Tish Graham

ABC Owned Television Stations had begun moving many of its workflows into the cloud over a year before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, making for a faster and smoother transition once remote workflows became necessary. Tish Graham, the group’s VP of OTV technology, says the current crisis will “absolutely” speed up the industry’s transition to IP and the cloud.

TVNewsCheck honors six individuals for their contributions to television technology with presentations of its annual Women in Technology Awards. (Photo by John Staley)

Tish Graham is the first woman to lead technology at a television station group. Her efforts to revamp ABC’s stations for a multiplatform world through IP, the cloud and more are at the forefront of where the industry at large is heading. She will receive TVNewsCheck’s 2019 Women in Technology Leadership Award.

She’s being celebrated with TVNewsCheck’s annual Women in Technology Leadership Award in recognition of her leadership in overhauling technology at the ABC Owned Television Stations Group. Her efforts have helped the company adapt to a multiplatform future and changing economic times. In her role as the group’s VP of broadcast technology, she has demonstrated an ability to make tough decisions and rally her team behind implementing a new plan.

Broadcasting’s top tech practitioners are focused on improving the speed and use of metadata. ABC’s Tish Graham: “Whether it needs to be a linear piece, or it needs to be OTT or some type of digital piece, we need to build the backend systems and automate them as much as possible to be able to move that content wherever it needs to go, and to be reliable.” And metadata is also essential to find content in an archive or to direct OTT distribution, plus efficient use can also lower overall storage costs. (Photo: Jill Altmann)