This afternoon, I met with Shawn Maynard, Florical vice president and general manager. Before joining Florical, Maynard was the director of operations for NBC Universal’s Television Stations Division. This experience, according to Maynard, is what makes the company unique. "I run this company from a broadcaster point of view, not a vendor point of view," he said. "This is how Florical is different from other automation companies."
This year at the show, Florical has introduced four optional modules for its S.M.A.R.T. Central product, which is a smart client-based gateway into the company’s television broadcast automation system. It is designed to reduce redundant tasks, make systems accessible over a closed network to improve workflow while maintaining a secure system and automatically e-mail critical reports to key personnel to improve communication and response times.
RemoteEditor allows access to current and future schedules for viewing or editing. As with all of S.M.A.R.T Central products, RemoteEditor can be accessed from any networked machine so that last-minute changes can be made from almost anywhere.
InventoryBrowser allows users to browse the database and view low-resolution copies of their inventory (i.e. on-air content). With the power of smart client technology, users can log in from any networked machine, whether from a sales laptop in the field or traffic desktop, and view content that has been dubbed into the on-air servers. The tool is ideal for traffic or sales during election season or answering questions from clients from the convenience of their desktop.
AssetDispatcher is designed to streamline central ingest systems. It is a transfer agent that uses spoke dub-lists and programming settings to push commercial and program from a centralized ingest location to spoke sites after material has been approved. Timing and all metadata can be entered once and shared by all.
And finally, RemoteAirBoss allows access to monitor or control on-air from any workstation within the Florical Network. RemoteAirBoss can be used to control a single channel or can simplify centralization of master control, allowing dynamic selection of "hub" location based on users’ unique workflow needs or as their workloads change.