When StorerTV began integrating our world class CentriX workflow engine into our Media clients' operations, we quickly found that there is a real need for broad workflow applications across the breadth of operations. We expected that operations would need to automate their program versioning and distribution systems or address the interconnection needs of their master control play-out operation. As we spend more time assisting clients with workflow applications, we are finding true return on investment is unique in every situation, and we have been pleasantly surprised by the innovative requests for workflow automation. Here are just a few of the ideas requested by our customers:

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• Programming Contract approval

• The workflow requirement is to initiate and track the inter-office programming contract approval process with management notification of the completion or status of each approval step. It uses automatic or time based escalation procedures to be triggered if a process becomes delayed. The workflow integrates various back office software systems to reduce duplicative data entry chores.

• Long Form Content Preparation

• Create a management dashboard to track, route, and report on the interdepartmental preparation steps for the long-form content as it is readied for broadcast. This workflow is designed to prioritize and schedule content processing by "first to air" date.

• Log Preparation

• In a large, multi-location operation, track interdepartmental steps to complete and deliver the log to master control operations and communicate delays that may impact other departments. This workflow includes dashboards and escalation procedures.

• Content Preparation

• Automate and integrate a multi-thread workflow to track and report the content receipt and preparation processes including ingesting of media, version transcoding where required, quality control, delivery to Asset Management storage, near-line and archival data, and the delivery to the master control operations center in a remote location. Additionally, this workflow presents customized steps to users based on both content-type and "first air date".

• Deal Memo

• Create and route program contract "deal memos" through a defined internal approval process. Provide a management overview of the process, and any delays, and automatically update software systems when the approval process is completed.

• Intra-Company Communications Enhancements

• Between a network and its operational playback center, track content receipt and preparation for air, report on the daily log status including media status, and supply a unified, jointly accessible dashboard displaying log and content ready-to-air status. This workflow employs innovative communication objects to provide management status updates without compromising either company's network security systems.

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Each of these ideas provides a unique level of savings, either in actual labor costs or avoidance of costs. Most of the workflows are designed to provide management with a new view into their procedures, and escalation triggers to ensure smooth and timely operations. As you consider enhanced workflows to streamline your organization and reporting, our media experts can offer ideas, applications, and tried solutions for your consideration.

 

Today, the buzz in the Industry is all about workflow and how solidly designed workflow properly implemented provides measurable efficiencies and return on investment. As a media executive seeking these efficiencies, the marketplace is a bit confused as almost every vendor will pitch their "workflows" as a solution. The reality is that there are really two basic types of these applications:

1. An interconnection within an operational element of your broadcast or media chain, such as a transcoder farm or a satellite ingest service for master control room automation.
2. A much broader application of software engines to enhance or automate the interfaces between major systems, such as your back office software, the play-out and distribution chain, or the production tools.

Deploying a broad workflow system to integrate your systems can automate repetitive operations, employ business rules to enhance human interfaces, provide management dashboards and solidify your processes and procedures for continuing training and constant improvement, all of which lead to measurable ROI.

Weighing the Value of End-to-end Workflow Integration

So, as a manager, how can you best gain these efficiencies? Some would argue that you need to define and build a complete, end-to-end solution, and some of our industry leaders have invested in the infrastructure and have deployed all-inclusive systems. But for the majority of operators, this expensive and lengthy process is too difficult and costly to support, and nearly impossible to "future-proof" as equipment, software and systems change and upgrade on an annual basis.

A wiser and more cost effective approach is to target specific areas of potential efficiencies and employ a workflow engine to address incremental deployments. This integration will take more time and involves multiple vendors during the integration process; however it will leave your organization in control of the specific areas

It is much easier to defend an incremental deployment, where regular measurements can show real savings in time, labor, training or an increase in capacity

of deployment, as well as trained in the methodologies and tools to address the regular and inevitable workflow modifications that occur naturally as vendors in the workflow chain upgrade and update their systems and software.

This incremental approach allows your organization to leverage existing equipment and implement a unique workflow that is best for your operations, a workflow that embraces and enhances the specific vision that makes your company successful.

Any manager will be asked to defend capital expenses and it is hard to justify purchasing a monolithic deployment where every department and individual is touched by a part of the new system--it is much easier to defend an incremental deployment, where regular measurements can show real savings in time, labor, training or an increase in capacity. In the incremental approach, you can define small targeted projects with recognizable returns, keep the costs under strict control, minimize the organizational upheaval, and lower your overall risk. Yes, it will take longer to manage and completely integrate a complex workflow system, and sometime the requirements of the system evolve during the deployment, especially if the process is planned over multiple years.

Managing a workflow implementation does not have to be a major undertaking with outside consultants, lots of management oversight (and overtime!) and high cost. Any company can target specific system improvements and model an end goal. The key to success is to talk to the users and "map" how media assets, people, physical resources and time interact in your system and define the business rules for the workflow engine, especially what should happen when a process "fails" or is "late." Your number one asset is your human capital—great workflows save time, money and free up your staff for more important tasks.

 

Flexible by design, CorporateXpress (CX) is deployed differently by the different television groups that use our SIMS software, depending on management philosophy or strategic directions. Some of our clients use CX to "push down" information from corporate to each of their station operations, while other "roll up" information from the station level, and still others employ a combination of these operations.

The best way to illustrate the potential of the software is to discuss its application in a case study format:

A Case Study

One large television group has integrated CX into their financial and programming workflows to increase labor efficiencies and reduce duplication at both levels of their organization, corporate and the station level. Their integration has provided real, measurable return on investment, so it is helpful to outline each of their applications:

1. They use CX to enter any contracts that have associated cash – Cash contracts and Cash Barter Contracts. This is done by 2 staff personnel, one on the east coast and one on the west. "Barter only" contracts are entered by each station/market, and are not entered by corporate.
2. Payments are set to be made using the corporate database. The group minimizes labor in the finance department by cutting one check to a Distributor that covers all contracts across all stations and markets.
3. CX is configured so that even if the payment schedules are managed in the corporate database, the payment schedules are "cast down" to the branch station databases as read-only entries. When payments are made at corporate, the payments are "cast down"to the stations as read only entries as well. That way, local business managers can pull reports on what has been paid, what hasn't been paid, future cash flow reports, etc. At the corporate level, these same reports are pulled using the corporate database "roll up" reporting.
4. To further their labor savings at the station level, a single individual employs the CX software to provide network scheduling: A network affiliate schedule is entered in the corporate database and then "cast down" to the 5 owned and affiliated stations they have in a hub operation. This saves each of the stations time and labor.
5. At the corporate office, a number of daily, weekly and monthly reports are gathered from the corporate database. Some of these reports have been customized to provide a unique review of the data, and others are scheduled for automatic generation and publication.

By using SIMS, a media contract rights and program management system, the corporate level can benefit from the timely analysis and verification of station program asset valuation/amortization for pre-sale preparations. These reports can be very effective in establishing value during the acquisition process and protect the corporate investments.

The Big Picture

By employing tools like SIMS and CorporateXpress, corporate executives will benefit from:

• Centralized Contract entry and management
• Centralized Payment Management and Tracking
• Post one check to a distributor
• Pay for multiple programs and multiple stations
• Track payment history including check level detail
• Centralized Network Scheduling to populate station schedules
• Roll up Contract and Financial Reporting across all stations

 

This was my first year attending IBC, and as a long-time NAB veteran I was not real sure what to expect. I found that in many ways IBC is like a kinder, gentler NAB because of its relaxed pace over a 5 day period. The halls however were smaller and arranged in a maze-like pattern, which caused a bit of confusion to a newcomer like myself.

Regardless, the major themes I noticed this year were 3D, Push-VOD and TV Everywhere.

There were several vendors prominently displaying their 3D offerings, but most attendees commented that viewers are not ready to make the switch from HD to 3D. Many people have recently purchased one or more HD televisions and are not willing to purchase a new television with new technology so soon. There is also concern about the limited amount of 3D content and of course those silly glasses. Glasses-free 3D televisions are on the horizon, but the popular thought I heard time and again was the market is simply not ready to adopt 3D yet. To put it in perspective, the first U.S. public HD broadcast was in 1996 and the New York Times reported that as of November 2010, only 56% of U.S. households had at least one HD Television.

Push-VOD was a new concept to me, and the business model is based on the idea that the large majority of the world's population does not have access to broadband. The Push-VOD model has content suppliers sending a pre-determined amount of content to a set-top box from where viewers can access the content without having to stream in real-time. This seems like a good idea for newly released movies, but not for someone with more eclectic tastes in television. I saw multiple vendors presenting their implementation of TV Everywhere. Offering the ability to view content on almost any device offers content sellers the chance to gain more impressions and hopefully better monetization of content. I will keep watching out for the latest TV Everywhere trends as it should get pretty interesting in the coming months.

The IBC Show is a great venue to not only meet European prospects, clients and vendors, but get a different perspective on our business.

 

What is "New Media?" I've spent the last several years reading and listening to one pundit after another espouse how this new thing would kill "Old Media" in just a few years and yet they never seem to fully define this new Fifth Estate killer...

The biggest problem with the new media is ultimately people like to be entertained and this is primarily a passive process. You buy tickets to the show or turn on your TV and you expect to be entertained; and if you are, you tell your friends and they decide they will go or watch and the "buzz" is created. But eventually the "buzz" wears off and you re-purpose the show to go after a different market segment until it gets placed on the shelf for someone to dust off and revive 20 years later. Key to this product life cycle is scale. The cost of movies, major series, sitcoms, and even reality TV is significant and the risks to create good content continue to be high. Creating consistently good content is both a risky process and very hard to do.

New media ignores all of this. First let's define what New Media is:

• Content delivered on alternative devices (not TV's)?
• Content delivered by alternative distribution channels? (IP, Mobile)
• Content that was not professionally created? (YouTube)
• Content that allows the viewer to interact with it in real time or near real time?
• Content that uses other dimensions? (3-D and 4-D viewing experiences)
• Content you purchase instead of receive free via an ad-supported funding model?
• Games?
• Anything that isn't traditional couch-potato, over-the-air, free to the home, old-fashioned TV seen on a 4:3 box?

What really is "new media"?

In my opinion, new media is all about making inexpensive content that entertains for a short period of time, but has no real consistency. In fact, the consistency is that it is inconsistent. The current major players of media content hate inconsistency. They can only keep their huge content engine cranking out new material by feeding it huge amounts of money and talent and hope that each day the audience and advertisers continue to recognize that they are consistent providers of top quality entertainment. If the engine breaks, people stop watching, ratings and other measures of performance drop and managers don't make their numbers and are replaced and we start again.

New media's real attractiveness is not the content itself but the method of distribution. It opens a more direct connection between the content creator and the consumer of that content. However, consistent, top quality entertainment is not a fluke, but a very carefully managed process that requires huge resources, high risks, a fair amount of luck, and the willingness to be flexible. Content distribution methodology and the associated payment philosophy are both important attributes, but are only a part of the media work flow. Most of the major content creators view new media as an opportunity to cut out the middlemen costs of distribution and as such will have more funds to make new content.

So what did every major content producer do before new media? They made lots of different pilots. Tested them in the real world to see what worked and what didn't and then made a few big bets. At the end of the day, some of those bets paid off and some didn't, but the successful companies made fewer mistakes than their competitors. As new media achieves a level of penetration that makes a significant impact to these large content producer's bottom lines, it also gives them a new platform to test content in ways they couldn't in the past. For the time being, they will continue to make real money through the more traditional distribution channels that have proven funding models. As more content consumers move to the distribution models supported by "new media" the revenue will support more and more experimentation with these revenue streams until you have a breakout event (a tipping point) that illustrates that new media can provide access to the same (or better) content as the more traditional distribution channels. This change will be gradual at first, but it will accelerate if the technology can support it. With any new technology, if it doesn't keep up with the demand, and delivers content poorly, this will limit adoption and stretch the timeline.

The producers of large scale, quality content will watch this transition carefully and must adopt new workflow and management processes to fit the needs of the new distribution, but for the most part they should survive the change. There is also the likelihood that a few smaller players will bet on new media and rise into the ranks of their big content producer competition. Many of the companies that depend on the current distribution system and do not have the scale to manage large content development and multiple distribution platforms will suffer and may be eliminated. It will be a time of major shifts in the industry and smaller players like StorerTV need to stay aware of where their customers fit in the old and new food chain and design new functions that support all the distribution functions.

For the large players, the most important function will be to manage the information flow from the early content creation stage through to the end of the content's life cycle when it has become a library title, collecting important metadata metrics through every phase. This will allow the managers of the content to determine what the appropriate distribution channels they should use to place the content at each point of its life cycle and maximize its ROI. The idea that all content follows the same path has never been true and will become even more complex with the huge matrix of choices that will face most content owners. Every choice will have both a benefit and a cost and understanding these values to maximize each program's return will make the difference between the winners and losers in this high stakes game.

StorerTV is strategically positioned to provide this type of ROI function for the current and future content mega-studios as well as for the larger number of content providers at the next level. It involves the expansion of partnerships and the creation of a data warehouse concept that is driven by CentriX workflow integrations and data collections starting at the earliest point of content creation and tracking a title through its entire life history. This pattern isn't really about old vs. new media, but about realization of maximum returns on the investments that create any media.

 

I recently had the honor of visiting one of StorerTV's key customers - TV Globo - at their broadcast facilities in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. For more than two decades TV Globo has used a media management system that they developed in-house to schedule media for the program inventory in their daily schedules. Though this home grown software media management system had served TV Globo well, the time had come to move to a more modern system.

As the largest media organization in Latin America, TV Globo has very specialized needs and operations. They saw that the Storer Information Management System (SIMS) was capable of being customized to meet these unique needs and hired StorerTV to develop custom software, a customized User Interface, and an integration with external systems that interface to SIMS at TV Globo.

While in Brazil, I was able to meet with the users and hear their reaction to the SIMS system. I was pleased to learn that these users are very excited about SIMS and anxious to start using it full time. They told me that the difference from their old media management system to SIMS was like night and day and that using SIMS to assign media to their program inventory on a daily basis will be a refreshing change.

Because things were running so smoothly at TV Globo, I was able to enjoy Rio a bit during my visit. It is a stunning city with lush green mountains, wide white beaches and deep blue ocean vistas. I took the cable car to the top of Sugar Loaf and the train to the top of Corcovado to see statue of the Christ and the beautiful view. I also took the opportunity to visit Iguaçu Falls on the Brazil/Argentina boarder which I have wanted to see for many years. The jungle was breathtaking with its 350 waterfalls, colorful butterflies, beautiful birds, monkeys in the trees and coati mundi roaming the grounds.

It was a very rewarding trip to see such a beautiful country, enjoy the welcome of my gracious hosts at TV Globo, and of course see firsthand the success of SIMS in the TV Globo broadcast operations.

 

As an amateur musician I have learned that the best way to improve my playing is to perform with musicians that are better than I am. Getting out of my comfort zone allows me to expand my musical knowledge and become a better musician. The same is true of my experience participating in broadcast standards committees. Having a strong background in business systems and some master control experience, I had joined the SMPTE BXF standards committee; a group created to improve broadcast software system integrations. I quickly realized that up until that point, that I had given little thought to the issues facing metadata, essence, and the processes necessary to get content ready for air.

It was at my first standards meeting that I found myself struggling to understand most of what was being discussed. It took some time listening to the many discussions (and asking a lot of questions) before I got a handle on the issues being debated and began actively participating.

I faced similar challenges when I joined the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA). After learning the new terminology and concepts, I not only began contributing, but started designing custom workflows for broadcasters.

Creating a standard that crosses broadcast operational silos requires input from experts in all areas involved - including multiple vendors in each area. Standards committees need to have participants from a broad range of backgrounds to reduce the risk of limitations within the broadcast community. All participants must listen to each other to create a standard that will work for all systems and be widely accepted.

To be in the know is to get out of your comfort zone and learn about new areas of the broadcast business. Joining standards groups will not only help to shape the entire industry, but will also advance your professional growth as you make new business contacts and expand your knowledge. Like any musician, it's difficult to become a great proficient without the help of a mentor and lots of practice!

 

So what is it like to turn 25? I was thinking about this the other day as we approached my company's 25th birth date and thought back to when I turned 25. I was still pretty young. It was 1978 and I was two years out of Harvard, four years married, but still two years away from the joy of our first baby. We had a two bedroom condo in Westchester and I commuted by train to Manhattan everyday. I worked with some very interesting (some would say historic) characters in the CBS Network sales department, and I was just starting work on my first computer system. Life wasn't too complicated and everything still seemed possible.

While I am older today, I like to think that StorerTV is much like I was back then – looking to the future and seeing real possibilities. We have been through the struggle of our baby years, learning the basics and avoiding the near fatal events that many young companies fall victim to. We reinvented ourselves as we approached our teenage years, thinking how great we were, when the reality was, we still had much to learn. And as we graduated into the real world of sophisticated software systems, we were constantly reminded of how much more we could achieve. We should all be very proud of the success we've enjoyed this far. Most startups, particularly in our field of broadcast software systems, have not been able to come close to celebrating a silver anniversary!

StorerTV has grown steadily over a quarter of a century. We have hired great talent and pride ourselves on delivering the best products and expert service to our clients around the world. We are investing into the company's operations and are strategically branching out into new markets.

The next 25 years hold amazing opportunities for StorerTV and the continued maturity of our people, products and processes. I look forward to sharing this with all of you, and I thank you for helping StorerTV reach this very historic milestone.

Several StorerTV staff members pose for a picture during the company's 25th Anniversary Celebration on July 3, 2011

 

Top reasons global media operations choose the SIMS non-linear module

Video on Demand, mobile video, IPTV, video snacks... They are the new media and entertainment frontier for entrepreneurs, media conglomerates and programmers who are seeking new sources of revenue. For television stations, pitching local news clips to cable users is just one part of a successful strategy to solidify their brand and increase recognition. It can get overwhelming when managing the contract rights, weekly (and sometimes daily) updates, along with the augmentation of metadata, dealing with the increasing volume of content, and accounting for the plays. This is where the Storer Information Management System (or SIMS) can help.

Preparing Excel spreadsheets for metadata files seems easy at first, but as volume grows, it becomes extremely time consuming. SIMS can facilitate this function for non-linear programmers. If you are sending content to more than a couple of platforms (i.e. VoD, iTunes, Airlines, Hulu, etc.), you will quickly find that it requires too much lead time to check rights after scheduling is done. SIMS automatically checks the contract rights as you schedule, saving an enormous amount of time and effort.

Another time consuming task is manually preparing rotations and refresh schedules for the various titles. In SIMS, the schedules can be refreshed according to the business rules you establish for each distribution platform. SIMS also provides true financial accountability by allowing you to manage your contract across the entire organization. Having the linear and non-linear scheduling performed in the same application that uses the same program assets (even when linear and non-linear scheduling is done in separate departments) is crucial to controlling and monetizing your assets.

What if you are not following a U.S. programing model? One example of the internationalization of SIMS is how it is used by a major European On-Demand system in multiple countries. The flexibility it affords in creating custom codes and fields along with the preparation of data for custom reports and exports is unmatched in the industry. The depth of the database, the open standards support and the solid architecture allows this particular SIMS user to engineer their own integrations and interfaces with third party media factory components. The powerful "Searches" (a fundamental design element of SIMS) are part of this European Broadcaster's tool set for workflow management.

The ease in which titles in SIMS can be placed on the schedule and copied from one on-demand package to another increases operational functionality and workflow. Most importantly, business rules use the contracting module for complex rights management which includes Market Territory, Language and specialized clearance rules for Media. The architecture of SIMS was designed to support the growth of media operations worldwide through powerful multi-lingual title metadata fields and a trusted amortization engine for calculating SL Time amortization of GET contracts.

 

As companies are shaking off the effects of the recent economic storm, broadcasters and cable operators are faced with many decisions on how to better streamline their operations and generate new, untapped revenue streams.

Complete system integration and control over operational processes sounds like a viable solution, but having engineers customize an integrated workflow engine is extremely costly and time intensive. A task like this requires sophisticated coding that is flexible enough to grow with new business opportunities. Fortunately, a low-cost and highly effective workflow solution called CentriX, was just released by industry leading program management solutions provider, StorerTV. As described, CentriX is designed to provide leading media companies with an intelligent engine capable of automating and monitoring every task within an entire media factory.

CentriX uses open standards like the SMPTE BXF standard to integrate and automate both the human and technological processes across departments. Because it facilitates data communication, it can eliminate the need to perform repetitive data entry tasks in multiple, stand-alone systems. CentriX also provides an intuitive web-based dashboard that allows users to monitor the status of tasks and operations on one screen.

Other vendors who have introduced business workflows have limited the reach of their solutions to only their products. Although CentriX does seamlessly connect to StorerTV's other systems, like the SIMS contract rights and program management system, it also integrates with modern and legacy hardware and software systems.

"CentriX can fundamentally link any system to any system," says StorerTV Chief Operating Officer, Jay Batista. "It is the best priced solution on the market to completely unify disparate hardware and software systems and create an efficient, adaptive workflow to automate your media factory."

According to Mr. Batista, StorerTV has taken years of integration knowledge gleaned from tying their SIMS product to other systems and employed staff experts with years of experience in systems and software integrations.

"We are integration experts with a 25 year history of adapting to the needs of the industry," he says. "StorerTV has been consistently growing over the last two and a half decades, enhancing our products to exceed expectations at each unique station, group or network we serve. Simply put, our new workflow engine removes the operational silos that have kept broadcasters from recognizing efficiencies in their business, and because it is a scalable system, we can address a single operation, multiple systems or an entire media factory."

StorerTV had officially kicked off its 25th anniversary during the 2011 NAB Show by launching CentriX. They have invited to their booth (#N329) any business who is looking to connect and automate operational workflows to come and see a demonstration of this unique engine, or StorerTV's other integrated solutions.

For more information about CentriX or to schedule a demo, contact StorerTV at 262.241.9005 or visit www.storertv.com.