BRUSSELS, Belgium—Mediagenix, a global provider of media business management platforms, has announced that it is advancing its Semantic Intelligence capabilities to help studios and networks unlock greater value from their catalogs.

The company says that strengthening the semantic foundation across title and rights data enables media organizations to transform metadata into actionable commercial intelligence, empowering sales and licensing teams to maximize catalog monetization while laying the groundwork for agentic AI across title management, curation, scheduling and monetization workflows.

As distribution models evolve and licensing strategies grow more complex, maximizing catalog monetization has become increasingly challenging. While media companies have extensive metadata and performance dashboards, they often lack a connected understanding of how titles relate to one another, to rights availability and to buyer demand. Without structured meaning behind each asset, teams struggle to fully utilize their libraries, and AI cannot operate effectively in commercial workflows.

Mediagenix embeds advanced semantic modeling across its portfolio, including within its Title Management solution. This capability is powered by recommendation and personalization intelligence originally developed by Spideo, which Mediagenix acquired in 2024. By connecting title data, rights intelligence and audience signals, the platform enables sales and licensing teams to identify opportunities faster, package content more strategically and drive stronger catalog ROI.

“Metadata describes an asset with information such as genre, cast, runtime and synopsis. Semantic Intelligence understands it,” said Gabriel Mandelbaum, vice president, Content Strategy & Management for Mediagenix. “It structures the meaning of content and connects it to rights and audience demand. With that level of detail and context, sales and licensing teams have a much clearer view of the catalog and how best to monetize it.

"The result is higher catalog utilization, smarter packaging, and improved content ROI," Mandelbaum added. "And critically, this semantic intelligence and well-structured repository becomes the prerequisite for deploying agentic workflows across your library.”

Mediagenix has embedded semantic structure within its Title Management solution and continues to advance it by deepening contextual modeling inside the content catalog and linking it directly to rights intelligence and recommendation data. By strengthening the relationships between assets, audience behavior and commercial signals, Mediagenix says it reinforces the operational backbone required for intelligent automation. When meaning is structured, AI does not function as a black box; it enables explainable personalization, more precise licensing strategies and data-driven portfolio optimization, transforming AI from experimentation into operational advantage.

Mediagenix will host a webinar on March 26 to explore how the underlying Semantic Intelligence can optimize title management: “From Catalog to Content ROI – How to Unlock Hidden Value in Your Content Library”.

The company will also demonstrate its enhanced Semantic Intelligence capabilities at NAB 2026.

Additional downloads:
Whitepaper: “Content Value Management From Catalog to Capital: Turning Existing Content Into Lasting Value”
Thought Leadership: From Metadata to Meaning: Why Semantic Intelligence Is Media’s Next Competitive Advantage.

To better help content creators handle the uptick in new linear TV and streaming channels, an expanding fleet of technologies that fall under the broadcast management systems umbrella are on the rise. There are new technologies designed to address converged TV advertising; ways to ensure consistent ad placement across different delivery methods, and new ways to transform monetization strategies for streaming TV.

And since the goals of today’s business management systems are as varied as the content itself, the technologies are varied too, allowing content creators to sell programmatic advertising on multiple platforms as well as manage HR issues and streamline the automation of order workflows.

More Data Please
“Today’s media seller is faced with more challenges than ever before—more solutions to offer, more competition and more budget pressure,” said Jimshade Chaudhari, senior vice president of product for Marketron. “To compete against these challenges, sellers need to deliver a comprehensive marketing program to advertisers through a converged order.”

Converged orders like the one Chaudhari mentions bring OTA, O&O and digital inventory into a single, organized buy. Sales platforms that support converged orders, like Marketron REV, give access to real-time inventory, ratings and sales activity. 

And as the industry well knows, one of the most compelling features of broadcast management systems is the harnessing of sales activity. Stations can use the technology to convert requests and proposals into orders. Once an order is authorized it can be executed into a radio or TV traffic system—even a third-party platform—via a web-based user interface.

“[The technology] maximizes linear revenue and O&O inventory through yield management and dynamic pricing while integrating with traffic, CRM, billing and reporting platforms,” Chaudhari said. “These integrations give broadcasters the flexibility to access data and insights across platforms and across their businesses.”

Harken back to a time more than a decade ago when the broadcast industry as a whole began to realize that those platforms—plural—were here to stay. As change rushed in in the form of an influx of streaming and niche programming channels, many broadcasters in the industry made what seemed—at the time—to be a wise step: creating a separate silo for digital sales.

“The challenge was that many broadcasters knew they had to get into digital. But instead of modifying their linear traffic and billing systems in order to handle digital, what they did was they ended up buying an ad server and creating a siloed tech stack for their digital,” said Rob Malcolm, general manager of Ad Tech at Imagine Communications. “And it turns out that’s not a very scalable or very cost-efficient way to run your business.” 

Many of those same players are now in the midst of trying to consolidate those rudimentary digital platforms with traditional traffic and billing modality to be able to sell an audience across all platforms in a single way, Malcolm said. Agencies and brands don’t care if it’s linear TV or addressable, they just want to buy the audience across all the platforms, he said.

As a result, a number of broadcast management systems are offering new ways to manage the resultant digital permutations and combinations. “[These systems are] ultra-mission critical. Every day [a station] can’t place an ad is money down the drain,” Malcolm said.

Imagine’s OSI traffic & billing platform, allows broadcasters and media companies to sell and decide where ads should be placed, manage the optimization of what ad to place in what location, to record impressions and to handle billing. Imagine has separate platforms that achieve this depending on region; in the U.S. market, OSI is based around the unique way local stations sell advertising. 

“If you think of it from a contract-to-cache standpoint, we have everything from management systems all the way to billing the agency and ad serving,” Malcolm said.

Although not disclosing specific details, Imagine plans to introduce several new products to the market within the next six months that will “ultimately enable customers to make more money in this cross platform world we find ourselves in,” Malcolm said.

Cloud Effect
Other broadcast management systems are targeted on a platform- vs. an audience-based sales approach. Operative’s cloud-based AOS converged advertising system manages advertising workflows across platforms and inventories. 

“The first step is to drive interoperability, the second is to allow companies to sell interoperationally,” said Ben Tatta, chief commercial officer at Operative. “The industry has gone from a platform sales approach to audience sales approach, so media needs to be sold in a more integrated basis.”

This shift became materially clear during the pandemic, he said. “People were home, they were consuming more content and there was a shift toward digital consumption,” Tatta said. And that carried all the way out to advertising, he said. 

AOS is now accessible through Google Cloud to allow  customers to more easily integrate AOS into their advertising workflow. According to Operative, retail, digital and linear media operations can use AOS as a “connective tissue” via the cloud to converge advertising workflows. 

Other technologies are evolving in other ways. The Xytech Systems Media Operations Platform has been slimmed down into a new mobile native interface that can be used to remotely manage resources and assets. WideOrbit recently announced the latest version of its WO Traffic media ad traffic operations platform that includes spot-level order validation and streamlined material approval options. 

Forging Ahead
As these technologies continue to evolve, the industry is looking ahead and attempting to make assumptions about what the market will look like in 5-10 years. 

“[Some] just think the future is [only] digital, but we are starting to see cracks in that [view],” Malcolm said. “One thing people love about television is the ability to some degree control where your spot is going to be placed.” Ten years from now, when we as a nation are watching the Super Bowl, for every TV set that can receive an addressable ad unique to a viewer, there will be brands that want their ad to be shown at a specific time and at a specific break. 

“The future of the media industry is connecting advertisers with the right audience on the right platform in a way that optimizes margin and delivers results,” added Chaudhari from Marketron. 

And as that transition continues in both TV and radio, it will be integrated tools and customized support from broadcast management systems that will best support the transition.

Today’s modern media companies juggle a variety of revenue streams, from traditional linear advertising to digital to growth channels like CTV. Group M’s global advertising forecast predicts that CTV will increase 13.2% in 2023 compared to a 1.2% decrease for linear. That change will create seismic shifts in how media companies assemble proposals, deliver campaigns and maximize yield.

The way advertising spend evolves across channels also adds to the already complex makeup of the processes and technologies that drive revenue management. Media companies are faced with the daunting task of meeting advertiser demand for highly targeted, custom ad campaigns across channels that can also deliver measurable results.  Over time, many media companies have built up a network of different technologies and processes that are stitched together, often with manual work and spreadsheets. 

These systems are often stuck in silos, focused on the linear business or the digital business, without integrations to bring information together. Without a unified system, media companies are often slower to create proposals for advertisers and have difficulty delivering campaigns optimally, leaving revenue on the table.

The good news is that there are a number of new approaches that solve these issues. 

The Components of a Modern Media Enterprise
The modern media company requires modern solutions that will drive unified ad sales, delivery and reporting. Today’s advertiser wants to buy campaigns at scale across channels, and they want to reach highly specific audiences on targeted content. The campaigns of today are incredibly finely crafted, which puts pressure on media companies to deliver successfully. New solutions need capabilities that can meet and exceed advertiser expectations and help media companies make strategic decisions to maximize revenue.

Modern revenue management includes:

• Unified product catalogue - Advertisers want to buy across channels, and don’t have patience to wait for media companies to assemble product information from disconnected systems. A unified product catalogue brings all relevant product information for each channel into a single database that makes it easy for sellers and their teams to see pricing and available inventory. A unified catalogue makes it easy to create a proposal that meets advertiser RFP demands and maximizes revenue opportunities for the media company.
• Systems integration - Media companies gain significant efficiency when they are able to seamlessly move an IO into the delivery phase and manage operations centrally. Modern ad operations require interconnected systems across linear, digital, CTV and more so that it is easy to activate and optimize campaigns.
• Real time reporting - Centralized, streamlined reporting is the only way that media companies can achieve accurate real-time reporting, something that has been elusive. End-of-campaign reporting has long been difficult for media teams, and the complexity of new channels, targeting and currencies has made it even worse. Reporting has been so complicated, that accurate, comprehensive real-time reporting mid-campaign is almost impossible, creating an extremely heavy lift for media teams who want to not only provide advertisers with insights, but also optimize delivery.

Solutions for Modern Media Revenue Management
There is good news in the face of growing complexity. New solutions based on cloud technology and modular design are helping media enterprises achieve their goals for modern revenue management without requiring a total overhaul of their systems.

Cloud-native technology allows a media company to connect their current linear, digital, CTV and other tech into a centralized system that can unify information and seamlessly interface to dramatically improve visibility and workflow. Cloud can be added without media companies having to rip out their current systems, which makes it much easier to adopt. 

For example, cloud-based order management can create a unified product catalogue that pulls from each legacy system, and interface with each system to constantly keep information updated, dramatically increasing visibility and reducing manual work. Cloud is scalable, which means it can grow with media companies as their business evolves. It can manage massive amounts of data and easily accommodate the complexities of today’s and tomorrow’s media landscape. 

What’s more, modern solutions are built to be flexible, with a modular design that allows media companies to customize the solution to their needs. A modular approach allows companies to add new channels as they need to, creating a more fluid on-ramp to a true converged revenue management approach.

Modern systems are built to embrace the change and complexity that comes with today’s media advertising market. Rather than throw out the old, these systems are meant to interface and unify data, increasing visibility, speed and ultimately, ROI. 

Media companies must meet advertiser demands, and the tools are available to do so while also gaining yield and revenue management controls. With modular cloud technology, media companies improve business outcomes today and pave the way for whatever new elements emerge in the future. 

SAN FRANCISCO—As networks broadcast and stream a growing number of channels, the technology that controls everything from ad sales to traffic and billing is evolving as well. New tools and strategies abound for helping content creators handle the growth of those channels. And as the name implies, today’s broadcast management systems have expanded and grown to offer content creators a better means of achieving that control. 

The goals? As varied as the content itself: Reducing operational complexity and costs. Selling advertising at a local and national level and on multiple platforms. Addressing HR issues. Automating order workflows. Identifying and executing audience-targeted orders at scale. 

Open Sourced
As the requests grow, broadcast management systems have responded—some by building  systems around a flexible, open source architecture; others by consolidating assets across a portfolio in an effort to respond more effectively to media buyers.

“The increase in channels has made it even more critical to ensure that organizations have a flexible and adaptable BMS,” said Jimshade Chaudhari, senior vice president of product for Marketron. “Given the increase in channels and the associated content, manual processes and siloed systems can no longer meet broadcaster’s needs. “ 

Earlier this year, two companies joined forces around the concept of standards-based platforms, open source architecture. For the Operative and Imagine Communications, that means ingesting orders from Imagine’s GamePlan ad decision and optimization engine from Operative’s cloud-native sales platform AOS, a partnership that enables a buyer to target audiences across different impressions—including geographic location or device type—as well as process orders across all types of different platforms using Imagine inventory management solutions.

”Our partnership with Operative enables our clients to streamline their operations across multiple media forms and to address the increasing desire to be able to sell on an audience basis,” said Tom Cotney, CEO of Imagine Communications.

Audience First
Those types of partnerships highlight the importance of taking an audience-first approach to selling advertising. Since audiences are more fragmented than ever, there is less guarantee that buying a specific TV show will deliver the specific audience. This is where NextGen TV steps in. The technology can deliver this by relying on consumer-driven demand to keep local TV competitive with growing OTT platforms. 

“And while this will level the playing field by allowing local TV to meet their advertisers’ changing needs… creating a common currency between linear and all digital assets will make it easier for broadcasters to sell their multiplatform ads,” Chaudhari said. “It’s important that modern BMS platforms recognize this and prepare broadcasters for this future.”

Over the past decade, broadcast management technology has steadily grown from standalone traffic and billing systems into integrated tools that manage content throughout its life cycle. That’s been a priority for companies like Myers, whose ProTrack software solution ProTrack centralizes content and allows users to acquire, schedule, monetize and distribute content from a single point of control.

Systems that were traditionally considered core traffic and billing are now expanding their systems with add-ons and built-in third-party technology integrations. ProTrack, which made its name in the traffic and billing space, now integrates with automation, accounts receivable and media asset management. 

Myers provides broadcast management systems to the vast majority of PBS member stations across the country, a unique challenge since public media companies must meet all the same responsibilities as a commercial network but with far fewer resources and revenue opportunities. Today, must-have features for networks like PBS now include automation log monitoring, schedule placement confirmation and report generation.

Unifying Operations
Other systems strive to meet multiple goals while simultaneously prepping to handle multichannel environments. Advanced planning, rights and scheduling, spot placement technology and ad sales and commercial scheduling are part of Imagine’s Ad Tech product suite. Technologies like the company’s LandmarkOSI traffic and billing system, Broadcast Master management suite for scheduling and finance or xG Linear scalable traffic for MVPD are designed to competently manage single or multichannel environments across multiple platforms. 

Unifying station operations on a shared technology infrastructure is another key priority for broadcasters with multiple stations in multiple markets. 

Large ownership groups are using WideOrbit’s WO Traffic system as a foundation to leverage new revenue streams by merging station operations on a single, collectively shared foundation. Like the infrastructure behind other traffic systems, WO Traffic integrates with other suites like analytics, sales, payments and airtimes while WideOrbit Placer works to determine proper spot placement for all advertisers as well as simplifies billing. 

That last piece was particularly important during the Covid-19 pandemic. Content creators needed to simplify the process of obtaining receivables, such as when religious broadcaster Bonneville International used the WideOrbit WO Payments Suite to help make decisions about clients who were struggling financially because of the pandemic.

“Because we have all the industry information coming out of our WideOrbit system, [we looked at industries like] the entertainment or tourist industries [and could be] more flexible [about payments] because that’s an industry that [was] hit harder [by the pandemic],” said Ken Nate, CFO and executive vice president for Bonneville. “We think this creates an opportunity for improvement down the road for both us and our clients.”

Streamline Internal Processes
Managing resources was also the impetus behind a UK studio selecting a new media operations platform to manage everything from studio bookings to quote creation. A joint venture of Sky and NBCUniversal, Sky Studios Elstree is using the Xytech Media Operations Platform resource management software to help streamline the film and TV studio’s internal processes like cost management and resource scheduling. 

That was also behind Viasat Broadcasting’s decision to turn to Xytech to manage staff and bookings for the network. With about 400 employees and 64 Viasat channels, the European TV operator needed an integrated system to manage and report on all operational and financial activities. 

“Xytech software offers a multitude of features when it comes to handling the complex requirements of bookings,” said Matt Waldock, Xytech vice president and director of business development for EMEA. “Our Media Operations Platform allows for quick and efficient quote and order creation. As bookings are added or changed, the system updates the display in real time, putting automated financial transparency directly into clients’ hands,” he added.

With the continued expansion of alternate viewing platforms, local broadcast TV is changing the way viewers consume their content — which changes the way in which advertising has to be bought and sold. Broadcasters looking to maximize their current core business must also effectively manage revenue that is now coming from OTT and third-party digital advertising. 

As with other broadcast management systems, the Integration Suite from Marketron is designed to serve as a single ecosystem. Working with business platforms like Salesforce and NetSuite, the system can handle billing export features, digital advertising, social media verification and electronic sales orders. 

The system works side by side with the Marketron REV sales platform, which addresses proposal creation, linear TV order entry and real-time data reporting leading to more revenue on every order via intelligent dynamic pricing and direct traffic integration, Chaudhari said. “All of this technology is built on an open platform that can be integrated into broadcasters existing systems via APIs, helping broadcasters augment their capabilities without having to rip out their core infrastructure,” he said. 

To demonstrate its efforts to accommodate an expanding array of advertisers, Marketron last month added new capabilities to its Marketron NXT digital ad platform that enable all broadcast and media companies to deliver digital ad solutions to advertisers operating in restricted industries, including cannabis, CBD, gambling, alcohol, fireworks and politics, thereby driving revenue from previously limited verticals.

As the market changes, so too must modern broadcast management systems — from aggregating data to holistic business-level reporting to ensuring the right programming appears on the right channel. 

“This level of flexibility prepares broadcasters for continued success as advertiser and consumer demands evolve,” Chaudhari said. 

HAILEY, Idaho—Marketron has introduced its ROI Calculator targeting broadcasters who want to measure the success of their ad campaigns against competing media companies.

“Anyone in charge of sales data—sales managers, GSMs, senior vice presidents of sales, digital sales managers—could use this calculator to understand their company’s potential by benchmarking against others in the industry based on current revenue,” the company said. “This calculator is simple to use and impactful to broadcast and media companies because it allows them to benchmark their results with industry averages. In just minutes, they will gain valuable insights to help inform budgets for years to come.”

For broadcasters two aspects make up revenue projections: over-the-air (OTA) revenue and third-party (audience extension) digital revenue. Marketron says it  created the calculator to help broadcasters look into the future of their revenue and understand the impact of third-party digital, especially if the station isn’t currently selling it.

The tool makes it possible to create realistic projections for OTA and third-party digital revenue based on the broadcaster’s 2021 actuals. Using information from BIA Advisory Services, eMarketer, and other industry sources, the calculator takes the data entered and projects revenue for both inventory types through 2024.

Marketron says its ROI Calculator is easy to use and more effective than the alternative: internal projections that don’t have built-in industry data to help benchmark against similar-size companies. Broadcasters simply plug in their total OTA revenue from 2021 and third-party digital revenue from 2021 (Marketron supplies a base if the station didn’t do third-party digital in 2021), and the calculator will quickly provide the data. It includes a comparison of large-, medium-, or small-company projections so sales managers can see how their company stacks up.

“Marketron exists to support the broadcast and media industry’s transformation and to help drive broadcast and digital revenue. The ROI Calculator is another Marketron tool to help further that goal,” said Todd Kalman, senior vice president of sales at Marketron. “It’s something any executive or sales leader should want to use to compare to the industry and to gain insight into strategies that will help them thrive now and in years to come.”

Sales executives may use Marketron’s ROI Calculator immediately by going to https://www.marketron.com/calculator/form.html.

WASHINGTON—COVID-19 came down on most of the world like a freight train, and as a result, how we deal with our lives—professionally and personally—have had to change nearly as quickly. That rapid process of change is not about to skip the TV industry, and in this instance, how business management systems continue to evolve.

Whether their primary objective is helping broadcasters handle advertising and traffic needs via the management of metadata, providers have focused their attention to a number of key processes that have been brought about by current events.

GOING REMOTE

Since mid-March, the majority of work forces have been keeping up with their day-to-day tasks from home. Many were unaware of just how the process would change for them.

“There weren’t a lot of people, a lot of our customers, that were talking about how to sustain a 95% ‘work-from-home’ posture,” said Steve Reynolds, president of Imagine Communications. In response, Imagine has been making much of its business management platform suitable for distributed use, whether via the cloud or possibly as a managed service. But it was still a change that people had to get used to.

Myers also had a number of customers questioning how best to handle operations remotely. They, like Imagine, had previously developed the capability and have been further developing it with its ProHost 2.0. While being able to fully integrate with all systems inside a given media facility, an edge device makes ProHost 2.0 available accessible anywhere, according to Mike Tirrell, CTO for the Westfield, Mass.-based provider of radio and TV management software.

What many users have been surprised to learn during this time is how little their work has actually been impacted because of the work-from-home orders, and in some cases, how more efficient they are. As a result, a return to the office and the type of previous operations pre-COVID doesn’t feel as urgent.

“I think there are a lot of companies now that are looking at what they can do with managed services and what they can do in the public cloud as being not just a business continuity plan but indeed being the primary plan for how they want to run their business moving forward,” said Reynolds.

COMPETING AGAINST DIGITAL

When it comes to advertising, TV has long been one of the predominant platforms for companies to spend on. But digital has emerged in recent years, and with the ad market severely impacted by COVID-19, the gap between TV and some of the big digital players like Google and Facebook is becoming clearer. Still, media companies should be taking this time to find ways to reassert its powerful position in the ad world.

“The premium television companies possess [digital’s] value, but their execution systems, the way they run their businesses, has grown to be very siloed—one platform stack on top of the next,” said Lorne Brown, CEO of Operative, a provider of automated advertising software. “The TV market ... needs to modernize their tech stacks in order to compete in this new marketplace and unlock their value.”

The dominant theme these days is programmatic advertising, which Myers’ CEO Crist Myers defines as, “making sure that the right programming is meeting your audience.” Although it is becoming more widespread in recent years, the development of the ATSC 3.0 standard will give broadcasters new tools to better target specific segments of the population, Myers’ Tirrell explains.

While digital has gotten out in front with programmatic, WideOrbit has developed “MarketPlace” and “Programmatic Digital” to help remove barriers to TV’s full use of the technology, like transactions, according to Mike Zinsmeister, CRO for the San Francisco-based provider of business management systems for M&E.

Brown, however, doesn’t see programmatic having the biggest potential for business management systems. Instead he is more focused on creating multifaceted systems that combine a number of different needs of users.

BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER

In our review of business management systems for M&E a year ago, we discussed how combining the different facets of business management into single platforms was underway. That approach has only increased in the current environment.

“It all comes back to this concept of having a unified infrastructure,” said Brown from Operative, whose flagship cloud-based AOS is designed to help media companies integrate the various aspects and platforms of their business and allow them to sell it in ways buyers want to consume it.

Nearly all of the companies we spoke with have these types of products, whether they are for full system operation, or focus on the many different aspects of a single function like advertising. WideOrbit has its Unified Sales Suite to connect buyers and sellers through a single, easy platform. The latest version of Myers’ ProTrack, 7.0, features a variety of services for managing, publishing and more. Imagine’s XG Gameplan gives users insights into supply and demand aspects, as well as audience and other facets.

“I think that what we’re seeing with COVID-19 is a decade of trends in 18 months,” said Brown. Providers and users just have to try and keep up.

ALEXANDRIA, VA.—Who says that you need to be either old school or new school? New developments with business management systems certainly don’t subscribe to only serving the requirements of traditional over-the-air services or the new needs for digital programming. Rather, companies are seeing a chance to remove the divides that initially required multiple devices tackling digital and OTA and create a “one-stop shop” for all business management needs.

Formerly known as “traffic and billing,” business management systems within the broadcast space encompass a wider range of financial and logistical needs within the media facility, including scheduling, ad management and digital rights management.

“It’s going in the direction of convergence between digital and linear programming and sales,” said Mike Tirrell, chief operating officer at Myers, a broadcast management software developer. “More and more broadcasters are looking to manage all of their sales and all of their inventory via digital or over-the-air in a single system.”

“[Broadcasters] want a rich mixture of television—digital, online, video on demand, over the top—in with their television buys,” added Dave Villano, COO for Imagine Communications.

The convergence into a single system brings a number of new capabilities to business management systems, including use of the cloud, increased integration opportunities and handling the implementation of ATSC 3.0 and how that can help improve the increasing use of addressable and programmatic ads, designed to automatically target specific consumers based on tendencies.

NEXT GENERATION SALES PLATFORMS

In the era where an iPhone can be a phone, a high-resolution camera (still and video) a computer and a gaming system, it’s clear that people want, if not expect, tools to handle multiple tasks. Users of business management systems are certainly no exception.

Myers meets that desire with its Pro-Track end-to-end business management software system, capable of handling tasks from proposal and sales to billing and accounting, as well as most everything that falls in between, according to Tirrell. The company is now increasing its focus on livestreaming.

“We’re in the process right now of building out some newer functionality to be able to handle the booking of digital business, custom branding for digital channels and management of digital rights as they relate to over-the-air rights,” Tirrell said. How customers can access this is also important, especially with the cloud becoming a vital source for users. Myers is addressing this need as well with new hosted solutions that are AWS-based.

MONOLITHS TO MODULES

Imagine Communications is also changing how its systems are operated by and presented to users. Switching from what Villano called “monolith” systems, Imagine’s series of next gen products, which all feature the XG moniker—i.e. XG Campaign, XG Gameplan and XG Linear—are broken into modules (aka microservices) that enable greater integration.

“We’ll consolidate a sales suite with one module and allow our customers to manage the sales and campaign pitch across media types so they’re not playing ‘swivel chair’ when they’re trying to sell media,” Villano explains. “The benefit there is that leaves us open not only to provide more robust functionality ourselves, but it leaves us open to work with our customers who may want to integrate technologies of their own to give them a competitive advantage, or also to integrate some other industry products that come from other vendors.”

ON THE ATSC 3.0 BANDWAGON

The rollout of the ATSC 3.0 standard, currently underway, will have a far reaching impact on the industry, particularly in the areas of hyper-localism and addressable advertising.

“ATSC 3.0 is the beginning of how we ‘level the playing field’ across the landscape,” Villano said. Imagine’s next gen business management system is designed to work with ATSC 3.0 as a standard offering, which it believes will allow broadcasters to operate in a similar fashion to MVPDs when it comes to ad deliveries.

Myers says that it is in the process of including the ATSC standard so that it can assist with elements like targeted advertising, messaging and other forms of hyper-localization. In the meantime, Myers recently rolled out a “full-functioned, full-featured sales platform” designed with addressable and targeted advertising in mind; Myers calls this new development its advanced sales functionality.

Similarly, the emergence of 5G is expected to provide a big boost to services for these systems. “Whether it’s ATSC 3.0, whether it’s 5G, whatever it may be, once you get to the impression… it will all be managed by the impression and be targetable down to a device,” says Villano.

SAN FRANCISCO—It’s been called one of the most difficult aspects of running a broadcast station, and it’s easy to see why.

The business of managing a station ranges from integrating sales to linear playout. And even at its simplest, there are rights issues to account for, constantly changing scheduling drop-ins to track, and finance target points to consider.

Now, add to that a need for today’s business management systems technology to be easy to use and simultaneously robust enough to handle the complexities of an individual station’s requirements.

“BMS systems are about to hit a major market shift,” said Lorne Brown, president of SintecMedia in New York. One of those reasons: the need to properly manage multiple new channels. Legacy systems that have traditionally specialized in linear TV ad or digital ad management must now switch gears. What’s needed today are simple yet flexible ways to control data and access information across multiple channels.

Using Myers PBS can centralize content metadata in a comprehensive database

Click on the Image to Enlarge

“TV and digital media are converging, advertisers want to buy using new metrics and audience data, and advertising is being distributed across new channels and platforms,” Brown said.

STREAMLINING IN THE CLOUD

Today’s current BMS systems are attempting to manage those key priorities. To do so, they are tackling the process in new ways—ways that streamline and provide a clear view of both business targets and the inventory at hand to ultimately unify and simplify the business of running a station.

Some solutions are finding a future rooted in the cloud. By taking the integration and synchronization of media operations into a virtualized cloud environment, broadcasters are able to take advantage of what the cloud does best: decrease cost and improve workflow efficiencies.

Imagine Communications took this step with Imagine xG Schedule, the company’s first cloud-based planning and scheduling system for linear, on-demand and digital platforms. When combined with other Imagine solutions, including the Versio cloud-native playout system and Unified Distribution portfolio, the solution is designed to be a cohesive workflow solution.

ProConsultant Informatique also took this step when it integrated its BMS LOUISE business management system with the Adways cloud-based platform—but in a unique way that pulls in a creative advertising component.

The Adways interactive video technology platform allows broadcasters to create and embed HTML5 interactive videos into creative content. The interactive video can be reviewed on any device, and each click is tracked—and fed back into BMS LOUISE—so broadcasters receive a dynamic report of points of interest and user engagement.

BMS LOUISE itself serves as the backbone to this new feature by providing a centralized management of media as well as technical, operational and business metadata.

FOLLOWING THE ‘CHAIN OF COMMAND’

Back on the ground, there’s another trend in business management systems, and that involves finding a tightly tailored solution that will allow a broadcaster to focus on what matters to an individual network or station.

For Army Television, the U.S. Army’s official audiovisual production organization, that focus included managing a wide variety of people, studios, facilities and equipment both within the Pentagon and in remote locations.

Talk about adhering to the “chain of command”—if the production team says it is unable to fulfill a request by a general to videotape an event, they better have a very specific reason why, said Kevin Beverley, Army Television engineering branch chief.

“It’s critical that we have a reliable scheduling system in place to make sure that we are utilizing our available resources to their maximum effectiveness at all times,” he said. In response to this need, the network installed a ScheduALL scheduling system from NetInsight to manage professional staff, work orders, as well as the use of production facilities and distribution of equipment.

Individual team members use the system in various ways: to see their assignment schedule in real time, or to determine how many events are scheduled in a given week, including all available staff, facilities and equipment.

Without such a system, “there is no way Army Television would be able to successfully achieve and maintain the operations tempo which has become our norm,” Beverley said. He estimates that scheduling system efficiencies result in up to 30 percent higher workload capability than the network could otherwise achieve. Customized solutions added to the ScheduALL system include project management, personnel manager, media manager and invoicing, among others.

The software is one such solution that gathers customizable features under the BMS umbrella; features like real-time conflict management, project management capabilities, integrated accounting tools and event-based notifications.

INTERNATIONAL FOCUS

Other BMS solutions are specifically looking at the best ways to address advertising placement across myriad multimedia delivery modes, including traditional broadcast, Web, new media and mobile. As campaigns become increasingly complex, so advertisers demand new levels of accountability.

The other key feature is optimizing use of inventory.

BSkyB worked with Imagine Communications to build an ad sales solution around the U.K. network’s Ad Smart initiative, a personalized TV advertising program that sends personalized ads to different households even though they are viewing the same programming.

That was the impetus behind BSkyB’s implementation of a Landmark Sales broadcast and multimedia sales solution: to maximize sales and operational efficiencies across 600 channels in 50 countries. The broadcaster worked with Imagine Communications to build an ad sales solution around BSkyB’s Ad Smart initiative, a personalized TV advertising program that sends personalized ads to different households even though they are viewing the same programming.

The solution has helped BSkyB address particular challenges, including core spot sales, and addressable advertising, the company said.

Gone are the days when just traffic, ads and billing were leading the charge. Today BMS systems are addressing personnel management, labor management, billing and receivables, external costs, media management, shipping — even down to managing bandwidth using new visual bandwidth calendars.

And for PBS, it meant using BMS to integrate a brand new channel altogether.

That’s what PBS faced this summer when it kicked off efforts to launch a new 24/7 PBS KIDS channel. This new service will air on more than 100 PBS stations via TV and live streaming by the end of 2017.

Preparations to coordinate programming and scheduling within the network’s existing infrastructure began months in advance of the launch, with PBS enlisting the ProTrack broadcast management system from Myers to download schedule and program metadata directly into PBS’s existing scheduling environment.

According to Crist Myers, president and CEO of Myers, this allowed the stations to focus resources on other important aspects of the project, like taking advantage of localization opportunities prior to playout.

With ProTrack, PBS can centralize content metadata in a comprehensive database, Myers said. By standardizing metadata and its usage, media facilities can streamline distribution workflows and improve operational transparency.

Like the majority of today’s BMS systems, it supports a variety of distribution types, workflows and formats, can be expanded via add-on modules that extend ProTrack's capabilities.

Broadcasters are also pressed to contend with scheduling for multiple outlets. That was a priority for SintecMedia during the development of its traffic and revenue management products—including OnAir, IBMS and Broadway—which are designed to manage traffic and sales operations across properties and media platforms with a single system.

Broadcasters like Fox, however, are bundling features beyond just simple traffic and billing. “OnBoard can allow [Fox] to package and sell audiences, as well as our basic content, more effectively and efficiently,” said Dan Callahan, vice president of programmatic sales.

For other broadcasters, the priority is to install business management systems that can tie together all inventory into a single transparent portal. OnAir helped NBC bring together all of its broadcast and cable inventory tech stacks, which helped the Peacock Network operate more on a portfolio level, said Sheelpa Patel, senior vice president of sales solutions for NBC Universal. “[This] allows us to be able to look at all of our inventory across the portfolio in one single solution,” she said.

This type of control allows NBC to enable emerging sales strategies as well as help enable new operational efficiencies, she added.