Myers Installs 13-Station Hub & Spoke

NORTHHAMPTON, MASS.—Myers announced the successful implementation of the company��s ProTrack Hub & Spoke technology for the new Florida-based centralcast environment that is now providing master control services for 13 public television stations spread across five states.

Operating as the Digital Convergence Alliance and funded by a grant from the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, the new facility is expected to save more than $20 million over 10 years. The Network Operations Center will be housed at Colo5 in Jacksonville, with operating services provided by JCT Services, Inc. The DCA, a partnership of independent public television affiliates, consists of WJCT plus WFSU/WFSG (Tallahassee/Panama City), WEDU (Tampa), WUCF (Orlando), WEFS (Cocoa Beach), and WPBT (Miami) all in Florida; plus, WPBA (Atlanta, Ga.), WTTW (Chicago, Ill.), WILL (Urbana, Ill.), WMVS/WMVT (Milwaukee, Wis.), and KERA (Dallas, Texas).

The ProTrack Hub and Spoke solution is designed to streamline and automate workflows while maintaining the flexibility to support a variety of centralcast service models and individual station operations. The ProTrack Hub serves as the centralized content and schedule management system for the NOC. It houses the centralized database of content metadata and provides the tools to manage the acquisition, scheduling and disposal of the content. The Hub also acts as a service manager by consolidating requests from the individual Spokes to update schedules, ingest and acquire content, and publish playlists, etc. The ProTrack Spoke consumes services from the NOC for selected distribution channels without sacrificing individuality and local engagement strategies.