PAPPAS BRINGS TRANSPARENCY TO BROADCASTING

Broadcasting from a fishbowl. Or, at least that’s how it feels to staffers at Pappas Telecasting’s duopoly in Reno, Nev.

The two stations, KREN (CW) and KAZR-CA (Spanish-language TuVision), operate inside the Meadowood Mall, right across from Bully’s Sports Bar & Grill, with big store-front windows that allow shoppers to peer into the studio, sales offices, newsroom, even master control.

It’s an unusual, if not unique, set up. But what makes the facility special is not just what you can see from the outside on your way to The Body Shop or EyeMasters, it’s what you can’t see—the guts of the operation.

It’s a high-tech, automated facility that deserves a showcase. It not only produces two daylong broadcast schedules, but also HD newscasts in two languages.

And, unlike most of the 60 or so pioneering local HD stations, the Pappas Reno combo is fully HD, capturing video from the field with Sony HD gear. Not bad for DMA 110.

Making sure it all hangs together and works is VP of Engineering Dale Scherbring, a 17-year Pappas veteran who also oversees the group’s other 25 full- and low-power stations from his offices at the CW affiliate in Omaha, Neb., KXVO.

In this interview with TVNEWSDAY, Scherbring talks about what makes Reno tick, first steps toward centralized monitoring and control of the Pappas stations and the renewed emphasis on getting every station ready for Feb. 17, 2009.

An edited transcript follows:

What’s on the inside of your shopping mall TV operation in Reno?

It’s fully automated. Our whole workflow is designed to get everything prepped and correct from the time it’s put on the log so that everything plays back correctly. We want to reduce the human hands that have to touch the video or the information. With the Pathfire metadata, for instance, we can ingest the video into the automation systems so a person does not have to prep the material a second time.

And what kind of hardware and software do you have to make that happen?

Currently, the company has OSI as the traffic system. The automation system is NVerzion and then the playback is using an Omneon video server for shows and spots. We have a Utah Scientific routing switcher and then Vizrt graphics for all the branding and EAS.

Are you into news automation in Reno?

Yes. We’re running automated news using the Ross Video OverDrive.

And what experience have you had with that so far?

We’ve never had a full control room staff since we started from scratch at that station. It’s what everybody in news production has grown up with. When they got hired on, they knew that this is what the station was going to be.

The only trouble we have is when the regular 9-to-5 guy is sick, so to speak. Then it would be nice to have more people cross-trained on it. But that’s just an internal issue that we’re working through right now.

Is Reno the prototype for what you’ll be doing elsewhere?

We’re already built similar systems in Fresno, Omaha and SiouxCity. But, yes, Reno was the prototype.

This is a non-technical question, but do you reap any promotional or sales benefits from being in the mall, a public square like that?

I don’t know that we can definitively peg any benefits to the mall location, just as you can’t peg viewership benefits to a particular billboard, but it’s got to have some impact. Thousands of shoppers are walking by our station every day. If even a few of them decide to sample us as a result, then we’ve benefited.

It also allows them to do “person-on-the-street” interview with ease. They just go right out into the mall to get the feedback. If you think about it, most TV stations are hidden away, so passersby don’t see them. Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes.

Are the stations completely self-sufficient. Is there centralized monitoring and control?

The only thing that’s centralized is our traffic servers. Our traffic servers are centralized in Fresno.

Are there other stations centralized there, too?

Well, in Fresno right now, we have about half of our stations migrated over to the OSI traffic system and most of the other ones are on Encoda. We’ll be transitioning over to OSI because it’s the upgrade path for the old Encoda AS400.

And the idea is that one guy can handle traffic from one location?

Yes, and share formats and maintain the consistent look of our TV stations. We’ve always wanted them consistent so if you go from market to market, you know that’s a Pappas station because that’s the Pappas look.

Did you ever look seriously at centralcasting, pulling master control of several stations into a single hub?

Yes, we’ve looked at that.

What conclusion did you come to?

Well, technically, any of the models could work. It’s the cost of interconnection. It’s that monthly cost for the fiber, especially with high definition, which requires so much bandwidth. So the cost of the bandwidth is really what drives the stake into it. However, we’re putting in the hardware at the stations that would allow us to go in and remotely view it and to make changes from any location in the United States.   

Other than trafficking, what other kind of centralized monitoring or control do you have or do you contemplate?

Right now, all we’re doing is the traffic. But we’re looking to do more of the transmission monitoring, to do more of the actual monitoring of the video wall for alarms signaling the loss of video, loss of audio or frozen video.

How is HD news doing in Reno going?

It’s going very well.

What lessons did you learn in the transition to HD that you would like to share with peers?

I guess the big thing with HD video is it just takes a lot more bandwidth and a lot more processing power in the computers to do the editing and to save the files because the file sizes are a lot bigger. You really have to manage the whole workflow of how much is being saved or you will fill up your video servers very fast.

I guess it’s kind of nice when you’re building a station from scratch because the infrastructure can be wide bandwidth and you can put in the necessary storage where you need it.

You can never put in enough storage. No matter what you put in, in three weeks news will have it filled. That’s always been what I’ve believed. So, if you don’t manage it, right from the outset, you’ll be in trouble. Some of the Reno people didn’t want to hear that until they couldn’t record a show one day because the video server was full.

So how do you manage that?

We have a few different tricks. We’ve had some rev drive data tape, but it’s a lot cheaper just going and getting a jump drive. You can get a gigabit jump drive now for $350 or $400 locally and it can plug right in on our Omneon MediaGrid and just transfer it over.

What are you using for HD field acquisition?

We’re shooting with Sony XDCAM, the PDW-F330s.

Those XDCAM disks are a storage medium, too. Do you limit the number that people can use them? Or are they free to use as many as they need?

We try to find that balance between being frugal and being able to leave the people to their job. We never say we have an open checkbook, especially when it comes to something that would be a monthly or annual cost to the station. We want to make sure that we manage that.

Are you happy with the XDCAM?

Yes, we are.

Are you considering the new solid-state HD camcoder that Sony just came out with, the XDCAM EX, which uses memory cards as its recording medium?

I’ll tell you after I do my experiments on it. I get the demo camera sometime in the next couple of weeks and I’m going to see how easy it is to get the video out. I saw it recently in Des Moines and got to play with it a little bit.

I believe you produce news in six other markets. Are you close to HD in any of them? Or, are you waiting on replacement cycles?

Replacement cycles and the constraint on cap ex. You know, right now I really have to concentrate on getting my stations ready for the DTV transition on Feb. 17, 2009.

I noticed that you’ve asked the FCC for extensions of time for some of your markets on the DTV. Why?

It’s a matter of taking some of our newer transmitters that we have on analog and splitting them apart and using the tubes in the new DTV plan. So, for example, we might have a four-tube analog transmitter where we would take two of the tubes and make a DTV transmitter at another one of our sites. Without the open checkbook, we’re trying to utilize some of the equipment that we had purchased in the last five or six years. Some of our stations are already completed. We’re probably at about 50 percent that are already built out full power.

What about the towers? Do you need to shuffle antennas around a bit?

On most of them, all the antenna shuffling is done. The antennas for the final digital channels are already top mounted while the analog and the digitals that we’re going to move away from are in the secondary positions or not all the way at the top. We have a lot of stacked antenna situations around. We just made sure that whatever was going to be our final digital play was the antenna that’s mounted on the top.      

Are you going to make it? Are all these stations going to be ready to go in 450 days?

We’re shutting analog off so we have to be ready. I guess there comes time where there is a point of no return. I believe the transition will really begin early next year. There’s going to be a lot of situations in 2008 where stations are going to be turning off or drastically turning down their analog signals to get the digital stations built.

Putting out a good digital signal gives a competitive advantage. If you’re out there and you’re covering your market the best that you can with transmitter power, with a good antenna, good antenna placement, good RF penetration, it’s going to be a lot easier for people to tune it in and make the transition than if you’re sitting not in an optimum situation.

You’re in Omaha. What kind of experiences are you having with the digital signal there?

I tuned my antenna once and, right now, on my home set, I get 24 over-the-air local digital streams.