When we discuss making money with our assets, a fundamental topic is advertising. Identifying advertisements to ensure proper use in broadcasts has been an important issue since the very beginnings of broadcast Radio and Television, and today those requirements include streaming media, Over-The-Top services, and Video-On-Demand playback. An advertiser only wants to pay for the proper advertisement in the proper program location. Harold S Geller, the Executive Director of Ad-ID LLC, a leader in the advertising industry and an expert regarding the history, systems and methodology, explains the basis and applications of metadata to advertising assets:

“If you can’t identify it, you can’t operationalize or measure it; if you can’t measure it you can’t monetize it,” Clyde Smith, SVP Advanced Technology, FOX has said. Unique identifiers and metadata for advertisements must be universally recognizable and employed across the industry to see the full benefits, in Operational systems, in Administration and Finance, and of course in Measurement. There are two registration authorities that supply the industry with advertising identifier metadata, and they are Ad-ID in the United States and Clearcast in the United Kingdom: Both provide unique identifiers, metadata, and APIs for validation and retrieval. By using IDs and data, and the associated program integration tools, media companies can maximize interoperability.

The benefits and cost savings of interoperability are most apparent when technologies work together so that the data they exchange prove most useful at the other end of the transaction.

We need highly interoperable systems at the technology, data, human, and institutional layers. See Figure 5.1.

In the United States, Advertising Digital Identification, LLC (Ad-ID) is a joint venture of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). Ad-ID was launched in 2002 and replaced the ISCI (Industry Standard Coding Identification), which was in place since 1969, established by the Broadcast Administration Technical Developments committee of the 4As. ISCI was withdrawn from the market in 2007. As of 2014, SAG-AFTRA requires that all ads using union talent be coded with Ad-ID.

All Ad-ID codes are 11 characters except for HD or 3D codes, which have an H or D in the twelfth character. See Figure 5.2.

Ad-ID provides the Complete External Access (CEA) API to approved companies (generally media outlets, online publishers, measurement companies, and their industry vendors) with access to all Ad-ID codes and selected metadata in the Ad-ID system. Companies using CEA must know the Ad-ID code they are looking for in order to validate the code or read the associated metadata.

Ad-ID advocates and supports embedding the Ad-ID code into files, using file native metadata format, and subsequently using the CEA API to retrieve the necessary metadata. In file-based workflows, the objective is to automate as much of the process of moving digital files through the supply chain by integrating different business systems. Having the identifier embedded in the file, and having that identifier survive the various transcoding processes is of critical importance, as ads are used on multiple platforms, and multiple consumption devices.

Industry Benefits of Ad-ID include:

• Guarantee of Unique Codes: This foundation is vital for the digital era and needed by the entire advertising ecosystem, including advertisers, agencies, vendors, and media;

  

  

• Improved Reporting Accuracy: The Ad-ID system allows for enhanced evaluation of advertising assets;

• Removal of Re-keying and Duplication of Efforts: Without Ad-ID, an asset’s identifying information must be re-entered into systems of record up to 20 times from when an advertiser gives approval to create an ad to the time the ad is actually published and invoiced. This is currently a huge duplication of effort, resulting in human error and increased costs; and

• Streamline of Workflow via Integration across vendor products: When advertising systems work together, the whole industry benefits. Ad-ID is integrated with a growing list of industry vendors driving advertising interoperability and simplifying processes throughout the industry.

We have learned from history – the fact is that non-standard, home-grown IDs for advertisements are bad for the Industry. These kinds of IDs do not account for the operational steps that follow the point where the ad leaves the advertiser’s domain. Unregistered identifier codes cause confusion among the rest of the advertising, broadcasting, and media community, and lead to wasted time and money. When everyone has their own methods to track, execute, and measure, it takes everyone involved increased time and effort to move things forward. See Figure 5.3.

As the advertising requirements in our media channels grow more complicated, the Media and Entertainment industry needs greater transparency and standardization. The industry has to be able to efficiently identify, manage, and track creative assets. Using the Ad-ID metadata and enforcing its persistence in your monetization workflows provides a reliable business platform, providing better digital video asset data, coding, and distribution in an industry that is becoming extremely fragmented.

Turning attention to business systems, the libraries for the media assets and their associated metadata are our first concern. As a newcomer to the industry, the DAM and MAM jargon seem to be used interchangeably, although they actually have very different applications.

Digital Asset Management is a document library focused on controlling, securing, finding, and leveraging content across an organization. DAM systems are typically used to enforce company governance, managing inter- and intra-office communications and templates, while making assets available to groups and individuals based on security clearance. DAM systems manage digital rights, enforce metadata and taxonomy, and optimize business processes, especially the interaction between individuals and departments, such as marketing communication, illustration, and graphics projects. DAM systems offer particular operational features, such as the ability to “check out” a project file and remove it from the library like a book from the shelf during editing or processing, and then “check in” the file when it is returned for general use. DAM libraries often manage complicated review and approval processes, mapped to the business logic of company requirements. A subset of the DAM system is the PIM, Product Information Manager, dedicated to the marketing department as an assistance to displaying the proper message to the correct channel in a timely and management-approved method. In addition to providing marketing communications, PIM systems manage data import and data model formatting and often interface to a customer facing “portal.” Portals can be used for many different purposes, such as customer support, distributor communications and management, as well as media exchange between partners.

DAM systems can manage video and audio assets as a part of their library, but their tools and workflows are directed across all the internal assets and are primarily designed for managing internal and external written communications or training media. Media Asset Managers (MAM) on the other hand are often paired with DAM systems to extend their functionality to address media-specific chores, such as multiple audio translations, technical versions such as standard definition, high definition and ultra-high definition media, subtitles, edited content versions, and distribution versions. MAM systems employ internal playback tools with more professional video and audio features, extended data models to cover the many industry-specific data resources, and workflows dedicated to media and entertainment business chores. MAM systems usually include hierarchical storage manager tools to control massive amounts of storage in tiers as the media is often in huge files, and by design are more complicated and video specific in their focus.

So, a MAM is a MAM is a MAM, right? As Shakespeare says, “A rose by any name would smell as sweet,” but in today’s Media and Entertainment Industry, it is important to recognize that all MAMs are not the same, and while the language the marketers use to promote the products is often rich, expansive, and all encompassing, broadcasters and media professionals can save themselves a lot of pain, time, and money by understanding the various types of MAMs and workflow tools available, and where a particular product provides the best solution.

Some MAMs are optimized for linear play-out: Often utilized for enhancing or extending a Master Control automation system, these dedicated MAMs support a linear channel and effectively automate a number of repetitive station tasks such as dub lists and preparing media for air. They are architected to be workhorses and have solid integrations with the local automation and traffic systems. The “best of breed” systems employ the SMPTE BXF interface for this communication channel and come with ready third-party tool integrated workflows to handle the standard chores a Television broadcast facility addresses on a daily basis. There are a number of these cost-effective systems available, and typically their drawback is a lack of flexibility, business analysis options, or limits on their upgrade applications.

Traffic Extended MAMs: A subset of the MAM for linear playout operations are library management tools that are sold as embedded solutions or packaged with Traffic and Billing Systems, Content Management Software for OTT or VOD distribution, or Work Order systems. These extend a particular tool within an operation, and often suffer from the limits of the playout MAMs, as well as the limits of some vendors to devote development and support resources to more than their core product line.

Production Asset Managers (PAM): Years ago, we would call them PAMs, but vendors have tried to blur the lines of their products’ abilities to widen their market reach. Library systems that prepare production schedules and manage workflows to create versions of media, track version relationships, and provide automated or manual quality control focused on a particular editing platform meet this essential need. Managing editing projects, “parent media,” and all various “child” versions is of prime importance to production support software. These systems are often maximized to a specific editing toolset and have limited expansion capabilities, but what they do, they do extremely well.

Business Process Managers (BPM): Marrying your library to workflow engines for a network operation can bring some solid benefits, especially in task management for employees, automation of repetitive tasks, and business analysis for the executive team. These systems are more flexible, customizable, and provide more insight into large operations with reports and dashboards. BPM MAMs often integrate into traffic and work order systems, all internal systems including custom-built products, and external systems for supplier input and distribution capabilities. If your organization is looking to measure and manage increasing throughput and add new operations or functionalities, a BPM orchestration system may be the best solution for you. If your goal is managing your employees better, understanding their workload and watching the bottom line, BPM MAMs can provide the task management by individual and user groups to control all segments of your company. Key to finding a good BPM MAM is their support third-party vendor list. How many common products do they already support? These systems are usually customized to a particular operation, and they can be expensive to build due to the unique requirements of a particular broadcaster.

While many vendors will promote their software as an “enterprise” solution, only a very few actually have a system designed to support multi-site, multi-department, multi-tenant operations. Enterprise solutions build on BPM MAM tools and add the ability to limitlessly scale throughput, manage millions of assets, workflows and users, and support unique, geographically dispersed operations. PAMs and specialized MAMs are often built into these solutions. These are expensive, multi-year projects with major benefits. The resulting automation of workflows, oversight on task management and deep business analytics provide measurable reduction in overhead and labor costs.

There are also specialized MAMs built as sports and live events logging tools, archive management systems, distributed production applications for TV Group operations, native automatically scaling cloud-based systems, systems with internal programmable playlists – there are a number of specialized options available, each with particular benefits that may meet a defined organizational requirement. Yet, specialization comes with a price, usually a limitation in one or more areas of the product.

There are fundamentals of MAM technology that support automated and efficient workflows and are found in most, if not all, of the MAM products available on the market today. Architecturally speaking, most modern systems supply a browser-based user interface which allows quick deployment of updates and the ability to “skin” the interface in a user’s language or save user-specific screen controls. The system should be ready to be virtualized, in other words the underlying architecture is ready to deploy on-premises, or in cloud infrastructure or in a hybrid combination of both. Frankly, in today’s world with the proliferation of cloud service providers, an all cloud infrastructure is an acceptable alternative to a flexible architecture. Most systems are prepared with active Cluster design options and disaster recovery features. Object relational grid databases provide a fundamental library design that will allow true scaling of your metadata and the system and leverage the functionality of modern database software such as the rich reporting tools now available.

The core of a MAM is its search engine, the system that quickly seeks and displays the media according to user requests. Most companies have adopted “google-like” search tools that automatically offer suggestions as the user types, drawing on an index of search criteria. More recently vendors have added support for faceted search and “elastic search.” The Graphical User Interface (GUI) can define special search criteria across millions of assets, often employing Boolean logic and wild cards, and many systems offer the user the ability to save unique searches for use at a later time. Some search engines have been enhanced with departmentalization strategies for assets, which is of great importance if the operation will manage millions of assets and associated files. Asset storage can be arranged in logical or physical storage, and systems can control media access with security measures.

The primary function of the MAM system is to bring media into the library in a controlled manner, allow management and enrichment of the assets by the library users, and then publish or distribute that media in many different ways in order to increase the monetization of the materials. The incoming process is called Ingest, and these capture workflows can be quite simple or multi-stepped with branching business logic to automate all possible acceptance of media deliveries. Typically ingest workflows will generate a reference “proxy” file, usually a frame accurate representation to the original media that allows annotations and edit decision lists to be applied by a user to the original media. Some systems will normalize incoming media to a house standard video format, but many media executives prefer to keep the incoming asset in its most pure form, and they save the original file as it was received, using the proxy to drive editing and versioning workflows.

Enriching media assets in a MAM includes adding metadata from multiple sources. Artificial Intelligence solutions can automatically annotate every frame of a file or program, convert the audio tracks into scripts, automatically mark points of interest such as product placements and on-screen graphics, etc. Automated quality control systems can annotate the proxy file with technical and visual data based on the testing criteria. Descriptive metadata can be translated into many languages and added to the database referencing to the original media file. Audio versions, such as stereo pairs, 5.1 surround sound and Dolby ATMOS, and foreign language translations can be associated with the original media, and the video can be marked for edits to align to the new translations as well as subtitles. High Dynamic Resolution (HDR) technical data can be added to the media asset and referenced in the MAM. Unique business requirements drive the enrichment process, and the MAM is receptacle for these enhancements and the maintenance of their connections to the original media files.

Publishing, or export of the assets from the library, is another fundamental function of the MAM. Leveraging integrations with third-party tools such as watermarking software, Digital Rights Management, video format transcoders, etc., allows MAM technology to maximize the numbers of versions the assets can take upon export, and most of these functions are automatable in current technology. The publish function of MAMs has been an industry focus for years, driving innovation to reduce labor and increase speed and efficiency for servicing social media, streaming services, video-on-demand and over-the-top services. Publishing can be as simple as a “drag-and-drop” of a file to a new folder, or as complicated as managing thousands of profiles in third-party tools.

In the newest technological advances, cloud-based tools designed as microservices in dockerized modules permit the scaling up and down of operations that allows cost management for unpredictable workloads. This is a boon for start-up businesses or companies that want to “pop-up” a channel or deploy an increase in capacity for a short-term production project. These MAM systems often tout their “native” cloud operation and link with a particular public cloud service provider. Recently there have been some highly publicized network projects to move MAM operations to the cloud to support cost effective, and rapid deployment of linear channel broadcasts. Cloud infrastructure offers MAM systems new flexibility and scalability.

Media has been stored and prepared by the MAM, and in some cases that media is even made “rights aware” by connecting it to the program and rights management tools. This is the next process that media workflows address.

Before we discuss the programming workflow, it would make sense to define Rights and Rights management. The rights to programming seem simple to understand, but in reality, rights are difficult to manage. There are two types of “rights,” rights for material that your company owns or manages and rights for acquired content. An easy way to describe these two types are as “rights in” or media acquired by your company for use, and “rights out” for product you own and distribute.

“Rights out” management systems are of key importance to asset owners and are often directly connected to an enterprise MAM to control the library access or manage/limit distribution. They track the media asset and its constituent parts and elements, as well as the contractual obligations the company may have in regard to those components. For example, music may require ASCAP and BMI license payments, or be restricted in some regions. Actors, directors, and writers’ guilds, etc., require percentage payments based on the distribution receipts. Distribution management includes coverage of territories and transmission format such as over the air broadcasts, IP streams, On-Demand file distribution, watermarking requirements, and Digital rights management encryption. These software systems manage the legal distribution contracts and support financial tools. “Rights out” workflows are typically managed as MAM extensions in conjunction with Content Management Systems (CMS) for packaging, and these operations will be discussed later in this chapter in section on “Automating Workflows.”

For an analysis of the workflows for “Rights in,” acquired content systems and the typical workflows associated with them, Peter Storer, Founder and CEO of the industry leading STORER TV Program Management software, has supplied a detailed description:

Programming, or for many in the industry simply “content,” covers everything from local live productions, like news and sports productions, to syndicated content purchased from large content distributors, such as “Wheel of Fortune” from King World Productions, Inc. Networks, like, CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox act as both creator and producer as well as the purchaser of lots of content. In return, they license the use of this content through affiliation agreements to their local stations. Cable Networks also both produce and purchase lots of content in order to fill their 168 hours of programming every week or 8,736 hours every year. Based on a 2014 report by Nielsen, the typical American has access to almost 200 channels of content of which they watch on average only 17 channels.¹ Think about what it takes to manage that 1.7 million hours of mostly unduplicated content every year.

For every hour of non-live content, there is often hundreds of hours of video/audio captured via various devices that must be reviewed, color corrected, audio enhanced, edited, close-captioned, and then delivered to your viewing device, which also has evolved significantly from the days of the standard-definition TV. In short, the process, the workflows, are staggeringly complex and diverse depending on what you are recording, how it will be shown, and who will be watching it.

Let’s consider a relatively simple workflow, say for a live news program. This program airs every day, at the same time slot for exactly the same length of time with the same format or structure (more on this later). Out of the 30 minutes total, you subtract out the number of commercials, let’s say 8 1/2 minutes along with 10 seconds of promotional material, and you are left with exactly 21:20 minutes of time to fill every show. You plan on 3 minutes for your standup weather, 4 minutes of sports (these might vary significantly depending on the market), and 20 seconds for your open and closing graphics and introduction, and that leaves you with 14 minutes for actual news stories. As a result, you might need fourteen 1-minute stories, or five 1-minute pieces and three 3-minute pieces, or some combination that fills the time. Your newsroom assignment editor hands out the stories to their reporters based on what they think will happen that day. In addition, there are also a number of “timeless” pieces that can be used as filler. All of this comes together as the day progresses with last minute changes until airtime. When the final pieces have been chosen, their order decided, the program’s director cues for the program to start. It is a time compressed, intensive, and unforgiving process that happens every day to deliver the news, yet the workflow is pretty straight forward and well established.

Separate from linear television and network broadcast channels is the News gathering workflows which constantly adapt to changing technology and vendor innovation. Over the last several years, technology has evolved to make the tagging and movement of video simpler and today it is practical to do live feeds from the front lines of virtually any story direct to the station and then on to the viewer. These workflows are defined by the key vendors in the space and are quite competitive in features and operations – news gathering organizations should investigate the product defined workflows from each vendor and source the model that best suits their business operation.

Turning back to the more traditional content workflows and how a television station or cable network decides what to put on the air every day and the process of actually making it happen. The first step is the same whether you are writing a book, giving a speech, or making any type of presentation: It is to know your audience. For a traditional broadcaster, there is a long history of surveying their audience using research companies like Nielsen, Arbitron, and others that provided a customized look into who, when, and why people watch what they do. These preferences are why the news is on when it is, and network programming starts when it does. Over any particular day, the TV audience changes its demographic makeup, minute by minute, but interestingly, when averaged out, the actual viewer levels stay pretty stable for any particular time period. Hence the decision to place any particular program in your inventory will be influenced by the demographics that you determine are available at that time. It will also be influenced by the competitive content already available in the timeslot. You might own a really strong game show that targets people 35+ in age, but if there are already three game shows airing in the marketplace, you might consider counter-programing them with news or alternative series content and placing the game show elsewhere. In short, what you put on in each slot is a very complex decision process that many consider more art than science.

In fact, it is a little bit of both. You have to consider what you have purchased or otherwise have available, what it costs to air in the time period, what it may generate in terms of audience performance and hence its attractiveness to your sales staff to be able to sell advertising in and around it. If a show costs $10,000 to air each day and commercials will sell for $1,000 per 30 second and if there are 6 1/2 minutes of time to sell based on the shows format, then your profit will be $3,000 each day. If you can only average $500 per 30, then you will be losing $3,500 each time it airs.

Of course, you sell advertising on a future prediction that it will perform at a certain level (“an estimate”) and what it actually delivers in audience is only known once it starts airing. Hence the reason networks often produce lots of short-run series (7–8 episodes) then run them and see how the audience likes them. Poor performance results in quick cancelations.

Once content has been selected, acquired, and scheduled to air, you often also have to arrange for delivery to your location. This process can range from standard mail delivery of an analog tape to digital files being streamed via private satellite hookups. Once your content arrives, it will often need to be ingested into your MAM, and sometimes it must be transcoded from the production format into the format you have standardized for linear playout within your own operational environment. As part of this process, it may also need to be viewed by someone to determine that it will play back correctly and that there are no objectionable elements based on your predetermined standards. Once approved for air, the show may need some editing to prepare it properly. There is a huge range of options depending on whether the content will air with or without commercial interruptions or many other considerations. Building in appropriate fades to black at designated transition points often need to be done and, if there is any objectionable material, this may also have to be edited out. The final edited version is given an identification code, often referred to as a “house number,” that is then used to reference its use by all the operational in-house systems: typically, the programing software, the traffic software, the MAM, and Master Control automation systems.

Once an asset is selected to air, the house number will ultimately appear on an automation log that controls the order of playback. The structure of the program (the exact timing of each of the program’s segments between the black fade points) must also be entered so the automation system knows exactly how long each of the segments will play before they switch to other content. As the content airs, a record of its exact playback is maintained in order to determine if anything aired improperly. More important, these records act as a proof of airing for commercials, and also serve as an accurate record of what each station aired during every day to comply with any Federal Government investigations. The program management system will often then be updated to reflect that the specific content has been aired and this may be used for various financial reports. As a result of it being aired, the cost of that program has been incurred and its remaining value has been reduced or amortized. If the contract for the use of the content indicates a limited number of airings, the use of the program will also be reduced by one. A history of each airing of every piece of content owned or produced by the station is also typically maintained in the program management system.

This discussion concentrates mostly on content workflows that are used within a traditional TV ecosystem. Today, an alternate content delivery process overshadows this linear broadcasting methodology by delivering huge amounts of video content via the Internet. YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, and the hundreds of other Over-the-Top content sources provide both traditional series, feature and short length films, as well as thousands of other different formats that are consumed by today’s viewer in so many ways. Much of this content does not follow the traditional Network or TV “workflow” process, but it has become a significant challenger to the traditional video content delivery systems.

Assets are scheduled but no one will watch them if they don’t know about their broadcast. For understanding the next steps media takes as it works through the operations of a linear broadcast, we turn to the President/CEO of Effective Media Systems, the supplier of the industry leading GRIP IT! Software, Brendan Kehoe.

Success in Television should often be viewed as a three-legged stool. Acquiring or making compelling Programs can be viewed as the first leg. Without compelling Programs that attract and keep your viewer interested, and engage them in the plot line, characters, and the outcome, success will be fleeting. The second leg of the stool is to make Promo materials, those 60, 30, 15 second clips that outline what you are offering as a product to the viewer, and interest them in “purchasing the product” – getting them to tune in long enough to be willing to sample and come back again for more.

But having those two legs of the stool is not enough, unless you can get those Promos to the viewers most interested in that type of Genre/Program, and get to those viewers enough times such that what you are offering is “TOP OF MIND” – they remember your offering, and when it is being offered to tune in.

That is the art of Media Planning and Promotion Scheduling. This art is no different than what advertisers spend so much time and effort in planning, executing, and validating results of their own commercials on all channels. Channels need to treat their own advertising with as much seriousness and planning as those who are willing to pay to advertise their products on your channel.

If you fail at this art for yourself, advertisers will not see the ratings success they expect in your programs, and your revenue stream will never meet expectations. There have been many wonderful programs that have been produced at great cost but have failed because this last leg of the stool (and the second leg of the stool) was executed poorly. There have been many a “why did we fail meeting” on any channel, where audience has been polled on why they did not watch, and often the results are:

1. The Promos I saw did not really tell me what the show was about, or did not interest me

2. I’m interested in only Sports or News, so why show me a promo for a Soap Opera on in the afternoon

3. What Program – never saw one but wish I did

Well executed Media Planning and Promotion can overcome this. In fact, well executed Media Planning can even get viewers to tune in to a terrible program, at least for the first few minutes.

So, what is involved in this art? It involves research, some industry math, and an understanding of what drives viewers. Let’s discuss these at a high level.

Being the Bridge: As someone engaged in the role of Media Planning, the first thing to recognize is you must be the bridge between many groups at your channel. Programming will have their own ideas about how to promote a program, Research will weigh in on what they think may be successful, and Advertising Sales will weigh in on what they hope will happen, and what they hope to sell the Program at and to what advertisers. The Media Planner will have to take all these opinions into account, and yet be the singular entity to understand everything else going on at the proposed launch time and push back where necessary.

This involves understanding the “Media Math” of your channel and audience. Much like your Mother may have told you to first eat your vegetables off your plate, lets deal with the math part first of Media Planning. The key terms of this are: GRPs or TRPs, Gross Ratings Points or Target Ratings Points. When a promo spot airs, each spot will reach a certain number of viewers. In each demographic, the numbers will vary greatly. In a sporting event, you may reach more Men 18–49 (M1849) than Women 18–49. In a reality program (think “the Housewives of…”) it will be the reverse. For each Demo, a number will be assigned by the reality of who watched. This number is expressed as a percentage of that Demo audience in your “Universe.” A 1.0 Rating for the demo will count as one GRP or TRP for that demo. The raw count is called Impressions. All Media Planning is done only by GRP/TRP achieved. As well as Reach and Frequency (R&F).

Many times, both Programming and Senior Management will ask “how many spots ran?” The job of the Media Planner is to re-direct these questions to “how many viewers did we reach?” or as you see in a bit “How many viewers did we reach enough times to get them to tune in?”

The “number of spots ran” question is immaterial. A spot in Prime Time may reach 600,000 viewers. A spot at 3AM may only reach 10,000 viewers. So how does the number of spots run make a difference?

Reach and Frequency (R&F) is important: Reach is defined as “How many of my audience have I reached?” You can never hope to reach 100% of them with limited Promo Time and current viewing patterns of viewers. To reach all viewers who are in your Universe, you would need to run a 30-second spot, 24×7 in every break position to achieve that. Unfortunately, many viewers will have abandoned your channel out of being fed up seeing the same spot so many times.

The goal of any media plan should be to reach as many of the target audience as possible, without entering “negative frequency.” Negative frequency is the point where viewers have seen your promo so many times that when it comes on, they leave your channel, to ill effects. Starting out a Media Plan will require at least picking a Demographic (Demo – M1849) to which you hope to achieve effective frequency.

Typically, a good media plan will try and reach approximately 70% of the Universe of viewers who WATCH your channel, and to reach them enough times in a “purchase cycle” to influence their viewing behavior. This is called Effective Frequency. That number will typically be between a minimum of three, and a maximum of seven. So, most Media/promo plans will look to achieve this over a period of four weeks, four weeks considered the Buy cycle for new shows.

There are systems that will project these numbers for you, as it requires the ingest of huge volumes of research data to make these calculations. These measurements use Audience Targeting/Affinity. Just getting to an effective frequency against a specific demo is usually not enough. A Media Plan will need to target specific groups of viewers within a demographic. For instance, if you are launching a Situation Comedy, you want to reach those viewers in the demo that view Comedy programs, on either your own channel, or on competitor channels.

There is research data that allows for systems building a Media Plan, with your input targeting information, that will track viewers in that category, and will direct your promo spots to where you can reach those exact groupings effectively, without wastage.

As well, those systems need to understand when the program is running, taking into account the viewers that it will try to reach are even available at that day/time to view the program.

A critical consideration is Spot Length: The Media Planner also needs to take into account the length of the Promo spots available, and when they should be run. Promo spots in the beginning of the Media Plan execution should be long enough to tell the story of what you are promoting to attract viewers. This usually requires a spot of at least 30 or 60 seconds. Many Media planners make the mistake of running shorter spots (15) at the onset of the Promo Campaign and scheduling the longer length spots closer to air.

Audience testing has proven that initially running the longer spot at the start of the campaign, then using the shorter “cut-down” of that spot closer to premier, causes viewers who have seen the longer spot first to immediately recall that when they view the shorter length spot. It’s the way the human mind works. Have you ever picked up a book, read the first two pages and realize how it ends because you read it years ago? Promotion spots have the same effect.

There are added tools available to the Media Planner in reaching audience. Especially for reinforcing the messages they received earlier. These are the in-show graphics you see run on many channels. They go by many terms – Lower thirds, Snipes, Violators, Ghost Bugs – but serve a very distinct purpose for audience targeting.

There is a great deal of clutter on most channels. Break durations seem longer every year and have more commercials in them (especially since the advent of the 15 second commercial). Your Promo spot runs the risk of being lost in this clutter. An effective mechanism is to use these in show graphics as “reminders.” In the show segment following a break where your Promo spot ran, scheduling a 12-second graphic as a “reminder” – Premiers Tuesday at 10PM – will assist in getting the target audience to remember what you are offering. They also help reach viewers who may not watch any breaks at all. The planning of these should be just as sophisticated as the rest of the Media Plan.

Your own Promotions, when added up, make you the single biggest advertiser on your channel. The use of these tools will help you generate success. Many a failed, expensive program has resulted when effective Promo Planning is skipped.

Karyn Reid, the Vice President for Broadcast Systems at Fox Corporation, has been a Product Manager at both broadcast traffic/automation and program management software vendors and has been involved in the SMPTE BXF schema committee since its inception. In this section she provides insight into the systems that monetize the program channels, the advertising sales and scheduling tools.

Ad Sales and Traffic systems have taken different evolutionary paths depending on the geographies and businesses that are supported by the software design. Different terminology has also been adopted to refer to similar processes, depending on the business or region. The system that modules are contained within can also vary, so for this review we will focus on the functional module versus the system that contains them. Most of these systems now include integration between their elements, and much of the data that in the past was manually entered in multiple systems can be entered once and flow through the systems at the required time.

With years of experience in broadcast operations and as VP/GM for iHeart radio’s Florical Master Control Automation software division, Shawn Maynard provides a thoughtful analysis of the next workflows that media follows on its way to transmission, Master Control Automation and playback:

Since the beginning of television, various electronic machinery has been in use to produce the product that viewers have enjoyed for ages. As the industry evolved, the electronic machinery became more and more intelligent and eventually allowing external control. This external control, once used for more conveniently placed buttons for Master Control operators, birthed the dawn of automation. The inception of automation began with very basic capabilities to manage tape/reel machines for recording live content for later playback, then quickly evolving into full automated control that manages the entire Master Control workflow chain. It would be very difficult to operate a modern television Master Control environment without some level of automation governing the process. Automation moved from a luxury to a necessity for the future of television content management and playout.

Television automation can be divided into three basic functions within Master Control: Acquisition and Preparation, Traffic and Management, and On-Air Playout. Each of these various functions will be explored from a high-level point of view providing the reader with a general understanding of the role of automation within a broadcasting environment. Before diving into each individual area of function we must first provide an overall description of the workflow of Master Control to understand the environment that demands the need for automation.

A viewer is sitting on their sofa enjoying their favorite television program without any thought of how it was delivered to them in the full package in which they see. The fact that the process is invisible to the viewer is a good thing and a testament of the success of automation. A broadcast company includes many different departments that are responsible for various aspects of the product that eventually is delivered to the viewer. From a very high level, a typical facility will have a Sales department that is responsible for selling commercial time (i.e., commercials/spots/ interstitial content), a Programming department for tailoring what “shows” will air, a Creating Services/ Marketing department for promoting the product to the consumer through various means, Production department for creating unique and live content, and a Traffic department that is responsible for aggregating all the business needs and create a schedule that contains the detailed instructions on how each element will play out for a given day.

The very end of this television “sausage factory” process chain that is responsible for what the viewer will see is Master Control. They are the tip of the funnel that receives, manages, and plays out the content that comes from all the various departments to fulfill the instructions of the schedule from Traffic. The strongest relationship and acting liaison between Master Control and the other business units is Traffic. In today’s automated environment the responsibility of how content will air has shifted from the Master Control operator to Traffic. The automation system precisely executes the schedule provided.

The first steps media takes in these workflows is in the acquisition and preparation phase. Traffic may be responsible for the schedule of instructions of how and when the precise content will play back but they do not generally provide the content itself. The responsibility of Master Control is to acquire the content needed to fulfill the Traffic schedule. In today’s operating environment most content arrive via Internet delivery into a local storage device as electronic files with metadata instructions attached and, although rarer, some content arrives via satellite stream that must be recorded into a local storage device. Automation has evolved over the years to manage the entire acquisition chain by monitoring “watch folders” for the delivery of electronic files and matching the inherent metadata provided with the local copy instructions of the asset from Traffic.

The automation will automatically retrieve the file, run it through a transcoding process as necessary to create a localized version, update its database, and move the finalized copy into the on-air video playback system. Additionally, any satellite or live video feed content is handled in a similar way. The automation will control the various machinery needed for receiving the feed to convert the content into an electronic file for the process described above. In general, all of the machinery (equipment) necessary for acquisition of the content is managed and controlled by the automation system. The operator interfaces with the system through a GUI (Graphic User Interface) in order to verify or manipulate the content once it is acquired within the system.

The main responsibility of the Master Control operator is to verify that all content is in the system and ready for on-air playback. By using various applications provided by automation the operator will manage the content to verify the quality and ensure that it will playback as instructed within the Traffic schedule. For long-form programs (i.e., shows) the operator will verify that each segment matches the format that is scheduled. Most Internet-provided content will contain format metadata that the automation system will automatically incorporate within the on-air database and operators mainly use the automation GUIs to verify or make any necessary adjustments to the timing details of each segment. The ultimate goal is to ensure that all content is prepared and ready for on-air playback.

It the symbiotic relationship between Traffic and Master Control cannot be understated. It is imperative that these two departments “dance to the same rhythm” and work closely together. Master Control is at the mercy of the broadcast schedule and metadata instructions for interstitial content that is provided Traffic. Whereas Traffic is dealing with sales, programming, creative services, News, and advertising agency instructions, Master Control is utilizing electronic equipment to manage the essence (“physical representation”) of the content itself. They have at their disposal all the equipment and software necessary to ensure the integrity of the on-air product.

Advancements in technology standards has significantly helped to facilitate the integrity of communications between these two departments such as SMPTE’s ST-2021 (Broadcast eXchange Format). BXF has standardized the electronic communications between the Traffic software system and the Master Control automation system to ensure they are speaking a common “language.” The growing use of BXF within television is helping to maintain metadata workflows from programming and commercial content that carry through the Traffic business system on to the on-air Master Control automation system.

Asset Management is also a large part of the overall responsibility of Master Control to maintain content inventory for playback. Storage architecture varies from one business to another based on the amount of content that can be accessable by the automation system. MAM (Media Asset Management) and DAM (Digital Asset Management) system integrations are becoming more prevalent and necessary as business requirements become more complex and move beyond simple playback instructions. The integration of these systems within automation has advanced the capabilities of the playback system significantly. The storage management can now be maintained in more efficient technology mediums like off premise solutions (cloud) or complex archive management solutions that are seamless to the on-air automation system.

As already detailed previously, the schedule instructions provided by the Traffic system are what the Master Control automation system utilizes to manage the on-air product. Those instructions account for every second of the 24-hour broadcast business day. Depending on the type of on-air product, the complexity of those scheduled instructions vary: for simple on-air products, it could be playing back pre-recorded content in a back-to-back linear fashion requiring very little interaction of Master Control operators outside of maintenance issue; for more complex operations a schedule may include a variation of live programming, pre-recorded content, graphics, and dynamic interaction (e.g., sports, breaking news, etc.).

Master Control automation should require little to no operator intervention to perform the duties found within the Traffic system. The instructions should be clear and concise for the automation system to fully execute them consistently and flawlessly. In a traditional Master Control environment, the automation system will be managing and controlling various equipment needed for playout.

This equipment includes but is not limited to a video router, Master Control switch, video servers, keyers, graphics systems, and more. More modern systems are using software versions of traditional hardware that run on COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) computers called Integrated Playout or “Channel-in-a-Box.” In the early adoption stage of the always evolving Master Control automation is moving to more advanced technology in virtualized environments that move away from monolithic software applications to micro services that handle the functional requirements in a more efficient and economical workflow.

What does the future hold? It is impossible to accurately predict details of the future of Master Control but certainly the broadcast industry is moving quickly in the footsteps of the IT industry by using more software-centric solutions to provide greater quality that is more adaptable to an ever-changing consumer expectation.

There have been three main technology shifts over the past 15 years that has radically changed the landscape of Master Control. Moore’s Law has remained faithful by accurately predicting computing capabilities that operate at speeds to enable more software-centric tools to meet and exceed hardware equivalents birthing the use of COTS computers in place of purpose-built hardware. The shift from SDI (Serial Digital Interface) video standards to a wider-industrial IP (Internet Protocol) standard allows more IT industry tools and deeper manipulation of the video workflow without damaging the integrity of the product. Finally, the expanding use of cloud technology has moved the product out of the purpose-built facility to a more virtual environment that can be controlled and managed throughout software solutions.

These shifts of technology demand more and more need for intelligent Master Control automation solutions that are reliable, flexible, and simple to integrate. The mantra of doing more with less is remaining true. To add to that, there is a desperate need for automation solutions to simplify the inherently complex environment of disparate technologies.

In conclusion, Master Control operations are like snowflakes; to the casual observer they are all the same. However, the devil is in the details. No two operations are ever exactly the same. They each have unique requirements based upon the on-air product they control. Automation is key to keep advancing the capabilities of the on-air product by continuing to make the process more and more simple to manage.

Again, drawing on Karyn Reid for her expertise, here is a description of BXF and how it applies to our media workflows:

The SMPTE Broadcast eXchange Format (BXF) standard was originally planned as a way for business systems and playout vendors to reduce the number of software interfaces they were maintaining. Each time a vendor released a new update, each of the existing interfaces had to be regression tested to ensure that there would be no impact on TV stations’ critical schedule functions. As the group began its work, it became clear that there were many other workflows that could be improved with an agreed upon standard, and the work also expanded to include transactional as well as file-based communication between systems.

Early in the adoption of BXF, there was a common misconception that BXF was a “plug-and-play” standard. It is a very expansive schema and a single transaction can be expressed in multiple ways, so it is key that all systems in a transaction agree on the structure of the data. BXF is also extensible, so any data missing in the schema can be added to an integration as long as the vendors agree to the schema expansion.

One commonly known application of BXF is Live Log, which allows changes made in a Traffic Log to be updated in Playout in real-time. Live Log replaces a very manual process for traffic schedule revisions made after a Log is completed. The benefit of Live Log is that changes can be made in the Log module, where the revision can be validated against ad sales, promotion scheduling, and Program Rights parameters, ensuring a late change will not violate any of the many constraints managed by these systems. A caution to this is that the Log module may not know the actual “live” time, and changes made too close to live, or even past the actual time, may impact the on-air product. Any implementation of Live Log should include at least one gating mechanism to ensure changes are made far enough in the future that issues, such as missing content, can be resolved before the event is scheduled to air.

BXF also supports Schedule and Program Format communication between Program Management and Traffic systems, Content updates including dubbing and purging commands, and Reconciliation (As-Run) data.

The ability to communicate real-time Recon data can have the greatest impact on a media organization’s revenue. Traditionally, the Recon process is completed on the morning of the first business day after the schedule log was completed. If a spot was missed on the last day of an ad campaign, but the traffic staff was not notified until the next business day, the result can be a credit for the missed spot and lost revenue. If the Traffic system was made aware of the issue as soon as it occurs, the staff, or the system itself, could resolve the missed spot and save the revenue.

Being able to add or remove content records or update the status of content is another powerful feature of BXF. Many times, content is received via a Content Delivery Service, and then the metadata is manually entered in the business systems. This can result in keying errors or mismatches in metadata, which can flow through the various workflows to the invoice and delay payment. By using BXF to pass a single source of truth between systems in the media workflow, processes should be smoother with less confusion and error. Real-time content deletion can resolve a common issue, where content is deleted by Traffic staff and the Content ID is reused shortly afterwards. If the deletion of the original content is delayed in the playout system, the old content may air in place of the new content. The use of BXF to support Content IDs such as Ad-ID in place of legacy House Numbers can help reduce the risk of incorrect content being aired.

BXF has been used to pass inventory availabilities between Traffic and Promo Optimization systems, Promo schedules including secondary events, program schedules between Networks to Broadcast stations, and has supported Metadata communication.

As media workflows have expanded to include systems such as MAM/DAM, Content Delivery Systems, and Enterprise Service Buses (ESB), BXF has found a place in the communication workflow.

The BXF committee continues to refine and expand the schema which now includes Traffic/Copy Instructions and enhanced Secondary Event commands along with many small updates that support new technologies.

Quality control in a broadcast operation is different from the QC operations used in post-production. To understand the workflows, we have tapped Frans De Jong, Senior Engineer, European Broadcasting Union to supply an understanding of its wide-ranging impact:

Quality Control (QC) is essential for making sure content is technically useable and editorially correct. A lack of proper QC can translate itself in delays, viewer dissatisfaction, and potentially hefty costs for recommissioning and penalties.

QC Workflow

The amount of QC automation that can be achieved depends first of all on the types of checks a company wants to perform. Computers are good at (file) format checks, but humans are still better at spotting specific baseband video issues and, of course, at editorial QC. Practical workflows make use of this complementarity, typically starting with automated QC, followed by the manual checks. If a file can be failed fast automatically, it prevents wasting valuable human QC resources (Figure 5.5).

Example workflow consisting of an automated QC step followed by a manual one.

Standardizing QC

To make sure QC checks and their results can be compared between organizations, devices, and QC profiles³ (which may use different parameter settings for the same checks), the EBU has created a large open catalogue⁴ of hundreds of QC definitions for the industry to implement in tools and for content parties to create delivery specifications with. Each of the checks is illustrated by a card, which summarizes the key characteristics of what the check is about. A public API allows QC product creators, QC service providers, and users to download the latest definitions.

In fact, in BXF 6.0, a fully standardized XML structure that is completely compatible with the EBU set of QC definitions was added in XML form (Figure 5.6).

To maximize these advantages, Media Asset Management systems must be able to offer an end-to-end IMF workflow that leverages the IMF specifications without overloading processes with internal conversions or limitations in the content management structure. New version generation needs to be managed efficiently in order that no media is replicated until required: different versions should merely reference the media masters in unique compositions that includes the additional elements needed for new material; i.e., a localized version in French with text insertions and audio and subtitles in French; another commercial version with different edits; a different technical version; etc. And finally, content delivery must fit seamlessly into IMF specification compliancy so that the package that is delivered takes the advantages of all these “Logical Versions,” supporting a flexible mechanism to select the proper components to deliver (video, audio, subtitles), in the correct order and with the transformations to be accomplished for a particular distribution reception site.

According to Julian Fernandez-Campon, the Chief Technical Officer of MAM Solution vendor Tedial, “To summarize, new Media Asset Management Systems need to be able to support:

• IMF Import, processing the IMF package and creating assets that can be physical or virtual, preserving and extending the IMF Composition playlist without media duplication

• Content Enrichment, by creating new versions establishing logical references to the Master and taking advantage of the logical references to the media from the Master(s)

• IMF Delivery not limited by the original IMF received packages, ready to generate new compliant packages with any compatible combination of the components for a specific Title: Video (SDR, HRD, different aspect ratios), Audio Languages, Subtitles.

• IMF end-to-end workflows imply the full support of the IMF packages at all levels, not ‘IMF-ish’ MAM that stores and manages the media using IMF labels without actually processing the assets and maximizing the advantages of content management and exchange.

An end-to-end IMF workflow requires these stages:

• IMF Import: IMF Content is received as a complete unit, or with additional supplemental packages, and is ingested into the MAM;

• Content Enrichment: full support for the creation of new logical versions or new component aggregation, such as adding subtitles or audio tracks that were not received as IMF packages; and

• IMF Delivery: Content can be delivered as the original IMF package received, or as new IMF packages based on logical combinations of the components, supplements and assemblies.”

For a successful IMF compliant MAM deployment, content enrichment must be considered a fundamental part of the workflows. Content enrichment includes all the processes and asset workflows that occur inside a media operational facility to enhance the received content and increase its value. In practice, there is limited content exchange based on an originally distributed IMF package, as every media company and broadcaster have their unique methods of enhancing the value of their incoming media. While there are many types of content-enrichment activities and an IMF compliant MAM supports them all, the most common scenarios include subtitles aggregation, audio tracks aggregation, and new versions of the image sequence.

Subtitles aggregation occurs when subtitles are generated externally to be attached to a particular title in the MAM. Subtitles are received as files in a specific format, converted if needed into IMSC1 to comply with the IMF-constrained specifications, and attached to the Asset Title within the MAM library hierarchy. If subtitles aggregation is required, it’s crucial that the MAM system can expand its asset management to display and manage all the multiple subtitle languages and types to be supported.

Audio tracks aggregation as individual files is similar to the subtitles case with the difference that there are more variants due to the sonic layout (2.0, 5.1, etc.) and the class (Full Mix, Music and Effects, etc.). In the IMF compliant MAM, audio tracks must be attached to the Asset Title and a proxy generated.

New Versions can be created within customer facilities using MAM tools to generate new localized versions (trimming, adding text insertions, etc.) that are related to the main title with a specific, annotated relationship. New version workflows present several challenges, depending on the customer business rules, such as slate insertion and any formatting of the video content including bars, audio tones, blacks, etc., that might need to be done with or without an off-line editor. A key feature for an IMF compliant MAM is to manage new version assembly or control the import of the EDL from an editor to identify new fragments and create a logical asset referencing the Master in the MAM. IMF identifiers can be crucial to streamlining and automating this operation.

IMF Publishing is the other key aspect of an end-to-end IMF workflow. To take a very simplistic view, the MAM system needs to be able to “export” IMF packages. One simple and straightforward approach is to “route” the imported IMF packages through the MAM and deliver them in the same compliant package as they were received, yet this simple workflow is not enough for a true end-to-end IMF workflow as the following features are in demand by media companies:

• Export both Complete and Supplemental IMF Packages: To take the most advantage of the IMF capabilities and cost efficiencies, masters will be delivered as a complete IMF package and the localized or editorial versions as supplemental. This decision depends on customer business rules and their recipients’ requirements – in some cases a reception site requirement might force the export of a localized version as a complete package. Usually, a mix of complete and supplemental packaging is required;

• Delivery of new combinations of audio/subtitles: The media company may need to deliver a combination of audio/subtitles that was never received in the original master IMF package, e.g., French version with English subtitles. Typically to keep their costs low, a translation company only delivers a French supplemental file that references the original master;

• New IMF package generation, for those versions generated in-house that did not arrive as IMF Packages;

• New components export in the IMF Package to allow the generation of new packages with a combination that was never received (e.g., English 2.0 + English 5.1 + French 2.0 + French 5.1); and

• Transformations: Reception site–specific requirements for generation of site unique audio routing, video transformations, etc., based on the OPL delivery profiles stored in the IMF compliant MAM.

Customer Business Rules outside of IMF: IMF is standardized, well defined and is great for content distribution. The specification permits some level of freedom for customer-specific applications according to their needs, which implies some business rules must be designed to be compliant with the IMF requirements. When implementing workflows, the challenge for a MAM system is the solution must continue to allow business flexibility at the same time the core IMF support is maintained. Some examples that are in use in media workflows include custom metadata fields that become data model extensions; the co-relation of multiple masters (SDR, HDR, 16:9) that arrive as independent IMF Complete packages, yet need to be related in the MAM; restrictions in formats, for example where the customer does not allow HDR versions for specific media; specific essence conventions in the video/audio, to insert slates, tones, blacks, etc.; and associated media such as artwork, photography, trailers, and other related components that need to be linked with the title. All these business rules are outside the native IMF support in a compliant MAM. A successful solution can embed these variations within the workflows to comply with particular media companies’ business requirements and offer an efficient IMF end-to-end workflow tailored to specific needs.

Examples of the application of IMF principles can be drawn from multiple sources, such as this case study from the Netflix techblog entitled “House of Cards Season 3:”

Netflix started ingesting Interoperable Master Packages in 2014, when we started receiving Breaking Bad 4K masters. Initial support was limited to complete IMPs (as defined above), with constrained CPLs that only referenced one ImageSequence and up to two AudioSequences, each contained in its own track file. CPLs referencing multiple track files, with timeline offsets, were not supported, so these early IMPs are very similar to a traditional muxed audio / video file.

In February of 2015, shortly before the House of Cards Season 3 release date, the Netflix ident (the animated Netflix logo that precedes and follows a Netflix Original) was given the gift of sound.

Unfortunately, all episodes of House of Cards had already been mastered and ingested with the original video-only ident, as had all of the alternative language subtitles and dubbed audio tracks. To this date House of Cards has represented a number of critical milestones for Netflix, and it was important to us to launch season 3 with the new ident. While addressing this problem would have been an expensive, operationally demanding, and very manual process in the pre-IMF days, requiring re-QC of all of our masters and language assets (dubbed audio and subtitles) for all episodes, instead it was a relatively simple exercise in IMF versioning and component-ized delivery.

Rather than requiring an entirely new master package, the addition of ident audio to each episode required only new per-episode CPLs. These new CPLs were identical to the old but referenced a different set of audio track files for the first ~100 frames and the last ~100 frames. Because this did not change the overall duration of the timeline, and did not adjust the timing of any other audio or video resources, there was no danger of other, already encoded, synchronized assets (like dubbed audio or subtitles) falling out-of-sync as a result of the change.

The impact of IMF principles and methodologies can result in significant efficiencies and costs savings. Francois Abbe, CEO of Mesclado of France, commissioned multiple case studies to investigate the application of IMF to current workflows and the following summarizes the results of the case study #1 inquiry: