WESTFIELD, Mass.—Colorado Public Television (KBDI), the PBS member TV station that serves Denver, has chosen Myers’ ProTrack broadcast management platform as part of a station-wide technology update.

ProTrack will serve as the primary system within KBDI’s broadcast operations, helping to manage content from acquisition to playout to long-term storage with the ability to handle things like scheduling, monetization and trafficking all media distribution activities.

According to Myers, KBDI has had previous experience with the ProTrack system. This latest version, though, features a new web-based sales environment for the automation of sales workflows to help monetize broadcast assets. KBDI is also expected to integrate ProTrack into its automation system.

Sally Wicks, director of content management for KBDI, says that the ProTrack system will help the station be more efficient in its sales efforts, as well as more agile in its entire operational workflow.

More information is available at www.myersinfosys.com.

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.

BOWLING GREEN, OHIO—As the technical services director for WBGU-TV—a PBS television station serving northwest/west central Ohio—my top priority is to manage technical support for WBGU-TV’s broadcast television, video streaming, web and IT systems.

Tom Cummings using the OASYS system at WBGU-TV.

A huge part of this responsibility is determining the specifications for every system we install as well as setting expectations for vendor support services.

Several years ago we realized that our broadcast automation system had reached “end-of-life,” according to the manufacturer. The pressure was suddenly on to find a new solution that would automate playout of our three channels.

We had two non-negotiable criteria: budget and simplicity. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the 18 years I’ve been at WBGU-TV, it’s not easy to keep it simple.

ALL-ENCOMPASSING
We needed a solution that would encompass everything—automation, playout and graphics—in the same system to simplify our set up. Continuity was also an issue as we had some old assets and could not justify the cost of file transcoding. It was also imperative the new system integrate seamlessly with our Myers Protrack traffic system.

There were quite a few potential providers, but no vendor could deliver all of our criteria on one software-based platform. It was only when we started talking to BroadStream about the OASYS integrated playout system that we knew we’d found “the one.”

It fit our budget, simplified workflow, addressed peripheral issues with traffic and legacy files, and alleviated concerns about future expansion. BroadStream also revealed a clear roadmap that gave us even more confidence to invest.

Our OASYS system manages two ingest and two playout channels, with on-board graphics and its Multi-Channel Web Client. The system also interfaces with Myers Protrack Traffic Import, our Sierra Aspen router and Sage EAS system. OASYS also provides graphics and audio ducking for the EAS system to update our presentation for emergency alert notifications for the region.

CUSTOMER COMMUNICATION
On-boarding was smooth and I was impressed with how quickly the BroadStream team responded. I received phone calls from their support team the day after we submitted the purchase order to answer questions related to our installation. All of the details were documented and an open line of communication was established. BroadStream’s pre-and post-sale planning and communication have set a new standard in customer communications for us.

Installation was very straightforward and took just two days to fit and commission and the training that followed was very well organized. No one enjoys upheaval, especially after having used our previous system for 13 years, but the transition proved to be much easier than we expected; and of course, everything on one platform makes playout much simpler to operate. We also love the way BroadStream provides support. When we have a problem we use the Collector App, which cleverly gathers all of the system information needed. It saves time by avoiding the need to log in remotely and analyze the system when it’s live. OASYS met all of our requirements and the BroadStream team maintained open communication and delivered everything quickly, on time and as planned, which rarely happens with complex systems. We’re incredibly happy with the system. I’d recommend it to any station.

Tom Cummings is the technical services director for WBGU-TV, a PBS television station serving northwest Ohio. He and his staff support all aspects of technical support for broadcast television, video streaming, Web and IT. He can be reached at ctom@bgsu.eduor 419-372-7835.

For more information, visitwww.broadstream.comor call 404-327-8300.