A 'SIMPLIFIED' APPROACH TO FILE-BASED TV NEWS

TV stations making the leap from tape to filed-based work flow have plenty of issues to address. Among them is how best to manage the huge volume of video that flows in and out of their newsrooms.

Fortunately, vendors have stepped up with solutions to that particular problem.

Among them is Irvine, Calif.-based Bitcentral. Its Précis is a news production system that permits broadcasters to manage video from ingest to air.

It interconnects with popular editing and newsroom computer system, permits remote editing and facilitates production of content for multiple platforms.

“We manage it, we play it out, we take care of your rundown information,” says Fred Fourcher, president and CEO of Bitcentral.

In this interview with TVNEWSDAY, Fourcher talks about Précis and its companion Oasis archival and news sharing system and their places in the competitive broadcast TV marketplace.

An edited transcript:

What the pitch for Précis and Oasis?

Précis is our news production system and the name means “a simplified version of.”

News production doesn’t have to be complicated. We didn’t just digitize the old tape workflow. We completely re-defined the workflow to make it simple and smooth. Everyone in the station wins—from the executive in charge of the budget, to the field reporter who has more freedom for creativity in his or her report.

Oasis enables TV station groups to maximize their creative assets and easily share broadcast quality video over the public Internet. For the first time you can actually see the video other stations are producing. Request the video and in a few minutes it is in the bin of your editor. We make it easy for our customers to find and access current and archived media, saving them time and creating a better product.

Our primary focus is on what the station wants—what the station needs. If we need to resell components, programs, etc., from other brands, then we do. Competitors don’t have the guts to resell components of a system from other vendors.

Bitcentral not only provides these components from other brands upon request, we also provide the support for everything. In other words, a station isn’t running around and calling six different vendors for support. Our team supports all parts of the “ecosystem.” Add the fact that Precis is easily integrated with popular newsroom systems such as iNews, ENPS and virtually any and all editing software out there.

You’ve described your system as non-proprietary. Exactly what does that mean?

Our systems are non-proprietary. Our focus has been to provide stations with products and services which enable them to create better news products, reduce costs or both. Everything we develop is from what customers tell us they want.

As an example, we standardized on HP at the end of 2007 because we are an open system and using the leading server platform is consistent with our goals of providing truly non-proprietary systems. News should not be an island in the IT infrastructure.

A lot of times, stations will lock themselves into buying a proprietary SD system. Then they realize they’re screwed, as their proprietary parts aren’t upgradeable to HD. Bitcentral allows for both SD and HD.

What about asset management?

We are all about keeping all media at producers’ fingertips. When we sell a system, the customers usually are not focused on archives because their current archives are lightly utilized. After they have our system for a while and have built up online archives, producers will use the archives three to four times per day. That kind of access to media simply makes shows look better.

Oasis is also a very cost-effective stand-alone archive. Because you can use non-proprietary storage, the cost to store online is far less than buying tape stock. The street price for a 2 RU HP storage array with 7.6 TB costs about $10,000. That is enough for 2,000 hours or five to seven years of SD, 450 hours or one-and-a-half years of HD.

As that price, there is no need to take archives offline. We back up the archives with spinning disk storage. And stations have the freedom to buy cheaper storage according to their budgets, meaning they can buy as much cheap storage as they want into the future. Bitcentral systems are absolutely scalable.

What new products will you be showing at NAB?

Our new product focus is centered on enabling our news customers go gather from, and produce to, multiple platforms efficiently. Our remote contribution interface allows journalists or viewers to upload video to the station using special protocols capable of reducing transmission times by two to three times. We will also be showing products that enable our customers to generate more revenue from their news without increasing costs.

Let’s talk about the market. We have 750 newsrooms in America, correct? How many have made the leap from tape to file based?

We see the market at about 645 newsrooms because there are combined newsrooms in the case of many. Of those, we believe that about half of them have probably made that transition now from a tape-based operation to a file-based one. We’re in about 10 percent of all newsrooms and we’ve done that in less than three years.

That’s a substantial share of market. Who are the other big players?

Well, it’s hard to say. That would be a good study to determine exactly who has what stations, but Grass Valley [Aurora] has a decent presence out there because they’ve been doing this for quite a while. I would say Avid [Unity], Grass Valley and our Précis are the top three systems in the market today.

Which groups have you done deals with?

NBC, CBS, Raycom, Media General, Journal, Gray, Landmark, Sunbelt, Clear Channel, Waterman, Granite, Capitol, Chambers, LIN. We have one Hearst-Argyle in now and there should be some more.

The market also includes cable. Are you after the regional cable networks?

We haven’t gone after them yet, although we would be very willing to do so. We just haven’t seen them spending in this area right now.

And what about the national networks?

To be continued.

So there is some potential there?

There are different aspects as to what these networks need and what they want in the products that we provide, but the answer is we’re pursuing them.

Everybody, of course, wants to know what the ROI is on capital expenditures like this. What are we talking about to get this thing into my newsroom and how do I get a return on that investment?

That’s a great question. When you look at why people go from tape operations to file-based operations, it’s very diverse. We’ve had groups that have done it because they have to save money and we have had others that have done it because their existing infrastructure has reached the end of its life. Still others do it because they want to do more and create a better newscast.

Some have been very focused on ROI and have justified it by saying, if we put this in we eliminate all this cost of maintenance of our decks and the running around and all the things that we do.

What that usually means is that they’re going to let people go. Some stations have used our system to do that and they have generated an ROI based upon staff reductions. The system is efficient. It eliminates a lot of the steps of a traditional tape-based work flow.

Other stations have said, you know, we’re in a smaller market, we’re down to a minimum staff, we just don’t need to cut fat here, but we’re going to use the added efficiency to create the asset of time.

The asset of time means producers can get their hands on assets quicker, the workflow moves more smoothly and the product on air looks better. That means rating points and a return on investment based on the station doing better in news in its market.

I would imagine the cost is a function of how big the system is and other variables.

Exactly. We have small market stations that have bought Précis systems for $100,000. We have large-market stations that have bought them for more than $1 million.

And what are those variables that determine the cost?

The variables are the number of edit stations, the level of redundancy, the amount of storage and the type of storage. For example, for large newsrooms, we put in storage that is capable of handling throughputs of up to four terabytes per second. You don’t need that in a station in Missoula, Mont. You can use much less expensive storage.

To what extent is HD driving this transition to file-based work flows?

This year, HD will be the main driver for this transition. In years past, it was efficiencies and cost savings, but we’re seeing now that HD is a primary driver and virtually all of the new systems going in are either HD or, if we put them in SD, they will be switched to HD probably within a year.

What’s involved in making the switch of your system from SD to HD?

Our older systems required you to switch out an interface card and that’s all you had to do. In the newer systems it’s a software switch and you have to tell the spigot to turn from SDI to HDSDI so it’s not a big deal to switch our systems to HD.

Because of the economy, broadcasters may not be as flush this year as they expected. Do you see stations tightening their belts?

We haven’t seen it directly. The writers’ strike may have impacted on overall viewership. Obviously, the lead-in to news is network programming so the news is affected by that. So, hopefully, with the writers strike over, things will return to normal.

So you’re expecting a pretty good year here? Can you quantify? What kind of business do you expect to do this year?

Last year we did about 30 Précis systems and so we would expect to do a similar amount this year. Do I see the market expanding? No. Do I see it remaining pretty much the same for the most part? Yes.

A couple of big companies—Avid and Apple—have decided not to exhibit at NAB this year. I assume you’ll be there and that the big convention still makes marketing sense for you.

It does, and the reason is, broadcasters, our customers, the groups, the engineering folks, they’re at NAB. We have a suite at the Renaissance Hotel, which is right outside the South Hall. It’s a quiet environment where we can have meetings and sit and talk. And we have our booth where we can sit and demonstrate our products.

I think we have the right presence there. It enables us to do these demonstrations to a larger audience and reach more people than we could by running around the country. That’s the whole idea behind trade shows.

So the key is non-proprietary products that are responsive to your customers’ needs.

Yes and the other thing is the people at Bitcentral here. We’ve got the best people in the industry. I get e-mails all the time from our customers when our field people are installing a system. They rave about our support people. They do an incredible job of really taking care of our customers.

Our development team, the whole team here, is just really phenomenal. So when we look at competing against other companies in the industry, it is not really about the technology. It’s really more about the people. I have to give our team a huge amount of credit for our success.