GETTING ON THE AIR OVER THE NET

At the NAB Show, which ends Thursday, not all the product action was on the show floor. In a hotel suite across the street from the convention center, Burbank, Calif.-based equipment rental house Wexler Video showed the Wexler BackPack—literally a backpack containing a device that takes footage from field cameras and sends it back to TV stations in real time using cellular technology.

The Wexler BackPack is positioned as offering an alternative to costly microwave and satellite transmissions, and can be used by journalists to capture news content on the fly as they cover their markets. It resulted from conversations among broadcasters, Wexler, and Telecorps Sourcing, the holding company that bought Wexler just over a year ago.

Telecorps is backed by private equity firm H.I.G. Capital. TVNEWSDAY's Peter Caranicas met at NAB with Thomas VanBenschoten, Telecorps' vice president, broadcast station services.

An edited transcript of their conversation follows:

How did this product come about?

After we bought Wexler we sat down with our key broadcast contacts and asked them what are the most challenging issues remaining as we head to February, 2009. We heard loud and clear that the trouble they're having is not with the transmitter, the tower or master control. Be it newsgathering, local programming or promotions, their biggest challenge is taking digital technology outside the four walls of the studio and into the marketplace.

How does Wexler fit into that picture?

Getting digital out into the field has been their core competency for the past 10 years. They've been taking digital equipment and file-based workflows out to some very remote locations with such shows as Survivor, The Amazing Race and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. So we put our heads together with [Wexler President-CEO] Chris Thompson and [CTO] Joel Ordesky. The thinking was, “We've got this technology for TV production. Let's turn it into something broadcasters can use.”

That's when you came up with the BackPack?

Yes. It's a way for a new breed of journalists or digital correspondents to go out to the field and capture content that they can immediately send back to the station without a live truck or a microwave truck, without hitting a WiFi hot spot. They can stream live through the BackPack directly back to the studio.

How does the video get back?

It uses Sprint infrastructure and the Rev. A EVDO standard. As long as you're within range of cell tower you can get the feed via Internet access back to the station. The station has a receiver/decoder at its end.

What's your relationship with Sprint?

Sprint has just given us the green light to put together a co-marketing agreement with them. They will give priority to broadcasters, so if there's a crunch for bandwidth on a cell tower, the broadcaster would have priority to get the bandwidth needed to transmit. There would also be promotion on air, at no cost to the broadcaster.

Can the BackPack stream HD content?

At this point it's good SD, but when WiMAX technology is ready in the market we'll step the technology up from Rev. A EVDO to WiMAX. At that time—hopefully in about three years—the BackPack will be able to stream live with real HD quality.

Describe the BackPack in a nutshell.

The preproduction model weighs about 14 pounds with the battery pack and provides enough power for itself plus a small camera. There's a two-channel EDVO router, and the video is encoded and converted into an Ethernet signal that the station receives over the Internet. The data package is split across two channels so more data can be moved. Everything is decoded and rejoined at the receiving end.

So the journalist travels just with the BackPack and a camera?

Yes. After capturing a story they could be transmitting it to the station while driving to their next story. Stations told us they need to put more feet on the street, that they need more content because the have secondary channels allotted to 24/7 news and information, and they want a lot of material for their Web sites. They may have several correspondents out there capturing the news but they don't yet have a cost-efficient way of getting that content back to the station in real time.

Is it being used yet?

Three broadcast groups have volunteered one station each to road-test it and make sure it will stand up under daily operations. We intend to make it generally available by July 1.

Which stations?

McGraw-Hill's KGTV in San Diego, Gray's KKTV in Colorado Springs, and Allbritton's WJLA in Washington, D.C.

Have they paid for it?

No, but they will. At this point they're doing us a favor at the proof-of-concept stage. Once we get started we're looking to start with six BackPack units per station.

How are you pricing it?

We're not selling it, we're leasing it. It's an evolving technology that we will upgrade at no additional cost to the stations. We haven't set the leasing price yet but we realize that economies are a a premium for stations and we want to get multiple units out there. The leasing from Wexler will be financed by AEL Financial LLC, and with Wexler being a dealer for many manufacturers, they'll be able to also package it with cameras. We realize that leasing is a difficult topic for a lot of broadcasters. It's fairly new to them, but their corporate entities are encouraging them to do more of it because it reduces the risk inherent in evolving technology.

Aside from the switch to WiMAX, what other changes do you foresee?

The three station groups will keep us busy throughout the rest of the year in terms of deployment and training. Another half dozen groups have now seen the proof of concept. Eventually we'll put the technology in a vehicle. It will be like having a hot camera on the road, able to communicate instantaneously with the station.