BROOKLYN, N.Y.—For over 45 years, arts and media organization BRIC Brooklyn has shaped the borough’s cultural landscape across visual arts, performance, media and civic engagement. Our public media center and arts spaces are complemented by Brooklyn Free Speech, a public-access platform, and BRIC-TV, a community TV channel and digital network. As one of the nation’s largest community media centers, we support hundreds of local creators who submit weekly programming, expanding access to cultural content.
Given our high volume of local programming contributions, we found that our traditional playout system could no longer keep pace with our organization’s growth.
The Hypercaster
In 2024, we left our top-name legacy broadcast equipment behind, with its opex and training needs, and replaced it with TelVue’s HyperCaster AIO (All-in-One) playback server and cloud services Connect and CloudCast for contribution, transcoding, scheduling and automation.
TelVue’s new system offered more flexibility, scalability and cost efficiencies, but most importantly, significant time-saving workflow adaptations and improvements. The upgrade delivered greater efficiency and eliminated a complex workflow in which our producers emailed download links and staff manually downloaded, sorted, transcoded and reuploaded files for scheduling. Any missing files had to be reimported from storage for playout.
TelVue Connect now handles submissions through a cloud portal, giving producers individual moderated access to login, drag-and-drop programs directly into BRIC’s cloud media library and tag the metadata. Connect automatically transcodes files to consistent, broadcast-ready presets, while staff members moderate submissions and control delivery to the HyperCaster, including series scheduling.
With over 100 active content contributors sending BRIC hundreds of video files each week, TelVue’s dynamic, seamless cloud-based workflow for contribution, approval, delivery and scheduling files for playout has been a huge timesaver for the organization’s team, as well as their contributors, freeing them up for more creative work.
Rhonda Alexander, producer of “Tomorrow’s World,” said, “As one of the first producers to use this TelVue Connect system, it has made it so easy to upload our programs and track what we’ve released and what’s upcoming.”
We recently expanded our Connect licenses to encourage and enlist program submissions from more community members. TelVue supports our goals of streamlining submissions and future-proofing distribution across platforms. Our content will soon reach viewers on Apple, Android and Roku, and this shift allows us to curate more cohesive programming on our channel with content themes and create richer interstitials, rather than spending hours managing file logistics.
Over the next two years, more than 400 contributors will move to Connect for a YouTube-like submission experience. TelVue has helped us reimagine how channels operate through transcoding and easing scheduling, and allowing staff to focus on curation and the overall viewer experience.
We’re also excited to use TelVue’s paywall options and AI tools for summarization and indexing to improve discoverability.
Branded OTT
Our operational shift reflects the broadcast industry’s transition to cloud-driven contribution, automated scheduling and multiplatform distribution, and TelVue enables our organization to onboard producers easily, eliminate bottlenecks, and publish across cable, OTT, mobile and social media from a single platform.
TelVue provides a full broadcast ecosystem, simplifying high-volume submissions and optimizing scheduling and playout through its HyperCaster platform with integrated graphics and multi-streaming. TelVue also helped us launch branded OTT and mobile apps, giving audiences access to live channels and on-demand content with search.
By leveraging innovative broadcast and cloud technology solutions like TelVue’s, we can continue to build on our legacy of supporting local artistic and creative communities in their efforts to drive positive social change through digital media platforms and more.
More information is available at https://telvue.com.
