their budget requirements and provide a simpler answer to the cost-crunch challenge.
Full automation
Full automation systems are more costly and control many more devices than production-assist systems. They are often built in association with a specific video production switcher, because switcher control is the most complicated device to control, and it is central to the delivery of the show to air. The automation is dynamically linked to the NRCS rundown, providing the system with playlists and production queues needed in the playout of the newscast.
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