In Broadcast - October 2015 - 36


36

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 5 - Issue 10 | October 2015

InStudio

News & Weather

The journalistic imperative of getting the story before any of the competition
is still key in television news but has shifted in emphasis over the 20 years,
says Contributing Editor Kevin Hilton...

T

oday the race is to get stories
online not just ahead of your rivals
but without waiting for it to appear
on your own main news bulletin first.
The key components for this are next
generation telecom links, replacing
satellite circuits, working with the
newsroom control system at the
broadcaster's or news organisation's
headquarters.
Sony was one of many news system
developers promoting this kind of
connectivity at the recent IBC in
Amsterdam. It introduced a new news
gathering chain at the show that
starts with XDCAM camcorders in the
field linked wirelessly to the SONAPS
newsroom system. "Our customers
are looking to be first on air but that
now means starting with the online
presence and then the evening news,"
comments Claus Pfeifer, Strategic
Marketing Manager for Broadcast
and Cinematography with Sony
Professional Europe.
Pfeifer
observes
that
while
satellite played a major part in the
development of news gathering as
we know it today, setting up a link
with a small OB truck or SNG van is
expensive and time consuming. The
same goes for taking raw footage out
of the camera and rushing it to the
studio by bike or car. "Advances in 4G
and LTE (long term evolution) mobile
technology mean we can link the
camera directly to the base station,"
he says. "The journalist can start
planning the story on site and then
send metadata back to the newsroom

AP ENPS TSV
(Tablet Story Viewer)

Viz Mosart installation
at TV2 Norway

so everyone knows what it will be. It
can then be put together in proxy form
for the website and is the basis for
the evening news story, which is put
together from high res footage."
Avid has been putting together a
full workflow by combining its iNews
newsroom with other products in its
ranges. "It's about a combination of
our newsroom system, news and video
and audio assets with the Interplay
MAM to create a full workflow for
delivering to linear, web and mobile
outlets," explains Kevin Usher,
Director of Broadcast and Media
Product Marketing. "This sits on the

MediaCentral platform to connect
everything, which empowers the
people in the field shooting the reports
and working on their iPads or other
devices."
This helps cope with what Usher
describes as a constant flow, which
includes material shot on smart
phones with good quality video
capability by members of the public.
He says a critical point in using such
footage, which often gives the first
pictures of a breaking event before
news crews get there, is validating it.
"Broadcasters need to know who owns
it and whether it can be used, which
means viewing it in advance," Usher
explains. "This is done through iNews
and MediaCentral for full integration
but we're also working with partners
to provide other methods of getting
content to social media."
Partnerships include those with
make.tv, developer of the Acquire
Plug-in for MediaCentral, and x.news,
which produces programmes for
gathering news and information from
agency wires, Twitter feeds and other
audio and video sources.
Avid iNews evolved from the
BASYS system developed by UK TV
news organisation ITN in the 1980s.
Another NRCS conceived by the

people who use it is Associated Press'
ENPS (Electronic News Production
System), which first appeared during
the mid-90s. Paddy Payne, Director of
International Business Development
for AP ENPS, comments that in the
technology's early days it allowed
a team of journalists to collaborate
more efficiently. Today it maintains full
connectivity with the main resources,
both on location and in the studio.
A recent innovation is the TSV (Tablet
Story Viewer), which, Payne explains,
replaces the "wad of papers" news
presenters traditionally clutched while
on air. "Paper looks bad and what
it contains can go out of date very
quickly," he says. "The TSV gets round
those problems and also provides
back up if network connection to the
prompter is lost because everything is
cached locally on the device."
Like other news systems AP ENPS
has full access to agency wires and
social media, which Payne observes
give journalists additional information
and colour for their stories. He adds
that using social media can be a "twoway" process, with the reaction to
stories online influencing the line-up
of bulletins: "The editor may have put
one story first but viewers are more
interested in, say, story three,
http://www.inbroadcast.com http://www.vizrt.com/products/viz_mosart/ http://www.enps.com/pages/features_and_specifications/features/241/ap_enps_tablet_story_viewer http://www.make.tv
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