Bitcentral

Constant data allows stations to iterate on the fly on their streaming and FAST channels, executives from CBS News & Stations, Fox Television Stations and Gray Television told a NewsTECHForum audience last week.

Bitcentral’s Greg Morrow: Broadcasters embracing FAST channels target the “average” viewer with advertiser at their peril, as relevancy for specific can be a game-changer for retention.

Streaming executives from Gray Television, Bitcentral, CBS News & Stations, LTN and Fox Television Stations will share the critical insights they’ve gleaned from consumers of their streaming news channels and how they’re using that — and emerging technology — to guide their fast-evolving programming strategies in a panel at TVNewsCheck’s NewsTECHForum conference in New York on Dec. 12. Register here.

The NAB Show New York looks to be gaining back its pre-COVID mojo with attendance on the upswing and vendors keen to meet with many clients who don’t make the springtime trip to Las Vegas.

Executives from Sinclair, Fox Television Stations, NBCUniversal Local, Bitcentral and Imagine Communications will discuss the sticky process of determining what stays on-premises and what functions should best move to the cloud in a TVNewsCheck Working Lunch Webinar on Aug. 10. Register here.

Executives from The Weather Channel, Fox News and Capitol Broadcasting have rolled up their sleeves and dived into their organizations’ deep and messy archives. They told a panel at last week’s Programming Everywhere event that doing so has yielded untold — and very monetizable — treasures. Pictured (l-r): Nora Zimmett, The Weather Channel; Sam Peterson, Bitcentral; Jon Accarrino, Capitol Broadcasting; and Ben Ramos, Fox Archive. (Alyssa Wesley photo)

Executives from Fox News, The Weather Channel, Capitol Broadcasting and Bitcentral will explain how they’ve delved into their archives to unearth content for new shows and lucrative licensing opportunities in a panel at TVNewsCheck’s Programming Everywhere conference at the NAB Show in Las Vegas on April 16. Register here.

Several years after the pandemic pushed a wide embrace of cloud editing, the technology has made significant strides in speed and automation. Above, Avid’s Edit on Demand is a cloud-based premium editing and post-production solution that can be deployed and scaled on demand.

Leaders from The Washington Post, E.W. Scripps, NBCUniversal Local and Bitcentral told an audience at TVNewsCheck’s NewsTECHFourm that traditional newscasts are in need of a shakeup, but core features like relatable anchors and a clear sense of connection to community can’t be jettisoned in the changes. Above (l-r): Scripps’ Socrates Lozano, NBCUniversal Local’s Meredith McGinn, Bitcentral’s Sam Peterson, WCBS New York’s Sarah Burke, Washington Post’s Micah Gelman and moderator TVNewsCheck‘s Michael Depp (Alyssa Wesley photo). Read a full report here and/or watch the video above.

News, technology and media futurists from The Washington Post, NBCUniversal Local, E.W. Scripps, CBS News New York and Bitcentral frame out how they’re envisioning, testing and implementing changes to longstanding news conventions in a panel at TVNewsCheck’s NewsTECHForum event at the New York Hilton on Dec. 13. Register here.

The NAB New York Show will be back at the Javits Center after a long pandemic hiatus. Following a strong showing at IBC earlier this month, expectations around it are rising.

Broadcasters are calling on a combination of cloud, software and transport technologies to facilitate collaborating and sharing at a station or across groups. The pandemic has shifted the many news sharing tools into high gear. Above: Dalet Pyramid Cut is Dalet Pyramid’s web-based feature-rich video and audio editor.

TV stations and groups are increasingly turning to the cloud for playout solutions, and vendors are meeting them there with SaaS options. Above: Imagine’s Aviator control interface. The cloud-based system is designed to support both linear and OTT playout.

With attendance predicted at around 60,000 with nearly 1,000 vendors, the NAB Show in Las Vegas next week will likely be down from its pre-pandemic numbers. However, vendors say that a more focused, less congested show might not be a bad thing.

Stations may be easing back into their studios as the pandemic abates, but cloud workflows that had been adopted out of necessity for field production are holding fast. Above, Avid’s MediaCentral Collaborate encompasses planning, assignments, task management and project tracking. It can be accessed on a web client, through a mobile app and also through the Media Composer and Adobe Premiere editing systems.

Bitcentral’s acquisition of direct-to-consumer video publishing vendor Powr.tv this week sees the company edging closer to an end-to-end streaming publishing solution, building on its AI-powered video playlisting tool.

Executives from Fox Corp., Tegna, Sinclair and Bitcentral at least week’s NewsTECHForum said the cloud has become an increasingly important tool for business recovery, even with the caveat that the public cloud can be subject to its own outages.

Executives from Fox Corp., Sinclair, Tegna and Bitcentral will chart the trajectory of more and more news operations into the cloud or a hybrid cloud environment at TVNewsCheck’s NewsTECHForum on Dec. 14, presented in-person at the New York Hilton and virtually as well. Register here.

Executives from WarnerMedia, CBS Owned Stations, Hearst Television and Sinclair told attendees of TVNewsCheck’s TV2020 virtual conference last week that their migration of workflows to cloud technology continues apace since the pandemic. However, concerns over the crucial “last mile” of their networks remain.

Executives from Tegna, E.W. Scripps, Hearst and Gray told a TVNewsCheck webinar last week that the cloud’s impact on master control operations is still years off, with those who have adopted hubbing still depending on traditional equipment.

Executives from Tegna, E.W. Scripps, Hearst Television, Gray Television and Bitcentral will explore the possibilities for hubbing some or all TV station group operations — and how much of a role the private or public cloud may play in those future designs — during an Aug. 5 TVNewsCheck webinar. Speakers are (clockwise from upper left): Dave Burke, SVP and CTO, Gray Television; Kurt Rao, SVP-CTO, Tegna; Ray Thurber, VP engineering, E.W. Scripps; Stefan Hadl, VP engineering, Hearst Television; Sam Peterson, GM, core business unit, Bitcentral. Glen Dickson, TVNewsCheck contributing editor, will moderate. Register here.

Equipment manufacturers say newsrooms have been too slow to embrace a storycentric model of content creation, one far more in line with consumer habits than the old evening-newscast-as-endgame paradigm. Above, Sam Adams, the morning anchor for KHQ Spokane, is preparing clips for NonStop News, the station’s 24/7 streaming channel. He’s seated at the NonStop News Desk, which is where these clips are prepared. He can produce and present the clips in a very short amount of time. The lower TV in the distance is receiving NonStop News over-the-air on ch. 6.3.

Pandemic-impacted newsrooms are increasingly embracing tools that allow more content sharing and collaboration from the field and between stations with the cloud playing an ever-larger role in the remote workflows involved. Above, Bridget Naso, news anchor for KNSD San Diego, uses Dejero’s LivePlus Mobile app on an iPhone to broadcast live from home during the pandemic.