Channel in a Box — don’t forget your business model
At last year’s IBC, Harris entered the market with its Versio Channel in a Box offering. In this commentary, Steven Samwell, director of Global Solutions, highlights the importance of ensuring that a Channel in a Box solution is fully developed and offers a long-term migration pathway that is integrated within a broadcaster’s evolving business model
DEMANDS ONthe broadcast playout business have changed significantly in the past 10 years. Whether in-sourced or outsourced, the revenue associated with delivering linear playout services is dropping, while demands on the service and complexity are increasing — up to the wire schedule and content deliveries, content re-purposing for nonlinear, automated continuity graphics, non-standard distributor formats and increasing language services to name just a few. Appetite for technical strategies
requiring large capex ‘steps’ to fund blocks of technology for service expansion is no longer there, especially when the next investment step does not have associated guaranteed revenue. A smooth and granular approach to capex spend is now needed, where spend is directly related to recognised revenue. In other words, the gamble of ‘build it now and hope thy time will come’ has folded. The perception of how services are
delivered is also becoming increasingly important. Strategies that promote efficiencies and lower total cost of ownership are now being used as ‘adverts’ to promote the organisation and drive new business. Use of ‘green’ power generation, efficient building design and use of virtualised elastic computing models all point to how our industry is embracing change in social awareness of ‘how and where’ media comes from and is delivered. Solutions that deliver financial, technical and environment flexibility, empower silos of the broadcast operation and reduce risk through simplicity of design are fundamental to the success of the operation.
Integrated playout An example of these needs being answered in part is the move towards integrated playout technologies — a
Your Team For Broadcasting Solution.
Steven Samwell: The gamble of ‘build it now and hope thy time will come’ has folded
well understood method for deploying channels quickly, cost effectively and on a case by case basis. Although this approach can tick many boxes it is not a ‘fit all’ and if used inappropriately can severely limit a service and introduce risk. In addition, the integrated playout solution approach must play to the strengths of the operation merging into the existing operational and technical setup without need for separate standard operating procedures. Although an integrated playout solution can introduce efficiency downstream, the real focus of improvement should be on the upstream operation where business planning and logic are derived. Business systems, for example
programme planning and scheduling systems, which are generally run in isolation use ‘best efforts’ to accurately output correct logic to drive downstream operations such as ingest and playout automation. Inevitably through this isolation mistakes are made leading to repair costs, inefficiency and a largely reactive operation. Through an empowered model of ‘informed and integrated’ business process where the operational content management and workflow tools, which accurately reflect content status, time code and metadata, are integrated with the business systems we can minimise mistakes and drive efficiency. This empowered and integrated
environment is more relevant than ever when monetising content across multiple platforms means creating many formats with individual platform specifications — it is simply not possible to check all the derivatives. If the programme plan, schedule and metadata published from the business systems layer are accurate, we have the best chance of reliably and confidently automating the content delivery process, increasing viewing ratios and driving out cost.