This article can also be termed as a war between technical and broadcast information technology. In other words it can also be coined as the comparison between a qualified plus experienced engineering versus the unqualified plus experienced engineering.
The objective of this article is to help the decision makers acquire the latest technology in order to improve their workflows and hence the quality of the transmission.
Few points in this article are related to the previous article “An Ideal automation workflow” which covered the basic features of automation and integrated workflow however this one will cover the comparison between the old and new technology and will highlight the significance of the IT based broadcast systems.
All the latest baseband equipments are based on IT; therefore those broadcasters who have IT background staff looking in to their broadcast side are performing exceptionally well. These days the integrated workflow is being followed all over internationally, however people in Pakistan still prefer to have manual setups.
About more than half of the broadcasters in Pakistan think that broadcast automation is only meant to burden the bank accounts of the owners of the TV channels. They think that it is useless to spend that much of amount when the work can be done manually. For them I would like to give an example of travelling between Lahore and Karachi, there are different ways to achieve this, speaking realistically the cheapest would be to travel by road, this will take about 24 hours of hectic road travelling with high risk of accidents as well. The second option is to travel by train which will take half the amount of time but will cost bit more than travelling by road. The most expensive option is to travel by air, it will take around 2 hours of comfortable travelling where you don’t have to spend on the food and at the same time you will be travelling in a safe and clean environment. Now you can obviously understand that what is the opportunity cost involved in taking this decision. God forbid in case of accidents most likely the air travelers will be compensated most. So now compare the same while selecting technology for your channel’s transmission. Full featured news automation will be most expensive however it will help you deliver the best results. You may come across your staff that may resist automation; the main reason is the fear of losing control and more dependency on the machines. In the road travelling example you may find one of your staff who prefers to go by road as he wants to meet one of his friend on his way to Karachi and might want to have food and get it reimburse on a higher value from the organization. I hope by now the reader would be able to judge or at least know the causes of the resistance of acquiring automation.
One of the major advantages of acquiring automation besides the highly reliable transmission is the reduction in the operating cost. Automation requires less human resource for operations. It will also save time and space (by space I mean the hard disk space required for the digital content). A good example is the environment where a data is ingested in one machine and then it is transferred to a central storage manually, from that storage it is transferred to the play out server manually and is deleted by the operator manually. If it is required to air the same content again, the same series of steps will be required and if there are multiple channels of the same organization running the same content then you can imagine the amount of work and time required. So, using automation which is integrated with the central storage, the content once ingested will always be available to the MCR and can be deleted or archived automatically.
Coming to the news environment, a non automated environment will have no integration of the production with the news journalist. In case of a news story the news room system will work in isolation with the PCR and non linear editing. After creating the slug of the story the journalist will physically go to the NLE and ask him to browse the ingested files and then send it to the PCR manually. Then in the PCR the producer will have its news room system open and he will line up the footage manually in a playlist based on that rundown. This will certainly not be the case in the automated environment. The journalist can browse all the content lying in the online archive using his own news room control system and even attached the video file with the story. In the PCR the automation will create the playlist automatically based on the rundown coming from the NRCS. It can also create the graphics rundown related to the stories to be produced and that too… automatically.
I think I am being too technical but I feel that, this explanation is required and should be communicated to all the relevant people.
The main reason is the fear of change and hence technology, I have seen people resisting broadcast automation due to the perception that it will make them lose their jobs. Here we need to correct the perception that when the calculator was invented people didn’t lose their jobs, it provided ease to the accountants. Those who have learnt its operation they didn’t have any issue in their jobs. Similarly automation doesn’t mean that all staff members will be sent home. Those who are willing workers and try to adopt technology they will always be needed by the organizations. And if at the end of the day automation can help in decreasing the operational cost then it means that the investment made to acquire it is worth it. In the TV business the operating cost is more important than the capital. Those who don’t invest in early days to acquire technology, they end up in paying more operating cost after few years.
The choice always remains with the decision makers but in my view the decision should be taken based on the above aspects.
If you have any queries regarding this article, please write to sheerazadil@gmail.com .
