NEW YORK CITY—Community Media of Staten Island (CMSI) has acquired a new system from tech provider Cablecast Community Media, a division of Tightrope Media Systems, that delivers live and on-demand streaming to viewers.

Four new streaming channels went live Sept. 7 as part of a rebranding CMSI that began in April when it changed its name from Staten Island Community Television. The term “television” in the previous name was antiquated because the public is moving to streaming platforms, said CMSI executive director Jennifer Sammartino. 

“We changed our name to keep up with these trends,” she said. “So many people were missing out because they’re not using cable anymore.

“Even some of our producers couldn’t see their finished product. I knew this was something we needed to do. Being able to have this bigger goal in mind has really helped the pieces come together.”

CMSI has deployed four Cablecast VIO Lite OMNI video servers, Cablecast CG bulletin board and a branded streaming app, which works with Cablecast REFLECT to provide viewers with access to live and on-demand content from the cloud, Cablecast said.

Available in the App Store and Google Play, the free Community Media of Staten Island app supports iOS, Android, Apple TV, Roku and Amazon Fire TV platforms, it said. 

CMSI fine tuned its streaming presence and made sure the app’s interface was easy-to-use during a soft launch over the summer. In September, the app went live.  

“We wanted to take it to the next level and literally put CMSI in people’s hands,” said Sammartino, who added the app has been warmly received. “The streaming app is really a game changer for us.” 

CMSI offers four channels, including a talk show-oriented, local entertainment, religious and civic government channel. They are available live and on-demand via the app. They also can be accessed via the CMSI website.

Besides the streaming launch, CMSI has deployed the Cablecast CG to offer viewers a community bulletin board for the first time. 

Scheduling through Cablecast also has increased flexibility, enabling automatic gap filling between shows and other content with PSAs. The Cablecast system also has improved the on-air look of its cable channels, while streaming content allows viewers to see CMSI programming in HD. (Spectrum’s and Verizon’s cable systems only provide SD channels).

More information is available on the company’s website. 

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.—Cablecast Community Media has announced that KMH Integration has completed a turnkey systems design and installation project for Queens Public Television (QPTV), a non-profit community media center and public access TV network serving the residents of Queens, New York. 

The project included a complete redesign of QPTV’s automation workflow, with Cablecast solutions supporting all ingest, scheduling and playout operations for six public access channels on three cable systems.

KMH Integration has a long-standing relationship with QPTV, beginning with a master control design and buildout project in the early 2010s. For the new upgrade, they were hired to evaluate how QPTV could upgrade their operations to simplify their technical infrastructure and workflow while providing an infrastructure for extending QPTV’s audience reach through streaming and platforms.  

For the project, KMH built an entirely new 12G-ready SDI infrastructure, upgrading and connecting several production facilities and studios, and centralizing all automation workflow functions to Cablecast. KMH also deployed an NDI infrastructure for content delivery.

“For a long time, we have combined automation systems with media and workflow products from many different manufacturers,” said Daniel Leone, president and CEO of Queens Public Communications Corporation. “Upgrading our system was a challenge due to frequent backward compatibility and interoperability issues. We also couldn’t easily share QPTV content on our social media feeds. By switching to a single-vendor solution, we can streamline our entire workflow and achieve greater harmony. With Cablecast, we now have access to the hardware and software tools we need to enhance our internet presence and explore new business models.”

In addition to installing multiple Cablecast VIO 4 and VIO 4+ multichannel video servers to handle scheduling, content management and cross-platform publishing, KMH Integration installed six Cablecast LIVE servers to stream QPTV’s channels online, and a Cablecast VOD server to support QPTV’s on-demand content library. QPTV will also use branded Cablecast Streaming Apps for OTT and mobile delivery of all six channels, and KMH will use Cablecast REFLECT for live and VOD streaming content delivery.

The KMH team also installed five Cablecast CG Bulletin Board systems, which allows more than 260 non-profit organizations affiliated with QPTV to upload digital signage content for broadcast. Cablecast also created six custom CG channels to deliver bulletin board content branded for each of their channels.

“The Cablecast CG Bulletin Board system makes it very simple for us to authorize user-uploaded content for broadcast on our six channels,” said Leone. “Once we create the templates, users can log in from anywhere and quickly add their content. It removes our in-house responsibility for script writing and all of the coordination legwork. We also have plans to leverage this same technology for digital signage in our front window and elsewhere in our building, which gives an opportunity to highlight the community and potentially monetize our content through advertising.”

Kevin Henneman, principal and director of engineering of KMH Integration added that his team architected the Cablecast solution to be fully redundant. 

“Every primary baseband ingest and playout channel is backed up by a redundant system, and we built out an 8x8 Cablecast infrastructure to allow for future expansion,” he said. “QPTV will also have the capacity to feed up to eight endpoints for digital signage, expand access to their VOD content library, and use branded Cablecast Streaming Apps to reach live viewers on mobile and OTT platforms. We installed a 10Gb fiber backbone and upgraded the entire network to support high-speed media transfers between all floors in the building for their production, broadcast, and streaming workflows using NDI, DANTE and SRT. It is a very useful and productive solution with a fair price point. It also establishes a strong foundation for QPTV’s media operations and future growth that will integrate well with community producers as they embrace emerging production models.”

Cablecast Community Media, KMH Integration and Queens Public Television will demonstrate and discuss QPTV’s reimagined workflows at the Alliance for Community Media 2023 Annual Conference, which takes place June 27-29 at BRIC Media Arts in Brooklyn, New York.

MINNEAPOLIS—Tightrope Media Systems, the developers of the Cablecast Community Media station automation, playout, and publishing platform, have announced that they will be relaunching the PEGMedia.org local access television media exchange site during the week of June 27. 

The relaunch will include an overhauled user interface and will make it easier for channel programmers and producers to find and upload compelling content, Tightrope said. 

Tightrope will showcase the new PEGMedia.org at the Alliance for Community Media (ACM) 2022 Annual Conference from June 28 to 30 in Chicago.

PEGMedia.org is a content sharing site for the PEG (Public, Educational, and Government) television community. Founded in 2007 by Robert Nichols to allow stations in his home state of Maine to exchange content, it quickly expanded to serve stations and content producers across the United States. Tightrope took over operation and development of PEGMedia.org in 2021.

PEG stations and independent producers who wish to air their content anywhere in the country can upload programming to PEGMedia.org. Participating stations can then download and air the shows locally on their channels. Programs can be uploaded for free, while nominal download fees – less than $1 per show – cover only the costs of site bandwidth and storage. 

While Tightrope offers its own Cablecast automation and playout platform, PEGMedia.org is available to all community broadcasters regardless of which hardware and software solutions they are using.

“Community media organizations need reliable, ongoing sources of content to keep their channels fresh and engaging for their audiences,” said Steve Israelsky, president, Cablecast Community Media. “There is a broad range of high-quality content out there that has relevance and interest beyond the local area that it was created in, and PEGMedia.org provides the opportunity to bring it to other regions. We want to make it as easy and inexpensive as possible to exchange content not only for our Cablecast customers, but for the entire PEG community at large. We’re pleased to enhance this service with these significant updates.”

The completely redesigned user interface replaces the text-heavy design of the original offering and provides an intuitive, graphical, thumbnail-driven dashboard while eliminating time-consuming manual steps, the company said. 

Stations can easily see collections of the most recent uploads; the most popular programs; and shows or episodes specifically relevant to their state. Users can then easily drill down to discover and download other episodes of the same shows.

The new PEGMedia.org also makes it faster and simpler for stations and content producers to contribute their content. The site’s new cloud-based ingest pipeline combines with automated background processing to maximize efficiency and enable seamless scalability as the site grows, Tightrope said. 

PEGMedia.org’s discussion forums have also been enhanced to better facilitate collaboration between the site’s users and sharing of ideas about PEG content.

“Over a thousand stations and programmers are participating on PEGMedia.org, and with the relaunch making it even easier for users to find and submit content, that footprint will continue to grow,” added Israelsky. “Uploading content is free and is a great way for stations and producers to gain recognition for their work, grow their audience, expand their reach, and help strengthen the industry. We encourage the entire PEG community to upload content that is of value to stations across the country.”

The new PEGMedia.org site is slated to go live the week of June 27. 

Interested producers and stations can sign up to be notified of its availability at https://go.cablecast.tv/pegmedia-launch.

MINNEAPOLIS—Tightrope Media Systems has upgraded its Cablecast Community Media broadcast automation, playout, and content publishing platform that adds greater flexibility and efficiency in how PEG broadcasters store and distribute media content. The new Smart Asset Manager (SAM) feature automates content archiving, backup, and retrieval to simplify video server storage management, while the new Cablecast REFLECT+ delivery service combines the robust delivery benefits of the Cablecast REFLECT CDN with the ability to store all VOD content in the cloud.

Tightrope will highlight SAM, Cablecast REFLECT+, and other Cablecast advances in suite 739 at the Renaissance Las Vegas Hotel during the 2022 NAB Show, April 24-27.

Tightly integrated into the Cablecast automation software, SAM intelligently moves or copies content between the video server and alternative storage locations such as a SAN (storage area network), NAS (network attached storage) or cloud storage. Rules-based archiving automatically moves content to archive storage if it is not scheduled to be used within a user-specified number of days, while SAM’s rules-based backup feature copies media files to a designated file store for safekeeping. Users can also manually trigger the archiving of an individual show. Automatic archive retrieval brings assets back onto the playout server when they are needed based on the program schedule, minimizing user effort and helping avoid errors related to missing media.

“Community media organizations’ content libraries eventually grow beyond their video server’s storage capacity, but manually moving content off and back onto the server is time-consuming and labor-intensive,” said Steve Israelsky, President, Cablecast Community Media. “Smart Asset Manager is designed to make archiving and retrieving content painless, flexible, and efficient.”

While Tightrope’s original Cablecast REFLECT delivery service automatically caches content in the cloud when it is first requested from the on-premises VOD server, the new Cablecast REFLECT+ allows users to easily push some or all of their media into cloud storage even before it is first accessed. Customers can use as little or as much cloud storage as they want, with user-configurable rules—for example, all shows from the past month, or all council meetings and high school sports from the current year—automatically pushing matching VOD content to the cloud. A web-based dashboard allows administrators to monitor cloud storage usage.

“Customers love Cablecast REFLECT’s ability to reliably and cost-effectively deliver live streams and VOD content with rich metadata to audiences of any size through Cablecast’s turnkey web pages, OTT and mobile apps. However, some organizations want to further isolate their media delivery away from their own network,” said Israelsky. “Cablecast REFLECT+ provides all of this same powerful functionality and adds the scalability and flexibility of cloud storage while keeping everything outside the local network.”

Cablecast REFLECT+ is offered as an optional service with pricing based on tiered storage capacities. The original Cablecast REFLECT service continues to be available for media organizations who want the scalable delivery advantages of the REFLECT CDN but prefer the economics of on-premises storage.

The Smart Asset Manager is a standard feature of v7.5 of the Cablecast software, slated for release by the end of April. The upgrade to v7.5 is free for Cablecast FLEX and Cablecast VIO customers on active software assurance agreements. The optional Cablecast REFLECT+ service also requires the Cablecast 7.5 software.

MINNEAPOLIS—When opting to replace its old automation and playout system, Michigan’s Orion Neighborhood Television (ONTV) chose the Cablecast Community Media platform from Tightrope Media Systems. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the upgrade allowed the station to deliver timely content to its community faster and more efficiently.

ONTV’s legacy system was failing and the station was looking to move on from its franchise fee funding model, according to Executive Director Ian Locke. With Cablecast, Locke said ONTV was interested in its scheduling tools and ability to incorporate short-form promos on channels and bulletin boards that would help enable new funding models. “It checked all the boxes,” Locke said.

Cablecast’s Auto-Schedule feature automatically produces recurring time slots, which ONTV uses to easily update its education channel, according to Locke. The system’s multiformat playback capabilities also eliminate the need to transcode incoming clips, offering native playback and the ability to play video captured at non-broadcast frame rates. Integrated online publishing workflows from Cablecast have helped ONTV’s mobile and web offerings.

In addition, ONTV is using Tightrope’s cloud-based Screenweave OTT service to automatically bring live streams and VOD content to the Roku OTT platform.

“I had worked with our previous vendor’s system for over 20 years, and moving to Cablecast was refreshing,” summarized Locke. “It frees our time to work on other things and has the flexibility to adapt with us as our needs evolve. We feel comfortable that our future is in good hands with Tightrope and Cablecast.” 

For more information, visit www.cablecast.tv.  

MINNEAPOLIS—Nā Leo TV (NLTV), a PEG station serving Hawaii, recently switched to Tightrope Media Systems’ Cablecast Community Media platform to help streamline its operations, including scheduling and remote access.

NLTV uses Cablecast Live and Cablecast Pro VOD solutions to publish its live channels and on-demand content to its website and mobile offerings. The station also relies on Cablecast’s intuitive interface for scheduling and playout purposes.

During a 2018 volcanic eruption, NLTV was able to use Cablecast CG’s Carousel bulletin board software, which displayed press releases from the Civil Defense Agency, as well as audio and daily updates from U.S.G.S volcanologists, to provide emergency updates.

During the pandemic, Cablecast’s remote access capabilities enabled staff to handle scheduling of both recorded and live broadcasts.

NLTV recently added the Enco enCaption system, which provides automated closed captioning for the Cablecast channels. There are also plans to integrate information like school closures and storm watch notices into its channels in the future.

“Cablecast has been a very dependable solution for us at a reasonable price, and makes it very easy to manage our programming,” said William Maffit, IT manager at NLTV. “It has been very good for our operations and helped us be even more valuable to our community.”

MINNEAPOLIS—North Penn Television is the educational access channel for the North Penn School District in the Philadelphia suburb of Montgomery County. To help students continue to get school-related content during the pandemic, NPTV relied on Tightrope Media Systems’ CableCast Community Media platform and Screenweave LIVE cloud-based service.

The Cablecast platform had been part of NPTV’s infrastructure before the pandemic, helping the student-run station cover school meetings, sports and concerts, including daily morning and a monthly newscast to the larger community.

In April, after schools were closed due to lockdowns, NPTV began using Screenweave LIVE, which enabled student broadcasters to continue reporting the news from their homes by adding live Zoom web conferencing feeds to the Cablecast system.

“We continued doing a full live television show each Friday with our high school students in their homes, me managing it from my living room, and pushing it out on YouTube, Facebook and our Comcast and Verizon channels,” said Bob Gillmer, North Penn School District’s coordinator of communications media. “It also lets us bring our virtual school board meetings into our channel live, across all our platforms.”

Gillmer also praised the ability to access Cablecast remotely through a browser-based interface, as well as the remote upload feature.

Even when things return to normal with students back in classrooms, Gillmer says that they will continue to utilize Cablecast and Screenweave LIVE as part of its broadcast infrastructure.

MINNEAPOLIS—Tightrope Media Systems has debuted the latest version of the Cablecast Community Media platform, v7.2. The new software for the broadcast automation, playout and content publishing platform offers support for NDI, as well as new clip trimming and metadata tagging capabilities.

With the v7.2 software, Cablecast can ingest NDI streams from NDI-enabled systems from anywhere on the network, Tightrope explains. This expands Cablecast’s flexible support for bringing live, network-based input sources into the platform for recording or broadcasting without an external decoder.

The Cablecast platform’s IP support has been further optimized with this update to directly encode network streams or files for subsequent playout without typing up a baseband recording channel on the server, per Tightrope.

The platform’s new virtual clip editing features enable users to cut out non-essential sections of a recorded program without needing a second editing system or creating multiple versions of the file. This includes the File Trimming and File Linking functions, which allow operators to mark in and out points within the recording to define sections. The new linking feature also enables a single shared file to be incorporated into multiple shows in the scheduler.

Taking it a step further, a feature of v7.2 allows users to skip recording entire sections by pausing and resuming recording during specified periods.

Another feature is an updated Tags field that allows multiple defined values in a single field.

Cablecast v7.2  is available for users of Cablecast VIO and Cablecast Flex media servers, and is free for Cablecast customers on active support agreements.

For more information, visit www.cablecast.tv.  

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.—Providing its community with government coverage, informative programming and hyper-local news, Greater Northshire Access Television (GNAT-TV) in Vermont has taken advantage of new Cablecast Community Media enhancements to enable remote operational models during the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to its work publishing content across different outlets.

With stay-at-home orders forcing the GNAT-TV team to adapt to remote production, the Cablecast remote file upload feature has been a key tool. This enables users to copy file-based content onto their Cablecast server and associate metadata with it from anywhere with an internet connection. The station also uses Cablecast’s live IP input feature to bring real-time YouTube streams from the governor’s thrice-weekly press conferences into their channel, while also recording them for future playback.

Another new way that GNAT-TV is using Cablecast is with its full-featured development API, which the station used to integrate Cablecast’s automated VOD publishing capabilities with its WordPress-powered website.

It has also been using the Cablecast VOD chapter marker feature to create more online viewing experiences and to advance the goals of its hyper-local news programming, “The News Project.” Then, with Cablecast’s Screenweave OTT Pro option, GNAT-TV has been able to offer its live and VOD content to OTT viewers through its own, custom-branded Apple TV app and Roku channel.

For more information, visit www.cablecast.tv.  

MINNEAPOLIS & SOUTHFIELD, Mich.—Tightrope Media Systems and Enco Systems have agreed to a strategic partnership that is designed to help community media organizations incorporate automated closed captioning into their broadcast, online and OTT workflows.

With the new partnership, Enco’s enCaption automated captioning platform is being made available to Tightrope’s Cablecast Community Media customers at a special price. The Cablecast customer service team will also offer support for integrated Cablecast and enCaption workflows. Tightrope and Enco are expected to continue to explore other opportunities for technical integration between the two products.

Cablecast is designed to help community media organizations reach audiences across cable television channels and OTT services. With integrated enCaption technology, users will be able to add closed or open captions to live and pre-recorded content in near-real-time, according to the companies.

“[B]y partnering with Enco to offer this proven combination, we can save community media centers the time and effort of separately researching, purchasing and implementing a captioning solution,” said Steve Israelsky, president, Cablecast Community Media.

The enCaption platform, which uses AI technology for things like word recognition and spelling precision, has already been a popular service among community media organizations, like North Penn Television in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

For more information, visit www.cablecast.tv or www.enco.com.  

MINNEAPOLIS & PELHAM, N.Y.—Tightrope Media Systems has announced a new partnership with the digital platform Burbio that will integrate Tightrope’s Cablecast Community Media platform with Burbio’s zip-code level event database to automatically update calendar information on broadcast and online bulletin boards.

Cablecast is a broadcast automation, playout and streaming platform that allows users to reach both traditional and cord-cutting audiences. With the combination of Burbio services, media centers can now easily update hyper-local community event information, including from school districts, governments, libraries, nonprofits, businesses and sports leagues. Users can set their own specifications within the Cablecast CG and Carousel user interface on what Burbio sources to draw from, and how long they appear in the bulletin.

Tightrope reports that the Massachusetts-based Billerica Access Television station is among the first media centers to implement the Cablecast-Burbio combination.

Both Tightrope and Burbio will highlight the technology at the 2020 NAB Show in Las Vegas from April 18-22. Tightrope will do so from Hospitality Suite 739 at the Renaissance Las Vegas Hotel, while Burbio will exhibit as part of the Sprockit startup hub in the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

For more information, visit www.cablecast.tv.  

MINNEAPOLIS—Tightrope Media Systems has upgraded the software for its Cablecast Community Media broadcast automation, playout and content publishing platform, officially announcing Cablecast version 7.1.

The Cablecast 7.1 update adds expanded IP input and closed captioning functionality, as well as SSL (Secure Socket Layer) support for securing web content portals. V7.1 also provides many features of Cablecast’s seventh-generation software to users of earlier Cablecast Flex servers after previously only being available on new Cablecast VIO video servers.

With its new support for sidecar caption files, Cablecast 7.1 can add closed captions to individual programs or complete libraries of existing file-based content. When media files are sent out for captioning, they return as editable sidecar files in MCC or SCC formats. The files can then be applied to corresponding media in Cablecast.

The SSL support in v7.1 comes through Let’s Encrypt, a free open certificate authority from the Internet Security Research Group, for conforming to today’s web security standards. With SSL, content portals powered by Cablecast’s “public site” web publishing templates can be securely browsed and can promote secure embed codes and streaming links for distribution.

An expanded IP input and file format support is also offered in Cablecast 7.1 that works with both Cablecast VIO an Cablecast Flex systems. Live, H.264-encoded RTP, RTMP or HLS streams can be brought directly into the system for recording or broadcast without an external decoder. Programs can also be recorded with H.264 compression, while broader codec compatibility—including VP8 and Theora—can be played out without transcoding.

For Cablecast Flex operators, they now have access to the new, broadcast-optimized Cablecast CB bulletin board software directly within the Cablecast user interface. 

Cablecast’s live channel branding capabilities are also integrated directly into v7.1’s browser-based user interface. Live branding also has greater control over individual elements and attributes, as well as having a new media file upload feature.

In addition, v7.1 has a confidence monitoring feature for Cablecast Flex and Cablecast VIO customers to see live video previews of each output within the web-based user interface.

This latest version of Cablecast Community Media’s software will be shown during the 2020 NAB Show, April 18-22 in Las Vegas, at the Renaissance Las Vegas Hotel.

MINNEAPOLIS—Tightrope Media Systems is rolling out its new Cablecast VIO series, the latest version of its multi-format video servers from the Cablecast Community Media platform. With VIO, Tightrope has consolidated more of the platform’s functionality into a single hardware unit while also offering broader live and file-based native format support.

VIO is designed for station automation, playout, branding and multi-platform content distribution. Through a web-based interface, users can control content scheduling, publishing and playout from any device. Further integration includes enabling more software options to run through the single server, including the ability to run multiple instances of bulletin board software Cablecast CG, allowing for the operation of community bulletin boards on the same server handling scheduling, automation and playout.

On the hardware side, Cablecast VIO delivers increased channel density. For instance, the Cablecast VIO 4 Plus model provides six SDI interfaces that can be configured as four outputs with two recording channels, or three inputs and three outputs. This versatility is advantageous for PEG stations, according to Steve Israelsky, president, Cablecast Community Media.

The VIO series’ baseband I/O features support for live, IP-based inputs. With Cablecast’s RTP stream input, VIO can ingest live, H.264-encoded RTP, RTMP or HLS streams without needing an external decoder or consuming an SDI interface, allowing for the playing of live feeds or pulling from sources like YouTube or Facebook Live.

The new platforms also expand Cablecast’s multi-format playout capabilities. VP8 and Theora now combine with support for non-broadcast-standard frame rates for use of internet-originated content. VIO also adds H.264 encoding for channel recording.

In addition to the Cablecast VIO 4 Plus model, other iterations of the VIO line include VIO Lite with 8TB of storage and two SDI interfaces; the VIO 2 with 10-40TB of storage; and the VIO 4, which has four SDI channels that be configured as outputs or inputs. All of these models have the latest version of Cablecast Broadcast Automation software and an option for Cablecast CG. There is a VIO CG model with dedicated bulletin board applications, but does not have automation and playout features.

LAS VEGAS—Taking residency outside of the Las Vegas Convention Center exhibit floors, Tightrope Media Systems is preparing a sneak preview of a new feature to its Cablecast Community Media platform for NAB Show attendees. The latest update of Cablecast, version 6.7, provides turnkey VOD and live streaming publishing for the web and OTT to customers, including schools and local governments. These new publishing workflows allow users to maintain control of how their content is presented.

Cablecast 6.7 features a new digital file uploader that enables content managers to copy media files onto their server from anywhere. Users can now add metadata information at the same time they submit content files through a single, unified interface page. There is also a new thumbnail selection feature that lets users scrub through video clips to select a promotional image for program schedules on public website and VOD libraries.

Cablecast’s online and OTT content presentations do not insert unwanted advertising in front of producers’ videos, nor suggest third-party content to viewers, per Tightrope.

Tightrope is slating a May release for this latest version of the Cablecast and its new standalone VOD publishing functionality. To see a demo of the system, NAB show attendees can schedule a visit for Tightrope’s suite at the Renaissance Las Vegas Hotel (Hospitality Suite 739).

The 2019 NAB Show runs from April 6-11, to register for the NAB Show, visit www.nabshow.com.

MINNEAPOLIS—When the Miami Valley Communications Council sought to enhance the quality of its online offerings, the group of cities in the Ohio region chose to go with Tightrope Media Systems’ Cablecast Community Media Platform to upgrade its master control and playout infrastructure for HD.

MVCC is limited to broadcasting in SD for cable distribution of its four PEG channels, but it sought to use the Cablecast system to provide HD quality for online VOD and live streams.

The configuration for MVCC’s updated system is made up of the Cablecast Broadcast Automation software and two quad-channel Cablecast Flex 4 playout servers. The system provides one recording input and one playout pathway for each of the council’s four cable channels. A Cablecast Pro VOD server automatically creates on-demand clips of the station’s programs, which can then be delivered through the cloud-based Cablecast Reflect service. In addition, four Tightrope Carousel systems drive independent bulletin boards on each channel. The new installation was launched in September 2018.

Beyond the system’s capabilities, MVCC staffers praise the ease of use and how the workflow simplifies their process.

MVCC has plans to add Cablecast Live systems for HD live streaming, while updating the video content area of their website with Cablecast’s “public site” publishing tools.

 MINNEAPOLIS-- Tightrope Media Systems recently introduced v6.5 of its Cablecast Community Media platform, with a new content analytics feature designed to help PEG broadcasters improve viewers online experiences.

The new v6.5 integrates Google Analytics with websites built on Cablecast’s “public site” web publishing tools and delivers data -- including site traffic and trends, visitor location and page views -- to customers. The platform also includes new adaptive bitrate options for VOD which allow viewers to publish and distribute on-demand content from the Cablecast Reflect cloud-based delivery service and the Cablecast Pro VOD system.

“While some of this data was already available to users through the Cablecast interface, the new Google Analytics integration and VOD reporting capabilities help customers aggregate, analyze and view the metrics in more comprehensive and convenient ways,” said Steve Israelsky, president of Cablecast Community Media. “The improved measurement and analysis help community broadcasters better understand their audiences, enabling them to develop more successful online engagement strategies.”

The Cablecast 6.5 upgrade is scheduled for release in early October, and will be free for Cablecast customers on active support agreements.