Media General’s To-Do List: HD News, Mobile

Media General is finishing up work this spring on a new facility in Augusta, Ga., that will house two stations — Media General’s own ABC affiliate, WJBF, and Schurz’s NBC affiliate, WAGT, which Media General has agreed to operate.

It’s the major undertaking on the 2011 to-do list of Ardell Hill, president of broadcast services for Media General, but certainly not the only project.

In an interview with TVNewsCheck, Hill says he intends to introduce HD news into two more markets and equip two or three additional stations for mobile DTV broadcasting. Other than that, it’s mostly replacing what needs to be replaced across the 18 network-affiliated TV stations he is responsible for and upgrading for the sake of greater efficiency or improved service.

This interview is the second 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 in April.

An edited transcript:

What projects do you have going this year?

We’re kind of sticking on pretty much the same plan we have been on for a while. We have still got a couple of stations that haven’t transitioned to high definition in the studio so we’re going to try to get that done and we’re going to probably launch some more mobile. Other than that, it’s replacing equipment that’s due in the cycle to be replaced and maintaining the operation and keeping the operation moving forward.

What is your budget like this year? Will it be up or down compared to last year?

It’s pretty close to flying with last year’s. It’s pretty consistent. We don’t have anything that’s pushed it over the top and there’s been no dramatic cutbacks. Our budget levels are really defined more by a property-by-property evaluation of what our needs are, prioritizing those needs and addressing those needs in three ways: Are they critical to sustain operations, do they save us money or do they make us money?

In terms of replacement, is there anything that stands out?

We have got some trucks that are wearing out, we have got some camera gear that’s wearing out and we have got some servers that are maybe getting to the age where it’s time to replace them. Storage capacity is now 10 times what it was for the same dollars and the same physical space. Also, we’ll be upgrading the IT infrastructure with more bandwidth in some places.

The overall distribution of signals has now moved to where most everything in the plant moves as an IP protocol so that the amount of video cabling has significantly decreased. It no longer requires big routing switchers and huge monitoring and distribution amplifiers to split the signal a dozen times. So the simple technology shift to data-managed networks has really been an improvement in the way that we have gone about constructing and putting a facility together.

What about cost savings?

One of the big cost savers is in power. The use of LED lighting gives me the ability to downsize the load from heat. The LED lights get even another step down by combining them with fluorescents. So my heat loads are continuing to fall, which means my air conditioning goes down, which means that my overall electrical loads in the building go down.

Do you have any new facilities or rebuilds in the offing?

Well, you know what we’re doing in Augusta, Ga., don’t you? That’s a new facility that we started last year and we will conclude that probably around NAB in April. We hope to have it on the air sometime in the second quarter.

We’re running two simultaneous news operations and TV stations — the NBC affiliate that is a Schurz property and our own ABC affiliate. We have leased a facility and we’re building that facility out and co-locating all of the operations under one roof so we will have consolidated news and consolidated technical operations.

I am pretty excited about it. When it’s up and running and people look at the way we have done it, they will see that you can do this in a very efficient way that helps you maximize the human resources required. At the same time, it does not compromise our ability to cover the marketplace and have products that are uniquely branded running out of the same facility.

Which of your stations aren’t doing HD news right now?

We haven’t gone HD in Providence [R.I.] yet and we haven’t gone HD in Jackson, Miss. So those are both on the radar. We will probably do Providence first and then we will try to do Jackson.

Have you done HD from the field anywhere?

No. I have got good, solid gear in the field. It doesn’t make any sense to replace equipment that’s working well and making great pictures in 16×9 digital. We’re P2 Panasonic all the way through. Unlike the old analog days where you lost something when you moved video around, the quality of the image is solid all the way through. So I don’t feel that we’re particularly disadvantaged if we don’t have HD in the field. In a few of our markets, it’s a marketing issue. Yeah, the other guys have got it, but I certainly don’t think we’ll suffer.

I know you are a member of Pearl Nine and the Mobile Content Venture, which sort of puts pressure on you to be mobile in as many markets as you can. Where are you with that now and what are the plans for this year?

Well, like I said, we are already on the air. We were on the air with Tampa and Columbus, Ohio, last year. We will probably launch our next one in Birmingham [Ala.] and there will probably be a couple of others. So we’re in sync with our partners.

From what I can gather, the MCV service is going to be more elaborate than what I thought it was going to be — with conditional access and maybe VOD and some other pay elements. Does this increase the cost of implementation for individual stations?

No it does not. As you picked up, we’re moving to deliver a very robust system. It’s got a lot more added to it than what we originally thought, but I think everybody realizes that we have got to deliver a rich environment for the consumer.

We’re going to support the client and we’re going to help launch a service that I think consumers are going to be really thrilled with. Everybody that’s seen it, they’re just blown away.

You were a pioneer with the control-and-monitoring type of centralcasting. How has that gone? Are you satisfied with that?

It’s been a huge success for us. It’s saved significant operating costs, it has allowed me to really take advantage of the technology and it has improved the accuracy of what we do. We operate much more efficiently.

We still have an individual operator at each station, but all of the assets remain at the station. I used to have to have 10 people downloading and formatting a single syndicated show and getting it into the automation systems. I now have one person who’s responsible for that show and who manages that content in the 10 servers at the 10 individual properties. So one person does the job of 10.

Is that network in constant need of fresh capital to upgrade and to improve?

It’s been on the air for five years or so now. I don’t want to say we haven’t spent a dime because we have upgraded a few of the servers here and there, but we have done stuff that has been very minimal. There’s been no significant capital cost to it and, quite honestly, we’re not at capacity. We can add channels at a minimal cost. So the answer is no.

Read the other stories in our Capex 2011 series here.