FROM NEWS TO OPERATIONS TO TECHNOLOGY

The small fraternity of chief technologists at major TV station groups received a new member last week when NBC Universal TV Stations appointed Matthew Braatz its new senior vice president, technology and operations.

Braatz reports to John Wallace, the newly appointed president of the NBC stations, and succeeds Ken Wilkey in a bit of tech reorganization at NBC Universal.

Wilkey had been responsible for the NBC stations as well as the Telemundo stations. In the shuffle, Wilkey gave up the NBC stations, but retained his SVP rank and is now overseer of Telemundo’s network operations.

Unlike many of his peers, who built their careers on video distribution and RF, Braatz is a production guy. After graduating from Boston University in 1990, he started not as a back-office tech, but as a news photographer, at Belo’s KHOU Houston.

It was only later, after Belo sent him to its Washington bureau in the mid-1990s, did he move out of news as he helped to expand the bureau. “That’s where I began getting into the technology side,” he says.

And it was as a news operations manager that he made the jump to NewYork and NBC’s flagship WNBC in 1997. For the next eight years, he worked at the station, rising to VP, technology and operations.

In 2005, he joined the station group as a VP for the Northeast Region, responsible for the stations in New York, Washington, Hartford and Philadelphia

In his new role, Braatz will oversee engineering, IT and operations at all 10 NBC O&Os, which range in size from WNBC in the largest TV market to WVIT Hartford-New Haven, Conn., the 29^th largest market.

Last year, NBC sold four smaller market stations to Media General.

The NBC stations are known in tech circles for having embraced centralcasting, running master control of all of its stations out of hubs in New York, Miami and LosAngeles.

But, under the current NBC organization, the hubs do not fall within Braatz’s sphere. They are the responsibility of Media Distribution Services, the same folks that distribute NBCU’s many broadcast and cable networks to TV affiliates and cable headends.

Braatz is a fan of centralcasting. “It’s been very successful,” he says. “We’ve got the stations running great on it.”

And, he says, he will be coordinating his efforts closely with the hub group.

Going into the new job, Braatz says that he focused on making sure that the output of all the stations produce can be distributed on multiple platforms—broadcast, Web, mobile, whatever.

“That’s really what our automation focus is on,” he says. “And we’re always looking at our field operations in ENG and what is the best work flow not just to feed broadcasts, but to feed all the platforms that we distribute to."

Braatz says he will also be pushing ahead with local HD news production. Right now, only two stations are HD, New York and Dallas, but a third will soon make the switch.

Braatz declines to identify the station. “It’s a competitive world still and you want to make sure you’ve got everything right before you go on the air.”

Braatz says he is also working on a local HD roll out plan for the remainder of the NBC stations.

Today, NBC stations use mostly Panasonic DVPRO for ENG acquisition, but, like a lot of other groups, it is contemplating a move to a tapeless, file-based format that can take it into the HD era.

“We’re deep in the evaluation phase right now,” Braatz says.

The transition to digital is a problem for WNBC and all the NewYork stations. They lost their primary tower atop the World Trade Center on 9/11 and they are now crowded onto the Empire State Building.

There is simply not enough space there for a clean switch from analog to digital on Feb. 17, 2009, as the government is demanding.

According to Braatz, WNBC will continue to work for a common solution with the other New York stations through the Metropolitan Television Authority.

Otherwise, Braatz says, the NBC stations are where they should be as the digital countdown continues.

“I’m picking up things in great shape,” he says. “A lot of work’s been done in the last few years to get us ready for this transition and I’m really here just to finish that project.”

Braatz concedes that RF is not his forte. For keeping the stations on the air and over-the-air viewers happy, Braatz says he will rely on Doug Lung, VP of technology.

Another project that will demand his attention is the plan to move KNBC Los Angeles into a shared facility in Universal City with Telemundo’s KVEA, the NBC News Los Angeles bureau and Access Hollywood starting in 2011.

“That’s going to be a very large project,” Braatz says. “The work is at a very preliminary stage at this point so I will be spending a lot of my time working with that team in the coming months and years.”