Belo’s Stations On A Mobile Mission

Mobile DTV is top of mind for Belo VP of Technology Craig Harper this year as the station group moves ahead with plans to launch the service in several major markets. So, among other things, Harper will be spending time at April’s NAB Show looking for the “back-office pieces” that will allow his stations to better manage the mobile signals.

In this interview with TVNewsCheck Contributing Editor Glen Dickson, Harper also says he will be upgrading field acquisition and editing at eight of the 15 Belo stations that produce news — the group owns and operates 20 stations in all — and searching for better ways to ingest news content in multiple video formats and quickly make it available for broadcast, for the Web and any other medium that may happen along.

This interview is the fifth in TVNewsCheck’s Capex 2011 series with top station group technologists to find out what they’re planning for 2011, how they will be spending their capital dollars and what they will be shopping for at the NAB Show. Click here to see the others.

An edited transcript follows:

What’s your capital budget look like this year? Is it up or down compared to last year?

We’re flat to last year.

What big projects do you have going on?

Well, deploying mobile DTV is the big priority for this year. We’re launching mobile DTV broadcasts at two stations here in the next 90 days or so.

What stations do you have on air right now with mobile?

WFAA in Dallas, KING in Seattle, KGW in Portland, WCNC in Charlotte and KVUE in Austin.

What are they broadcasting?

The NBC stations [KING, KGW and WCNC] are a simulcast, and the two ABC stations [WFAA and KVUE] have news and weather on them.

What about improvements in DTV transmission? Since the switch got turned off on analog back in June 2009, have you switched channel assignments in any markets, or boosted power?

We boosted power in several of our VHF markets. We had applied for maximization early on. And so we’ve taken advantage of that where we could.

But you haven’t switched any channels. Do you think VHF will prove viable for mobile DTV reception?

We’re in the middle of testing for it right now. My personal work here in Dallas on WFAA has been exceptional on my devices. I’ve got a Samsung Moment [mobile DTV-enabled prototype phone] and a Tivizen [USB dongle receiver for smartphones and laptops], and a Dell Mini [mobile DTV-enabled prototype netbook], and I just use them to do my own kind of non-scientific kind of research. Working with the OMVC [Open Mobile Video Coalition], we’re doing more real technical tests here in the market in 50 or 60 days from now.

What are you doing on the news side?

We’re deploying Sony XDCAM in the field, and upgrading edit systems at the stations.

What do you edit on?

We currently edit on BitCentral, Grass Valley News Edit and on Sony NewsBase, which are the oldest, of course.

And are you going to a new vendor?

Yes, but we’re not announcing who it is until NAB. And we’re doing a fleet of cameras in the XDCAM family. Depending on the market and the use, we’re applying the right camera for the right job. And so we’ve given our stations a selection of a couple of cameras, and they can make the choice. We believe very strongly in XDCAM.

Is that the optical-disc format, or the solid state [EX]?

It’s the solid-state.

In terms of camera size, are we talking all shoulder-mounted cameras?

Primarily. We understand that the EX-3 is a great camera, and we have a lot of them and use them for specific [applications]. But you can’t mount the wireless mics on them, you can’t mount a light on them as easily and it’s not as robust a camera. So we’re applying those as the tool they are, but then shoulder-mounted for everything else.

Our photographers are shooting all day and they travel significantly. So you’ve got to have a camera that is reliable and can support all of the ancillary devices. It’s really easy to get hung up on an inexpensive camera. But when you really look at outfitting, even if it’s a one-man band, it still requires wireless mics and lights and other ancillary devices. You have to look at the total ownership of it. It’s not just, ‘I’m going to buy the most inexpensive camera I can’ because, in the long run, it’s either not as workable or you have to keep adding and Velcro-ing things onto the side of it. And the batteries don’t last as long because they’re not built to power all these other devices.

How many of your stations have HD newscasts at this point?

Of the 15 that produce news, we have eight that are full HD productions.

Does that include field production?

To some extent, yes. That’s what we’re really doing this year, improving that. All of our stations are widescreen. We’re 16:9 everywhere.

Doing widescreen SD [instead of HD] was something that a lot of stations talked about and, frankly, it’s still how the bulk of field productions happen, even at the network level. A lot of smaller-market stations say  that might be a long-term solution for their newscasts, just from a capital perspective. What’s the viewer response been to widescreen SD? Has that been perceived favorably?

I think it has. I’ve talked to friends of mine who have HD sets, and they’re loyal WFAA viewers. And, even though we’re up-converting our [Sony Betacam] SX cameras inside of an HD newscast, because of the way our plants are built, our up-converted SD in most of our markets is very viewable on a big screen HD set. We’re not trying to pretend it’s high def. It’s obviously not. But, I’ll tell you, it is a great picture. I think that has a lot to do with the SX format and the fact that it up-converts so well. There are a lot of other formats that I’ve seen in this market, and other markets, that did not handle that transition as well.

The seven stations that don’t do HD news now — is there a plan to take any of those HD this year?

Not this year. That could change. There are variables, of course, in every market that could change that. But at this moment, none of those are ready. The heavy lifting right now is on the field acquisition piece. And some stations are already HD. So we’re focusing on enhancing those stations that are already HD leaders in their markets, and really building on that.

Have you used any of the automated production systems like Grass Valley Ignite or Ross OverDrive in any markets?

We have Ignite on the air in St. Louis at KMOV and it’s done really well.

Is that something you’d consider for other markets as you upgrade them to HD? Is that a way to make it more financially palatable?

It’s in the conversation. We actually had built that into our plan in those stations that are HD, as they all have Kayak switchers, which is the switcher for Ignite. But we had an opportunity in St. Louis last year to put that together and get it on the air, and it’s gone very well. The system has matured. It’s really more broadcast-centric, in my opinion, than it was early on when it was ParkerVision and Grass Valley was converting it. St. Louis is a very competitive market, and our newscast did not miss a beat. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it, and watched them in the control room do complicated newscasts with a lot of live elements to it. There’s just no issue with it.

Were you able to reduce headcount as a part of implementing that? Is that the major goal with Ignite, or is it more a matter of standardizing your newscast across the different markets?

I think it’s a little of everything. You look at all facets of a decision like that. But no, it was not purely a headcount kind of decision.

What about on the master-control side? Is there anything that you’re improving or upgrading there?

We’re doing some master-control switcher replacements in some markets, but nothing significant there. All four of our Arizona stations are run out of Phoenix and have been now for years. We’ve been running LMAs and other stations out of Dallas here in Texas for a number of years as well. And we do some monitoring of our stations centrally, like overnight and things like that.

Is that something you see doing more of across the group?

Yes, I do. It’s one of those situations again where you take advantage of the technology. And when you’re evaluating everything, if we have the tools in place, we take advantage of them when it’s smart to do so.

Obviously, you already know what you’re doing to a large extent on the news side. Any other technologies you’ll be exploring at NAB?

Well, mobile’s a big part of what I work on every day. We’re a part of Pearl [the mobile DTV consortium] and very active in the OMVC and ATSC [Advanced Television Systems Committee]. And so I’m probably going to spend a good bit of my time looking at the back-office pieces. You know, how do we manage the signals better, and what’s next in the encoders? We’re pretty much standardized on the Harmonic encoder on the air, and so that part of our transmission path is complete. And now it’s seeing what Harris has to deliver and just continuing to advance that because that is a really strategic part of Belo’s thought process, mobile handheld.

Is there anything else specific to mobile besides the encoding stuff that you’ve been looking at? Anything in terms of repurposing content you already have from the Web?

You mentioned master control. Our initial master control design five years ago was to handle multicast channels, including the servers, the automation and everything that we have in place from an infrastructure standpoint. We’ve been able to add things like Live Well Network, or additional networks on multicast, or add mobile. And it’s not been big, heavy lifting for us because the infrastructure’s already in place. So for us, that piece has been tamed.

To your point about taking Web content and other content and being able to repurpose it, our team here at corporate has spent quite a bit of time working on how we can handle any format. It’s really everything from an iPhone to an XDCAM 1080 [line-resolution] camcorder. And we have to be able to manage that content, not just for mobile at its aspect ratio and resolution, but also on the air. Of anything that we have done in my 20 years at Belo, that’s been the most complicated — making the iPhone video work just as well on a 110-inch projector in someone’s media room as it does on their BlackBerry when they’re watching our newscast. That’s been a really great challenge for us, going through the steps of [taking] any format to anything — I can air it, I can podcast it, I can Tweet it, I can pick a still out of it.

We had ice here in Dallas for two weeks, and WFAA had so much great content from our viewers. Everything from video of people ice skating in their front yards to still images. We received thousands of stills and video clips that we were managing and putting on the air and on our website. There’s a lot going on there in the back room to make that happen. But it has worked well for us, and our news departments have used that effectively, and it’s a key part of our everyday news coverage. You can see what we’ve shot, but you can also see what your neighbor shot next door on our air.

It’s an exciting time, I’ll tell you. It’s no longer just maintenance and keeping things running.

Read the other stories in our Capex 2011 series here.