feature automation & asset management
In these challenging times for business and
Feature sponsored by
finance, broadcasters are facing pressures on
Harris.
revenues as advertisers look to get the best
return on their spend. This environment is
forcing broadcasters to change the way they
view their operations, moving from an
architecture which is based on technology to
one based on outcomes. Chris Simons, Harris
Broadcast Communications, reports.
Taking automation to
the enterprise level
T
elevision automation has a meet the business requirements of certainly is not consistent with the
history of not much more the broadcaster: how it impacts their rapid rise in the number of channels
than 20 years, but it has efficiency and profitability, as much as and delivery platforms (even before
come a long way in that how it meets their technical the current financial crisis). So
time. Its first achievement requirements. broadcasters and content owners are
was to make it work at all, to To understand why integrated being forced to do much more on
replace operating staff and sneakernet solutions are the way of the future, ever-tighter budgets. With all of these
with computer control of a single we need to consider the dramatic new requirements, it becomes clear
channel array of master control change in the way that content is that one size and one type of
switcher, router and robot tape library.
Chris Simons, Harris
delivered. Most consumers now have automation no longer fits all
It was a complex business, often
Broadcast
Communications.
tens, if not hundreds, of channels broadcasters.
involving commercial breaks being from which to choose on their To a broadcaster, online services
pre-compiled inside the robot, and the television screens. and catch-up TV are not seen as a
automation having to take into We are also moving to a discretionary investment on their part,
account the pre-roll times of VTRs. multiplatform era. Content is available or even necessarily bringing in
The coming of the video server not just on broadcast channels, but as positive revenues at this stage, but
made the second phase, multichannel video on demand and catch-up part of the cost of building and
automation, a practical proposition. It television, via over-the-top Internet maintaining a brand. Consumers
also enabled the non-linear world:
Consumers
services, and on new devices such as expect that the familiar television
with content no longer tied to a expect that mobile television. The channels will now be available when
physical tape, multiple users could communications industry is moving and where they want them.
the familiar
have access simultaneously. And now, towards faster broadband services - To create the savings to fund this,
television
of course, we see content movements the German government is pushing broadcasters have to use technology
channels
freed from the straitjacket of realtime, for 100% access to VDSL at up to 50 to increase the level of automation all
video format transfers.
will now be
Mb/s by 2018 - and there is a the way through their content chain,
We are now moving into a third
available
continued drive towards mobile and to manage all their processes.
phase in the evolution of this part of television services. This will result in They have the content: they nowwhen and
the industry. What marks it out, consumers expecting to be able to need to move it quickly and extremely
where they
perhaps above all else, is that the access any content, at any resolution, cost-effectively from format to format,
want them.
customers we are now talking to no on the move and via their home delivery platform to delivery platform.
longer see the automation system as network, on a range of different Put simply - they need to manage
a point product, but as part of a displays. their content assets to achieve the
broader solution. That solution is At the same time, the overall spend best possible return on them.
being specified in terms of how it will on content is barely increasing, and The move to file-based
18 l ibe l march/april 2009 l www.ibeweb.com
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