CENTRALCASTING PAYING OFF FOR LIN TV

Five or six years ago, the hot topic in broadcast tech circles was centralcasting—consolidating master control of several TV stations in one facility to save manpower and cut capital costs.

Despite the benefits, most station groups opted not to pursue it, discouraged by the high cost of the fiber interconnections and concerned about taking local control away from stations.

Among the handful of groups that pressed on with centralcasting was LIN Television. Sixteen of its 29 stations are now served by two hubs in Indianapolis and Springfield, Mass.

In this interview with TVNEWSDAY, LIN chief tech John Viall says centralcasting was clearly the right move. In fact, he says, the group is prepared to grow two additional hubs if his bosses buy more stations in the Southeast or Southwest.

Viall also provides LIN status reports on local HD news, ENG gear, the DTV transition, the Sprint Nextel program, news production automation and mobile TV.

An edited transcript follows:

Let’s start with your hubs. You’ve got two of them, I understand—one in Indianapolis and one in Springfield, Mass. How many stations are involved?

We have 11 stations in Indianapolis and five in Springfield.

Give me a little of their history.

These hubs were constructed about five years ago. They’ve certainly grown. We’ve learned a lot as we’ve moved into it. We all see a lot of discussion about whether hubs are practical or not. It’s a very heavy investment and you want to see a return on that investment.

The big question is whether it’s server-based at the station or do you do a complete central installation. In our case, we feel the central installation is the way to go. The reason for that is that you have a facility where all of your content is coming into one facility. In that way, it can be distributed much more easily than if you were pulling those files in from the individual stations.

We have point-to-point fiber going from our hubs to our stations and each one of those represents a cost. So the great key to the success of your hub is the fiber deal that you strike. Also, you can’t just look at it as a master control operation. We’ve combined numerous services out of the hub. In addition to master control, we have traffic, we have finance, we have non-news promotion.

You’ve been at it for five years and you say it’s a heavy investment. Is it paying off at this point?

It certainly is and not only in manpower. Converting a single station’s master controls to high def is much more easily accomplished from a hub because of the centralization. So there’s a significant hardware savings also.

We can pull a station into a hub in three or four months for well under half a million dollars versus completely rebuilding a master control for a couple million.

Are the hubs fully HD?

No, they’re not. That is in the works. We are preparing for that now so that we can do commercial and program playback in high definition.

You have 29 stations and only 16 stations are hubbed right now. Are you looking to build hubs elsewhere?

We have two what I’ll call mini-hubs in Albuquerque, N.M., and  Mobile, Ala. If we were to expand in the Southwest or Southeast, we would be able to pull those stations into those hubs.

You have duopolies in those two markets. By “mini-hub,” do you mean just two stations?

By mini hubs, I mean that the infrastructure at those two facilities have been constructed to handle more stations than just the two stations we now have there.

Let’s talk about local news production in HD. You have not gone down that road yet. What are your plans?

That’s correct, yes. We have been looking at our capital investment from a studio perspective. It’s quite expensive. When we started talking about DTV, everyone felt that after you got the RF piece of it done, that was it. Obviously, that’s far from the truth.

Each of our stations is preparing for high def, although we have not set a firm commitment to place any on the air. We have one station that’s about 80% constructed.

Do you want to identify that station?

I don’t, no.

I had a feeling you didn’t. Do you feel any great urgency to go HD? It seems that the pace of local HD rollouts has slowed over the past few months.

I certainly have had discussions about this with my counterparts. No, I don’t think anyone wants to say that moving to HD does not provide some benefit. I suppose it does in the sense that you’re first in your market and you’re serving your audience, which we all want to do. But if you’re looking for a return on investment right now, there is none that I’ve heard anyone quantify for me.

Obviously, we all have to be there eventually and equipment needs replacing. Certainly in stations where we feel it’s strategically worth the move, we’ll move ahead much like our counterparts.

Do you have a grand goal—a date by which you want all your newscasts to be HD? Perhaps the transition date?

We do have a goal. I don’t mean to sound mysterious here, but all of our facilities will not be completed by the ’09 conversion date.

What about ENG camcorders, which you’ll need to produce full HD news?

As you know, we’ve been pretty aggressive on the acquisition front over the last several years. As a result of that we have a mix of gear. Now the good news is that the majority of those cameras are 16-by-9 switchable.

Most groups are going with either the Sony’s XDCAM or Panasonic’s P2 for the next generation. What’s your plan?

We’re evaluating both right now.

I think you’re going to see an open platform type camera where you can either do disc-based or memory card-based recording. So I think both parties are going to be going in the same direction. We’ve evaluated both and, quite frankly, I think each one has its own merits.

One of the things that we were talking about the other day is the use of what we’ll call throwaway cameras for high def. Certainly, as you start to look at the development of our Web sites and you start to look at the acquisition of quick high-def local programming, those cameras will have a greater bearing on the operation. There’s a place for them and as well as for the larger HD cameras.

When you say “throwaway,” you’re talking low cost?

I’m talking $9,000 cameras. I hate to call it throwaway. Let’s call them less expensive cameras, OK?

Made by whom? Can you be specific?

JVC makes them. Panasonic makes them. Sony, too.

And the idea is to put more cameras on the street?

Either more cameras on the street, or there could be a place for these cameras in small-market facilities in lieu of the larger cameras.

The $30,000 cameras.

Yes, that’s correct.

You suggested earlier that you have the RF part of DTV transition pretty much in hand.

Yes, we do. We were very aggressive in the beginning of the transition and have numerous facilities ready to go. We’ve purchased additional stations and they need some work. Right now, we in the process of installing three transmitters and we’re closing contracts right now on another.

For most folks, it’s not so much the transmitter as it is the antennas on the towers. How are your towers looking these days?

We’ve been very aggressive in pursuing that promptly, too, so we don’t have any issues from that perspective. If we needed to swap out antennas, we did that in the beginning.

As you’re well aware, Sprint Nextel just asked the FCC for an additional 29 months to complete its ENG microwave upgrade program with broadcasters. Where are you in that process?

We are at the head of the pack. We’ve got all of our contracts signed and we have four or five stations that are receiving equipment right now.

I noticed that LIN has joined the Open Mobile Video Coalition, which is looking at developing in-band mobile TV. What do you see as the potential for that?

Obviously, with DTV we have a chance to provide multiple channels, but no one has really found a solution that monetizes those channels. Mobile is another way to utilize that capacity so we need to be aggressive in determining standards for that type of distribution.

As I understand it, the mobile service can coexist with the HD service in the digital channel. So that’s not a big consideration?

It’s a huge consideration. Looking for the most efficient system where you can transmit secondary channels while using the least amount of bandwidth is of prime importance with all of us. I’ll certainly say that for our group bits are precious in today’s world.

Have you looked at any of the news production automation systems?

Are you talking about things like the [Grass Valley] Ignite System? As a matter of fact, we’re installing one right now. You know, Grass Valley purchased Parker Vision, and we were among the first to install Parker Vision. At one time, we had four Parker Vision stations. We sold one, so we’re down to three. Now, we’re installing an Ignite system at another. We’re very supportive of these systems and we think they make sense.

And where’s the Ignite going in?

In WLUK and Green Bay.

And where are the Parker Visions installations.

Hartford, Conn.; Austin, Texas; and Buffalo, N.Y.

So we’ll see more of these things throughout the group?

Yes. We’re very supportive. We like that type of operation.

Do you see any other new technology that is likely to change the way LIN does business?

We’re a group that likes to do a lot of reading and a lot of research. We like to look at what other people do, but we sort of move on our own. We’ve been very aggressive here as far as the Parker Vision is concerned and duopolies and hubbing and so on. So we’re always trying to plan for the future and what’s the best way to operate most effectively from a quality standpoint and also from a cost perspective.