Bitcentral Offers Mobile, OTT Linear Ch. Solution

Bitcentral, a provider of digital and broadcast video workflow solutions, today announced Continuum, a 24/7 linear news channel for mobile and OTT. The company says this automated process for channel creation “is the first of its kind, enabling broadcasters to reach greatly expanded audiences for their current news and advertising.”

“There is an audience for live linear channels on OTT, Mobile and digital subchannels,” said Fred Fourcher, Bitcentral CEO. “Continuum is a real breakthrough for our customers with vast revenue potential for them at no added costs.”

Continuum is able to automatically or manually program a live linear channel direct from a rundown, then distribute it to subchannels and IP for mobile, digital, and OTT.  Syncing with master control operations, Continuum is directly tied into existing traffic and billing systems, driving a massive expansion of advertising reach.  

Because the product allows broadcasters to digitally deliver viewers a playlist of content containing advertising instead of the current online model of playing cut-up, individual videos with pre-roll advertising, Continuum enables stations, networks and other content producers to sell and manage their own advertising versus being dependent on internet based ad servers.

Continuum allows channel programmers to integrate advertising and traffic wherever they choose, opening up new opportunities for advertisers to sponsor branded segments at various dayparts.

While the larger shift of local journalism to OTT and mobile has been developing for a few years now, the backend newsroom processes to produce such content to date have been largely manual and labor-intensive.  Continuum bridges two robust systems — news production integrated with either ENPS or iNews on the front end,  and master control integrated with traffic systems like Wide Orbit on the back end — providing a high degree of automation to output a 24/7 live or pre-recorded linear channel for digital. 

The product also provides broadcasters further revenue opportunity by opening up an unlimited number of digital subchannels suited for hyper-targeted, niche interest-based or hyperlocal content.