feature content distribution
The broadcast world rang in 2011 on a high note this year, with literally billions of viewers estimated to have watched countdown celebrations on hundreds of channels on every continent. For the end user, it’s an awe-inspiring time to be tuned in, with seemingly limitless content from all over the world accessible at the push of a button on every screen. Behind the scenes, however, broadcasters and bouquet operators alike are scrambling frantically to keep up with increasingly complicated consumer demand. It seems sometimes that the bigger the broadcast animal gets, the harder it is to feed. GlobeCast’s Matthew Rosenstein reports.
Behind the broadcast curtain:
scrambling to go global, go regional and go multi-platform...without going broke!
overseas, with versions of its channels developed for the UK, USA, India, Malaysia and the Middle East. But behind the fantastic Bollywood glitz, the amount of sheer content that the broadcaster had to deal with was quickly becoming a headache. In its content archives B4U had over 22,000 hours of content from eight channels sitting on tapes in various rooms at their headquarters in India. To maximise this content and to make it
R
ecently, for example, Bollywood broadcaster B4U realised that it had a problem. Well-established in India, B4U was also beginning to grow
Service providers that have offices around the world have found that their presence in every key market can be of huge assistance to broadcasters
looking to expand.
work for them, B4U needed first of all to go tapeless - getting the raw content from digibeta format to clean, neatly-labelled files - and next they needed to get a tapeless workflow in place that allows for easy repurposing of the content for the multiple channels, multiple regions and multiple platforms for which it was destined. To address this challenge, B4U completed a deal with GlobeCast for tapeless playout and media management services for eight of its worldwide channels. All its tape-based content is being converted to files and B4U will soon be using a MAM system to ingest and deliver content made in India to a library in GlobeCast’s central London facility. Editors at B4U will be able to access, edit, and finish content prior to playout in a tapeless workflow that minimises both cost and timing issues. When content has been edited and is ready for playout, it will be transcoded and automatically supplied to GlobeCast’s playout automation system with subtitling in English, Malay, and Arabic live at the point of playout, automatic audio level control, and logo insertions and graphics. This end-to-end workflow will not only speed time-to-air for B4U across a variety of markets, but it will also provide a foundation for flexible multiplatform distribution going forward.
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www.ibeweb.com
The barriers that B4U faced are far from unusual; broadcasters of every size from small niche channels to mid- sized thematic brands and even large news organisations often need help coping with the increased demand that going global puts on their organisation and business. However, it’s becoming a necessary step in a shrinking world to make content available around the globe - while also making it region-appropriate. Witness, for example, the globalisation of national news organisations such as France 24, Al Jazeera and Russia Today. Seeking to scuttle the dominance of American and British media, these new entrants from non-English speaking countries have adopted a model of global-yet- regionalised broadcasting. They offer versions of their channels in several languages - French, English and Arabic for France24, Arabic and English for Al Jazeera, and Russian, English, Arabic and Spanish for Russia Today - and each broadcaster did extensive work to identify target markets and to regionalise content and presentation to suit them.
There are so many audiences to reach in markets around the globe but it takes so much time, money, market and technical expertise to reach them. So, here are a few ground rules for broadcasters making the global leap:
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