Myers And France 24 Set Distribution Partnership

Myers, a provider of broadcast management solutions, has set a new distribution partnership with France 24 that will make the International news channel’s programming information and associated metadata available through their ProLink distribution service. All Myers customers, including all U.S.-based PBS member stations, that subscribe to France 24 will reap the benefits of having all of the channel’s schedule and program metadata automatically downloaded into their ProTrack scheduling environment, saving them both time and money.

This new partnership between Myers and France 24 originated from a reach by Myers’ customer, Northwest Public Broadcasting. Their initial interest was to be able to subscribe to the France 24 packaged channel while using Myers as the conduit to facilitate the acquisition of all the associated essential metadata directly into their ProTrack system. ProTrack is a complete end-to-end broadcast management solution provided by Myers that manages content up and down the broadcast chain, providing robust sales, traffic and billing capabilities.

The set-up of France 24 into a cloud-based version of ProTrack and integrated into ProLink will make it easily accessible for Northwest Public Broadcastings’ two stations, KWSU Spokane and KTNW Yakima, both Washington, and any additional ProTrack customers, to subscribe to and download schedule and program metadata for the new channel.

“For us, this new partnership with France 24 is demonstrative of our commitment to giving our customers content choices and delivering them efficiencies,” said Crist Myers, president-CEO, Myers. “I am very excited to have partnered with France 24, extending their channel’s reach and our customer’s International content options, all while automating the process to make it happen. It is truly a win-win-win for us all.”

The new packaged channel will be available to go live with Myers’ customers on April 1. In preparation of going live, the Myers Programming Team will be entering all of France 24’s schedules and program metadata into a cloud-based instance of ProTrack. Once entered, the information will be uploaded to Myers’ ProLink metadata distribution service, where it will then be available to directly download into a subscribing station’s ProTrack scheduling environment. Stations then can quickly download schedules and the required program metadata, which will drastically reduce errors and eliminate the need for the stations to manually enter that data into their system.

“Myers has always proven themselves a true business partner who continually works to provide us with solutions that make our life easier; streamlining processes and simplifying and automating workflows wherever possible to help us increase our operational efficiency,” said Tom Hungate, program manager, Northwest Public Broadcasting. “Therefore, it was not a surprise that in our station’s initial inquiry into subscribing to and broadcasting France 24’s content, we knew we wanted Myers involved. This project has proven no exception to the productive and successful partnership we share with Myers as they have taken on a majority of the upfront work and heavy lifting, by way of getting all the schedules and program information uploaded, so that when we do go live with France 24’s content, all we have to do is start downloading.”