A Little Name Change

Thanks to Larry Keene at TDGA.org for this write up! Jerry Katz Gets Title Change at BroadView Software – It’s a realization that BroadView’s expansion into Radio a few years ago now has melded into the combo worlds of Webs, TV, Cable and, of course, Radio itself. “I’ve changed my title to Regional Sales Director from Radio Sales Director. Since I find myself talking to several clients with cross ownership of TV and Radio, the old title seemed limited. Justifying his inclusion of TV, Katz jokingly told TDGA: “And I actually did spend some time in several stations over my career that were combo ops, with some time on camera doing TV Sports (WSAV-TV) on Saturdays and weather (WJCL-TV) when absolutely no one else was left in the building that could do it! And trust me, the guys in the control room used the opportunity to move the maps to keep me jumping. I think I predicted absolutely no snow for a Savannah Christmas day to wake up Christmas Morning with two inches of the white stuff sticking on the ground. Thanks for the update, Jerry and the added role for US Traffic Sales in the U.S.

 

Fast-Growing Broadcast Network Consolidates Gains, Opens Doors With Advanced Tech Infrastructure

Every now and then it seems I have to go ahead and spread the news  of yet another addition to our BroadView Software Family.  Welcome to  The Country Network, coming to a local digital channel near you.

The Country Network, a fast-growing music broadcast, cable, and new media network founded in 2009, has implemented BroadView’s integrated traffic, programming and sales modules to upgrade its technical infrastructure.

Since its creation, the Country Network’s founder Warren Hansen has understood the importance of bringing the proper broadcast management tools to bear to realize his unique vision for his network. With BroadView, the network is able to manage the 40+ affiliates, live web and moble streams, and multiple IPTV providers (including Roku) more effectively while providing a firm foundation for future growth.

“We’ve come to BroadView after an exhaustive experience with the current technology,” said Hansen. “We take an innovative approach to classic broadcast issues and BroadView gives us the flexibility plus the ease-of-use to build the business how we envision it and not how the technical infrastructure dictates.”

Hansen noted that this “exhaustive experience” goes beyond researching the marketplace and includes previous installations of OSI as well as other traffic systems. In practice, these proved unsuitable for implementing the Country Network’s business strategy.

BroadView’s solution for the Country Network puts programming, traffic and sales on the same information infrastructure while seamlessly interfacing with existing systems. This unified architecture is the hallmark of BroadView’s highly customizable modular approach. Clients enjoy the power of a custom-designed system with the economy of an off-the-shelf package. Also, customers receive updates to the latest revisions to the product. As new features and modules become available, they are able to quickly implement the latest capabilities as needed.

“The Country Network takes an innovative approach and their success is proving that such innovation is the key to opportunity,” said Michael Atkin, BroadView Founding Partner and President. “We are in the business of providing highly configurable, modular systems that meet the vast variety of needs in today’s fast-changing media marketplace. With BroadView, the clients’ needs define the technology – not vice-versa.”

About The Country Network
The Country Network (“TCN”) is an innovative music video network dedicated to providing today’s country music enthusiasts more choices in televised and digital programming. TCN is the only broadcast television network dedicated exclusively to airing country music videos. The Country Network with “all Country Music Videos, all the time” offers broadcasters a turn-key solution to utilizing their digital channel capacity, while attracting the largest music audience. The Country Network: It’s Your Country!
www.tcncountry.com

 

Clear Skies But Talk of The Cloud

Of course this convention would have to have a few buzz words to be normal.  And like most recent events, “Cloud Computing” and “Work Flow” were the two biggies.  Regarding Cloud Computing for Broadcasters, Michael Madden of Avid gave his “101” version.

By now most everyone knows what Cloud Computing is, but not everyone is sure they want to be in the clouds.  The process has been around much longer than the new name.  It basically is a server, with all your computer applications, that you access remotely.  When I do my banking, that cloud is in West Point, Georgia.  When playing around with any of my blogs, that cloud is in Arizona and I suspect that even St. Cloud, MN has a few clouds there too.

In one of Michael’s examples, several television stations could access a common production library, complete with stock or real time video, for fast news room editing with an almost unlimited library video or special effects. Now the cost savings for a group of television stations using a system like this makes sense. Not big equipment purchases for each location, just internet access and a web browser.

What I didn’t know was that Amazon Web Services can provide a cloud at reasonable charges.  Here’s the example, you buy a server for your station and unless it’s the automation, it’s probably getting real use only 8 hours per day.  Do you feel cheated that it’s sitting doing nothing the rest of the time?  Well, with the Amazon model, you pay for what you use. And that’s basically time on line and size of your data.  You need more space, it just grows automatically with you, less, and then it gets smaller.

You may however remember the news from several months ago about their server farm going down.  However, due to redundancy in many locations, Amazon customers didn’t really know about it other than what they read or heard in the news media.  They guarantee a reliability of 99.99999% and that’s a lot of 9’s.

So, the cloud can be a money saver based on your operation, or reduce some of the work load of your already overburdened IT Staff. But for many, the decision is to keep that cloud inside your operation where you have control of everything.  So for now, the forecast, Continued Partly Cloudy!

 

Rate Management 101 – A TAB Session

Several years ago, while working with another software vendor, I became the staff expert on Revenue and Rate Management. Now being the staff expert just meant I knew more about it (our software) than anyone else on the team and as I look back maybe I didn’t know enough.

There are several products designed to get you the maximum rates based on inventory demands.  And maybe that sentence is part of the problem.  You don’t need maximum rates everywhere; you need a rate to get you to budget.

At the Texas Association of Broadcasting convention this past week, Mike Mahone of Revenue Development Resources conducted a session called “Pricing to Win: Strategic Plan for Rate Management”  Before anyone buys software to work the rates, they really need to buy in on and understand the concept of pricing and be able to have your advertisers understand it as well.

In Australia, where our program was originally developed, all of radio understands the concept and the majority of stations sell that way.  Today I can name a handful of stations in the US that use one of the many products out there and get it, consistently “Nailing” their Budgets month after month.

Now much to the dismay of software vendors with extra priced rate management tools, Mike and his team have developed an Excel Spreadsheet that works all the magic formulas to get your rates right, to meet budgets. He offered it free to those of us in the meeting. You do need specific information from Traffic on inventory, but then the sheet does the heavy work.  From my point of view, I’d rather just give him a solid easy export from Traffic, after all the data is in there, right?

Mike points out that the biggest objection to this type of rate management is from within your own staff.   Understanding the math is just one step in getting the team on board to new ideas.  I liked the fact that even the lower priced ROS spots would get even distribution throughout the day parts and not all shoved to after 7PM for example.   Now Mike has been in the business long enough to know what he’s talking about, as a
Former Executive Vice President of the RAB. And he is practicing what he preaches, as he’s also the Market Manager for a three station cluster in Corpus Cristi with some pretty big name competition.  You can find more about him and the company at http://RDRToday.com.

 

Susan Harris Joins BroadView Software

Welcome to new staffer Susan Harris.   Susan Harris has joined BroadView Software as Director, New Business Development, to spearhead the sales efforts for OneSolution, the company’s new end-to-end research and sales proposal through traffic and programming package.

Harris brings over twenty years experience working with broadcast technology and began her career as a traffic professional. Over the years, she has seen systems evolve from mainframes and green screens to today’s desktop technology. She comes to BroadView after many years’ service in senior positions at VCI Solutions (now WideOrbit).

“We’re bringing a new value equation for the industry, so Susan Harris’ experience introducing and implementing technology for broadcasters is invaluable,” said Michael Atkin, BroadView Founding Partner and President. “Her cache is credibility – grounded in a thorough understanding of today’s broadcast technology marketplace.”

Harris says that the opportunity to introduce this new approach to broadcast management systems is the fulfillment of a vision she has shared for some time.

“The arrival of BroadView’s OneSolution marks a major advance,” said Harris. “It’s easy to appreciate what this offers in theory, but what is even more impressive is how they’ve made this a practical reality.”

Harris added that implementing the new end-to-end system is greatly eased by BroadView’s “trifecta” approach.

“The ‘trifecta’ is highly configurable software, excellent training plus full, electronic conversion of the client’s historical data. This greatly simplifies the transition to the new system so that the bottom-line advantages can be had faster and easier than ever,” she said.

 

Social Media for Broadcasters

Texas Broadcasters just wrapped up their 58th Annual Convention and Trade Show in Austin this past week. Nearly 1,200 attendees converged on the Renaissance Austin Hotel for two days of workshops and a Golf Tournament. Nearly 40 different meetings set for Radio & TV Managers and Sales Folks.

One of the final sessions and maybe one with the most attendance was Stephen Warley discussion on “Unlocking the True Value of Social Media”.  Stephen said those words that many Sales Managers in the room probably didn’t like to hear.  “Forget Cold Calling”, he said.  He echoed the words of another Sales Trainer I’ve followed lately, Frank J Rumbauskas, Jr., with similar thoughts.  Stephen said you should work to develop relationships with prospective clients using Social Media.  Essentially become the expert that others come to for help and buy what you’re selling.

Also emphasized was the need to use social tools to further educate you.  Monitor marketing trends and gather sales ideas.  His favorite social media tool appears to be Twitter.  And while he recommends Facebook for that business account, he’s thinking of quitting his personal account.  As a matter of fact, I stopped some Facebook habits I had after hearing his talk.  I guess you really don’t care that I’ve gone to the pub again today at five, since you’d expect me to do that anyway.

• Quick Facts from Stephens’s discussion:
• Top Five States on Facebook, 1 – California, 2 – Texas, 3 – New York, 4 – Florida and 5 – Illinois
• Record for Tweets per Second recorded during Super Bowl and it was 4,064 Tweets.
• Top Tweeting Events: , New Year’s Eve (In Japan), Obama’s Speech on Osama Bin Laden and the 2011 Super Bowl.

Small Businesses that post on Social Media more, get more noticed.  That makes sense, but the numbers were interesting.   Post 8 times or more a week and the average number of comments back is just over ten, but post less than once a week and less than one comment per day. The lesson is be consistent and post once or twice a day.

The final few minutes were discussions on promotions that can be done from each of the Social Media Sites. There are too many to name here, but freely available at his website, LocalBroadcastSales.com.  I would say you should pass that web address along to anyone in the Sales Department.  You’ll find lots of great ideas and forum discussions to spark that next promotion at your station.

 

TAB

Off to Austin on Wednesday for the Texas Association of Broadcasting. Two day show and hope to catch with some friends along the way!

 

Off to the Mothership This Weekend

A trip back to the home office in Toronto is on tap this weekend.  Working remote, you can sometimes miss some of the new enhancements coming our way and totally know nothing about “Big Secret Projects”, not that there are any.  I’ll be spending some time with development, service and training, along with some pretty nice dining along the way.

 

Traffic Defined

I thought it would be interesting to see what the new Merriam-Webster dictionary had for the word “Traffic”.  The business of bartering or buying and selling.  Since contracts for buys work through the Traffic Office I guess this makes sense.  Although, another definition reminded me of a few folks I met along the way in my radio career.  It said, “illegal or disreputable usually commercial activity <the drug traffic>

To be fair, I went to the ultimate source of all things traffic, the TDGA for their definition.  Here’s what they said: The broadcasting term used to describe the function of scheduling announcements, programs and other information to create a Station Log or daily schedule. Traffic has been expanded to include all facets of tracking Inventory, Reports, and Continuity and frequently includes billing, co-op and other functions involving both Broadcast and NTR revenue functions.

 

Yet Another Blog

Blogging is pretty second nature to me.  I’ve got several going on now covering community news to my camping adventures.  Having decades in Broadcasting and Broadcast Software, I thought “Why Not Another Blog?” So hold on to your hats, here we go again as we play in “Traffic”