News moves to three screens
Oct 1, 2007 12:00 PM
The urgent desire for a system that would allow local stations to use a piece of their 6MHz wide DTV channel to deliver mobile TV is so strong that two systems — MPH from Harris and LG Electronics, and A-VSB from Rohde & Schwarz and Samsung — may even compete in the free market before the ATSC standardization process has run its course.
Those responsible for charting the future path of broadcast and news operations are taking this market extremely seriously. For example, The E.W. Scripps Company is conducting engineering studies to determine whether it might be possible to enhance delivery of a mobile TV broadcast signal, says Bill Peterson, senior VP for the E.W. Scripps Company television station group. The studies seek to find out if “adding a vertical polarization to new antennas that we install” would allow “good home reception as well as good reception off a handheld device,” he says.
Neither Scripps nor other broadcasters are waiting for the ultimate direction a broadcast mobile TV standard takes to begin offering content to viewers on the go.
“We are introducing video to mobile devices in most of our properties in the near future — real near future,” Peterson says.
Within the past month, the Associated Press introduced a Pocket PC version of its SNAPfeed store-and-forward video application, which previously was only available as an application for a laptop.
One approach is via cell phone, and a major avenue onto those handsets is News Over Wireless, a network of mobile solutions that provides coverage across 85 percent of the United States. The company, which belongs to Capitol Broadcasting Company's CBC New Media Group, offers a way for broadcasters to use wireless Web, Java, video and SMS services to distribute their content to cell phone subscribers. So far, the company has signed agreements with 25 station groups, including CBS Television Stations, Gannett Broadcasting, Lincoln Financial Media and Media General, to assist their stations in reaching mobile handsets.
On the other side of the coin, today's handheld devices can play an important role in news contribution. That's the thrust of the new ENPS Mobile Suite introduced at IBC2007. The system consists of three components: the ENPS Mobile application; a Web-browser version of the ENPS desktop known as ENPS Web; and SNAPfeed, a Pocket PC version of AP's store-and-forward video application.
“The SNAPfeed Mobile Client makes every staffer that you want to give a device to a newsgatherer,” says Joe Webster, manager, marketing technology for AP Global Broadcast. “For those situations where you need to turn your handheld device into a newsgathering tool, you can capture audio, video and stills and using the same kind of SNAPfeed workflow that's in place with the full SNAPfeed client, transfer content to your station's server.”
Be true to the medium
The SNAPfeed interface makes it easy for journalists in the field to contribute footage to an ingest server in an ENPS newsroom via a standard IP network connection.
Broadband Internet service and cell phones have emerged as new media faster than many imagined and left television station news operations scrambling to figure out what's the best approach to take.
Certainly, the transition from linear tape-based news production to file-based workflows has positioned TV newsrooms to seamlessly create content for these new digital outlets. But that's the easy part.
Far more difficult is figuring out what kinds of news content will best serve the needs of the news consumer at the receiving end of these new delivery platforms. How long should a story be? How should it be told? What's the best way to use graphics and titles? How can news stories on these platforms best use their interactive element? Those and scores of other questions must and will be answered as the use of these new media for news consumption unfolds.
In this sea of uncertainty, one thing seems clear.
“The one lesson that has come out of all of this is whatever you do has to be true to the medium,” Peterson says. “Whatever you do has to be authentic for the medium.”
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