Evolving the Workflow

Since the inception of television, the workflow of gathering news in television has never stopped evolving. Take for example, the capturing of moving images. It has evolved from film to tape and now to digital bits of information. I'm sure anyone who remembers shooting on film, wouldn't want to return to the days of literally splicing together their stories. While new technologies are resisted at first, they are eventually adopted and people can rarely image returning to the old way of doing things.

Unlike new technologies of the past, the transformation of newsrooms to a digital format will affect all aspects of the news gathering operation. Fred Schultz, Vice President of Newsroom Automation at Sundance Digital, a provider of broadcast automated solutions, says this evolutionary step to digital began with the introduction of first viable VO servers in 1994. What surprised him most that year were the people who bought those servers, "It was not the educated and sophisticated, it was the poor and the desperate." Schultz said the motivating factor at that time for the stations who bought them was purely economic. The technology for commercial insertion at many smaller stations was just worn out and a solution to play commercials reliably was needed. They ended up taking a chance on the servers, and it paid off. Schultz says that economics are now also playing a big part in the drive towards newsroom automation, "There is a trend of tightening down on expenses, so that more and more is done by fewer and fewer."

Probably the most ambitious transformation to newsroom automation has occurred at WLS-TV in Chicago under the leadership Kal Hasson, Director of Engineering there. As he began the transformation of WLS-TV in the mid-90s, his focus was always on workflow, "It was all about workflow. Actually all during our build out, our focus was on workflow more so than technology."

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The story of WLS was also an economic one. Their facilities were antiquated and with HD on the horizon, they decided to take a holistic approach of going digital, as well as becoming automated. First, Hassan built a new technical center, along with a new rack room. He says a "rack room" in today's world is more of a data center. From there he built two new control rooms, a new master control room and by 1999 they had HD.

WLS converted to the new system last September and completed its transition to digital a few months ago. All incoming feeds are no longer recorded on tape, but are stored on a MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) with 1,000 hours of digital video storage without any human intervention. Producers can view incoming video on their desktops and then move over to a nonlinear edit room to cut a piece. "Now we don't have any linear rooms in the station. It's all digital," says Hassan.

Shifting Responsibilities

With any type of automation comes a fear of job losses, but Schultz doesn't think that will necessarily be the case in newsrooms, "I don't see a widespread flurry of pink slips, so much as opportunity to retrain people who already know something about how things work." This has in fact been the case at WLS according to Hassan, "In a station like ours there is always a need for certain kinds of skills, so a lot of people were trained in other areas." There undoubtedly will be some consolidation of responsibilities. Only one operator now controls five robotic cameras in the WLS studio and Hassan says they are down to only one editor in their programming area where they use to have two or three.

Automation is also starting to have a direct impact on how stories are told says Hassan because producers can now edit their own video, "It has changed the way we tell the story. It use to be that if you were a producer and you wanted to tell a story, you had to have an operator work with you in one of these linear rooms and they were basically the button pushers for you."

In the late 80s, WLS had the foresight to include a clause in the union contract that precluded jurisdiction of any computer-based editing systems. Some would argue this threatens union jobs, but Hassan says that has not been the case, "We have not taken the position of taking those positions away from the union, it's a mixed practice. People who have traditionally done those jobs have maintained their editing positions, however the whole workflow has changed." In fact, some editors have become shooters, while others are now producing. When practiced correctly, newsroom automation is an opportunity for people to learn new skills, rather than being cast aside says Schultz, "I think if there is one place that management needs to come to understand is that their staff needs to be trained and that this is not a source of job insecurity, but rather a way of making them more effectual in doing their job."

Things to Think About Before You Automate

Newsroom automation isn't just a cost saving measure, it's an investment. "It's a mistake to think that you can run a competitive news operation by getting all the stories lined up ahead of the news and just having one person make sure they go to air right. It may look good, but it won't be competitive," says Schultz. Automation is not so much an evolutionary step, as it is an evolutionary leap forward. The human impact cannot be underestimate. Hassan attributes the success of automating the newsroom of WLS by involving the news managers in the early stages of the process, "We actually invited news into the architecture of the system. News managers were intimately involved into all of the decision making."

Once a station has decided to automate its newsroom, it is not just about buying a couple of pieces of new equipment, it's a commitment to change the entire workflow of the newsroom. "You have to have a game plan. One of the things that I think I can take credit for is having a vision of where we wanted to go," says Hassan.

The approach at Sundance Digital is to fill in all the gaps in the newsroom workflow to create a complete solution. They actually build to the needs of the workflow. Schultz says the greatest challenge of helping engineers map out a plan for automation is to help them understand what it is really like to work in a digital environment, "They have such a finely focused look at all the details of what they do, that sometimes they have a hard time pulling up and looking down at the big picture." Both agree, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, but rather each station needs to understand its needs and where it wants to go. As with any new technology, there is a huge learning curve and Hassan say they are now focused on finessing the system. He admits he has a few more grey hairs, but as with his predecessors who converted television from film to tape, he can't imagine ever going back.

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About the Author

Stephen Warley has made a career out of assessing the future direction of television. From producing for CBS News and CNBC to working as a project manager for interactive media agencies like ThirdAge and Osprey Communications, he has gained an insider's view as to where tomorrow's content and business opportunities lie in the video media industries. He is currently an MBA candidate at Fordham University with concentrations in media management and finance. He can be contacted at swarley@tvspy.com