Crispin tests subscription model for automation products
Nov 3, 2011 3:33 PM, By Michael Grotticelli
Crispin now offers its Cameo and Veranda automation platforms on a monthly subscription basis.
As equipment vendors struggle with an overall unwillingness among broadcasters to start new capital expenditure (CapEx) projects, they have had to become creative, both in their pricing structure and their technology offerings, in order to win new business.
Rodney Mood, chief operating officer and CTO of Crispin (www.crispincorp.com), a veteran automation supplier with hundreds of customers (commercial and public TV stations) throughout North America, thinks he has found a way to improve his bottom line while helping stations acquire the latest technology without having to own it. Leveraging the system-as-a-service (SaaS) model being applied to the broadcast industry with increasingly regularity (e.g., cloud-based processing and storage services), Mood has launched a new monthly subscription program for Crispin's Cameo (a standard system of up to eight channels) and Veranda (a customized system for larger, multichannel operations) automation platforms.
He calls it the right idea at the right time.
"Our watershed moment came a year ago during our negotiations with the PBS stations we regularly support," he said. "We realized something had to change immediately in the way technology is bought and supported because their grant money, like virtually every commercial station's budgets, is being reduced significantly. But they all still have a need for high-quality automation to keep their stations up and running smoothly in the most cost-effective way."
Mood quickly deduced that although grant money for CapEx projects was going away, stations still have an operations (OpEx) budget that is renewed each year.
"No matter what you hear, capital budgets are not coming back strong," he said, "I think we're locked into this era of 'careful spending' for a long time — even as the economy seems to be improving and ad spending at TV stations is actually up this year. But operationally, those budgets are still fairly predictable and highly necessary to keep the station on the air."
Having dealt with decreasing budgets for some time, Crispin has tried to attract customers by increasing its after-sale support; moving from seven years of service and support and three years of hardware maintenance, to four years or service and four years of hardware warrantees. Since 2006, this has been called the "Crispin 4 Life" program.
Apparently, however, it was not enough to get stations to start upgrading their aging automation platforms in any meaningful way, even though, as Mood sees it, there are "more than 60 percent" of the stations in U.S. that need a new system (meaning their existing equipment is more than five years old).
"The problem chief engineers have is that they must keep going back to management for new money to support an old platform," Mood said. "It's a tough sell because management wants a fast return on investment and a clear idea of how long equipment is supposed to depreciate. With an automation system, although it keeps everything running, it's hard to put a finite number on how much value it provides day to day."
"So, if we can offer simplicity, predictability, and a low cost per channel — even better than some of the 'channel-in-a-box' solutions now being offered — while at the same time provide higher quality signal processing and automated playout as a best-of-breed vendor, then I think we can be successful with our new subscription-based services model."
| Want to use this article? Click here for options! |  |
