The digital dilemma

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While many broadcasters continue to grapple with the cost burden of establishing digital television services, many fail to comprehend the benefits - and challenges - associated with fully exploiting the technology itself. Carolyn Heinze investigates.

As broadcasters leverage new technologies to boost both productivity and the quality of their offerings, the gap between TV and IT is closing.

This dictates not only the need to apply new skills related to the operation of broadcast equipment, but also an entire revamping of how facilities approach workflow.

John Honeycutt, chief media technology officer at Discovery Communications, whose flagship Discovery Channel broadcasts to more than 431 million homes in 170 countries worldwide, observes that the emergence of IT offers appropriate, real-time interaction between day-to-day business activities and what goes on inside a broadcast facility.

As a result, changes to logs and modifications to what programmes broadcasters wish to run and when, can occur much more efficiently, adding a level of flexibility that didn't exist previously.

At Discovery, the broadcast team works closely with the marketing and sales departments on promotions. When a new promo is announced, the broadcast staff will electronically transfer a new log into its environment, make the changes and provide an electronic validation.

"The other thing that we have the capability to do is to provide a low-resolution preview of what the change will look like," Honeycutt explains. "A change will come down, we can create a Windows Media file of what it's going to look like on air, and email it back to them to see what impact the change has made visually.

This necessitates a different approach to how assets are processed, emphasising the need to apply networking, software management and software configuration skills.

"When you built a facility 15 years ago, the most important thing you got at the end was a wiring diagram that detailed which device was hooked up to what," Honeycutt observes.

Today, the focus is on a software dependency diagram that breaks down what data flows between different pieces of software. Because of this, job titles such as ‘director of Network Engineering', are becoming increasingly common, he says.

"Someone who has Cisco skills or data router skills, network traffic management skills, is important," Honeycutt explains. "However, you can get lost in the IT side of it, so finding that individual who understands both broadcast and IT applications is a huge challenge for us.

The job descriptions attributed to traditional positions, too, have evolved. Three years ago, Showtime Arabia relocated its broadcast operations from the United Kingdom to Dubai, transitioning to a tapeless environment in the process.

Mike Whittaker, Showtime Arabia's vice president of broadcast operations and technology, notes that today, producers working in a digital environment are being required to do things that were once relegated to an editor.

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