The Zacapades

Final Thoughts: PBS TechCon April 19, 2009

Overall, I took away a lot of information from this year’s TechCon, and I had a fantastic time. It seemed this year that PBS was trying especially hard to cater the conference to the attendees, providing a variety of topics for a variety of interests and structuring the sessions so that there was little overlap. I had a fantastic time networking with other stations, meeting fellow scholarship winners, and basically coming away with the feeling that we are not alone in the issues and situations we face day to day. It’s always enjoyable to be able to talk to someone who has similar interests, let alone one who performs a similar job to yours.

At the closing session, they brought up a representative from AVID, who (unbeknownst to us) presented the ten PBS Next Generation Scholarship Winners each with a copy of Avid Media Composer software, which was absolutely incredible, not to mention incredibly generous. I’m spec-ing out my current computer system now… hopefully when I receive the software, I won’t have to purchase an entirely new computer to run it.

I hope to have the chance to return to TechCon at some point in the future.

Other Sessions Attended April 19, 2009

I attended several other sessions, other than those posted separately. While some of these sessions may have been enlightening on certain levels, I don’t think it’s incredibly necessary to go into graphic detail on them. If anybody has any questions or would like more information on any of these sessions, I would be happy to share.

“This is an EMERGENCY! Wildfire, Evacuations, and Hurricanes. OH MY!” – Several stations who had recently had devastating disasters spoke of the events and how they worked to restore their stations. These included WYES in New Orleans, which was essentially destroyed when the levy’s broke from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. KPBS in San Diego, whose radio transmitter just missed becoming engulfed by California Wildfires (in 2007, I believe). WNIT in Elkhart, Indiana, who in January 2009 had their headquarters completely destroyed by fire.

The basic point of this session was to have a disaster recovery plan within your station. Not to oversimplify the theory or downplay those stations who have experienced disasters, but the disaster recovery plan essentially boils down to over thinking everything and planning for every conceivable disaster, then getting everybody on the same page.

“Workflow Simplified – Details of the NGIS Station Services Platform” – Even more on NGIS. This session, I hoped, would delve into really the how-to on the NGIS system. This basically turned out to be a Q&A session for the system, which was still beneficial. Panelists included members of PBS, as well as representatives from ProTrack and Broadview. More reiteration on how NGIS will work for stations. A major point the NGIS creators are stressing is increased workflow because programs will be delivered quickly and in non-real-time. You won’t have to wait on a satellite feed, and repairing erroneous feeds will be simpler.

They also stated that once this system was fully effective, in time, we would be getting a majority of feeds from NGIS rather than over-the-air, allowing PBS to cut down on the programs they feed. This seemed to rattle several of the session attendees, who were worried about quick turnaround feeds “Nightly Business Report, World Focus, BBC World News.” PBS reps stated that they recognized that those feeds would need to continue, for obvious reasons. Attendees were also worried about their sat records going away and wanted some kind of time table for the dissolution of OTA feeds. PBS reps clarified that this would take time (hinting at years) before this happened and said  (in not so many words) not to worry about it.

“Emerging Broadcast Technologies: Update from Sony” – This session was chosen primarily to satisfy the nerd in me. 99% of Sony’s products are ALL HD now. The presentation was mainly product sales and specs and a preview of the equipment they would be showing at NAB. Most of it went over my head. Also, I didn’t write down EVERY feature. I swear, I heard the presenter say a camera could “heat a microwave oven” and that it had “video poker.” I think that’s just Vegas warping my mind. Of special interest – Sony will be releasing an automation system.

Getting Your Return on Investment: Creating an Unmanned or Partially Unmanned Master Control April 19, 2009

I have to be honest… I was quite disappointed with this session. Topically, I was very interested. I know there is loose discussion with how this would be done at WOUB, so I definitely wanted to see what an expert panel at PBS had to say. Turns out, very little. Everything that was presented was, for the most part, pretty obvious. “If you don’t want to have people there, you need some kind of alert system to tell you if something goes wrong.” Well, yeah. “You need a way to FTP into your system to fix something if it goes well.” You don’t say. “Somebody needs to be on call to check from home if an alarm goes off.” Uh huh. There were also many comments from a managerial standpoint on how “you’ve purchased this automation software, why pay more to have people monitor it?"

I’m an advocate of automation, to be sure, but it’s very hard to COMPLETELY remove the human element. Sure, there may be shifts where operator involvement is at a minimum. But what of those nights where the unexpected happens? Storms knock transmitters off the air, or a program happens to stop abruptly halfway through, or a satellite goes dark for no apparent reason? In television, seconds can seem like an eternity. But 90% of the time, WOUB operations is pretty quick to provide a solution. I couldn’t imagine a situation where, because of errors in notification systems, or delays in transportation and dispatch of personnel, kept our station off the air for… hours? The whole night? Sure, you can save some money by cutting a shift out, but is that worth equal to general reliability of service?

I sat through the session, expecting them to go into real nuts-and-bolts on how to accomplish this, but there was really nothing. Perhaps we at WOUB just have such a really good grasp at this that the information intended to be thought-provoking just came off as redundant.

Promotion Here, Promotion There… Promotion EVERYWHERE! April 19, 2009

I went into this session with pretty low expectations, based purely on our own equipment shortcomings in terms of keying. To my surprise, the session did spark some ideas for increased and improved promotion that I would like to see implemented at WOUB.

Indeed, much of the discussion focused on interstitial tagging and in-show tagging, which our current system would be unable to effectively perform. However, current advances in the latest Pro-Track may allow us to do even the most basic tagging, and if coupled with strategic placement of promos, could prove very beneficial for our viewers. Again, I’ll save the uber-techie details for when I return.

Another discussed area involved cross-promotion between digital streams. We may be able to accomplish this at WOUB by utilizing billboards at the top of our breaks, which would show viewers what is coming up in the next hour, not only on our HD channel, but on our SD channels as well. These slides would need to be created by our  production department, but should be simplistic. Essentially, a cookie cutter could be created that would allow for simple updates. With schedules set in advance, an afternoon’s worth of work could produce a month’s worth of usable promos… and all without on-the-fly tagging!

I propose we do a test run of this. Production could produce a week’s worth of billboard slides for the WOUB channels ONLY, and test this “up next” feature for just that week. Depending on the feedback we get (if any), and gauging the increase in workload, we can make a decision on whether or not to keep this system in place.

PBS TechCon: Day 3 April 17, 2009

The third and final day of PBS TechCon ‘09 is upon us… er, me…

Today is PACKED, with sessions beginning at 8am, lasting through to 5pm tonight.

On a personal note, my plane home departs at 6am on Saturday morning. Because of the quick turnaround, I will be focusing my energies Friday on taking notes at the conference and packing my belongings when the conference ends. I will address Fridays sessions, as well as a couple Thursday sessions I have not had a chance to report on yet, when I return to Ohio.

I’ve had a great time in Las Vegas and look forward to an exciting final day at TechCon.

NGIS: The Wave of the Future (again) April 17, 2009

Much of this year’s TechCon focuses on PBS’ newest forthcoming technology, the NGIS (Next Generation Interconnect System) non-real time server. Essentially, the NGIS equipment would enable programming to be sent as data to each station’s server in non-real time and would allow for increased recovery from errors that can accompany most over-the-air, real-time feeds.

At the Traffic Advisory Committee meeting, Charles Cole announced that he was able to pull strings and offer the first NGIS demonstration to traffic personnel(i.e., us). There are several NGIS demonstrations scheduled for TechCon, but our session would be specifically aimed towards traffic staff.

With NGIS references in every session that day, the bar was set pretty high going into the NGIS demo. We were greeted with a brief presentation featuring an animated character named NRT (non-real-time) Nate, the NGIS mascot, that showed viewers how the NGIS system worked in INCREDIBLY simplistic terms. The presentation was so juvenile that it was borderline insulting, which was echoed in later conversations with several individuals. Whether or not the presentation was intended for PBS viewers (who, in my opinion, would have no use for this), or other station staff that might not fit into traffic, operations, or engineering (which, again, would have little use for this), the presentation seemed to be poorly aimed.

It was described repeatedly as “simple” and “seamless,” and other similar words that seemed to flaunt the greatness of the NGIS. However, when the demonstration took place, several errors became very apparent. There were audio issues and format playout problems. Clearly, the NGIS wasn’t as close to being ready as the PBS staff seemed to be  indicating.

At Thursday morning’s opening session, another presentation, hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson of Nova Science Now, placed the NGIS system on an even higher pedestal. While it was less insulting than the “NRT Nate” video, it took an overly simplistic viewpoint of the NGIS system, only outlining the highlights. Not that a presentation should dwell on the weak points of a topic, but to those who may not fully understand the NGIS system, it creates the impression that the system can do no wrong. In reality, there are still snags in the system and it will not be as error-free as it appears on the surface.

I discussed the NGIS with several individuals at lunch, who had several different viewpoints. The NGIS system has been talked about for several years. We were supposed to have this system in place well before now. This delay has caused several stations to purchase equipment to work around problems that was supposed to be solved by the NGIS. Many feel that the move to HD by PBS before NGIS was made available was a poor decision. Several stations had to purchase additional HD receivers and converters to insure they would have the right format of program for the right outlet (whether it be an HD or SD channel). Having the NGIS system earlier could have resolved this. Stations would have been able to receive NRT programming without having to go through these major SAT and converter upgrades.

After talking with people, I feel (on the whole) that stations weren’t ready for HD in terms of server size. Many of those I’ve talked to experienced (and many still experience) the server pinch brought on by having to record all of these HD feeds. While the NGIS would not have greatly helped online storage for all stations, it would have offered an alternative to receiving programs that would have softened the need to hold large HD programs for lengthy periods.

At the risk of sounding unimpressed with the NGIS system, let me reiterate. NGIS, if it works properly and at its best, will be incredible. In years to come, it will become the primary source for PBS programming. This technology has existed for a long time (look at P2P file sharing), and to see it finally implemented in a system that will greatly help out our station is fantastic. But the last few years of NGIS promises seem to have left a bitter taste in the mouths of several PBS stations. They spent large amounts on satellites, converters, and other gear that WHEN NGIS is fully functional, will become obsolete.

When I return, if anybody has any technical questions on the NGIS, I will likely be able to answer them. I’ve intentionally not gone into great technical detail in this post, but nevertheless, I feel I understand the system fairly well, and would be happy to discuss it.

PBS TechCon: Day 2 April 16, 2009

Apologies for being behind on my blog post. After yesterday’s long day of PBS-ness, I was pretty exhausted. I started to post something, but was falling more and more asleep as I was writing. I thought it best to wait until I was perhaps a little more coherent.

Getting ready to start the general welcome session. Right now, I’m sitting in the middle of a HUGE room. I would take a picture, but it really wouldn’t show this room’s immensity. Heh, that’s just like me… come to a PBS conference and waste blog space talking about how large I thought the room was. That’s like going to the Oscars and saying, “I wasn’t crazy about their choice of seat color.”

Upon entering, I saw my name on two large monitors on a slide congratulating the Next Generation Scholarship winners. That was pretty cool.

Anyway, the general session is about to begin. More later… I promise!

**Note: Apparently, I don’t have internet access, so this blog will be posted later.**

PBS TechCon: Traffic Advisory Committee: Opening and Welcome April 15, 2009

This was perhaps the most traffic-specific session (for obvious reasons). I had a chance to meet Charles Cole (ThinkTV) and Cricket Masson (TAC representative), both of whom were quite friendly.

The session had the feel of a secret club, which was both humorous and enjoyable. Cricket led the group in a game of “Name that NOLA code.” It was a say-it-if-you-know-it format, but had it been a competition, I would have won hands down.

Following introductions and entertainment, we broke into smaller groups discussing several issues, which included: SD in an HD World, DTV Conversion, Underwriting, Pledging on Multiple Channels, Automation Challenges, and Neilsen. I chose to partake in the Automation Challenges group, with the intent on hopping around to other groups, but the conversation was so intriguing I decided to stay put.

I mostly listened, but offered information on WOUB’s automation system, server, and traffic software. Because few people have the Microfirst/ProTrack combination that we have (nobody I talked to had it either), it became hard and irrelevant to go into specifics with Microfirst and its relation to other automation programs. Several stations had the ProTrack/Sundance combination and discussed their issues with Sundance. Although I’m unfamiliar with Sundance’s layout, it was very interesting to hear the similarities in problems that exist with automation software in general. Many issues and concerns are shared between all stations and their automation systems. The ProTrack/(automation system) relationship with kill dates seems a global concern in making the two speak the same language to each other, instead of one killing on the day of, and another killing after that day has passed.

One factor I found incredibly intriguing was that stations seem to be utilizing ProTrack’s AFD (which, I believe, stands for Automatic Frame Detection) to change the aspect ratios on their Sencore receivers to eliminate excess black. For example, if an HD feed (normally letterbox) was 4×3, it would remove the side pillars. If a program was 16×9 in a 4×3 HD feed (postage stamp), pillars would be removed from the top and sides. Essentially, the AFD allows images to be cropped appropriately on the fly.

The biggest thing I took from this gathering was we, as traffic people, are more alike than we are different, which was very comforting.

PBS TechCon: Myers ProTrack User Session April 15, 2009

Speakers: Crist Myers, Jim Connors, Tracy Carter, Nancy Carter.

This session was set up in three parts: a review of the previous year’s accomplishments, a review of new and current happenings, and a question-and-answer session. Of particular interest was Myers’ new brand identity. They will now be called “Myers’ Information Systems,” to properly represent Myers’ multiple outlets other than ProTrack.

Much of the session discussed the features of the new 6.04 version of ProTrack. WOUB has yet to upgrade to this version, so I had the opportunity to look at some of the features and know what to expect when our upgrade does happen. Without going into too great detail, there are several features that WOUB will be able to utilize immediately. There are also other features that WOUB may not currently have that I think could be useful, such as the Media Assist Management system, which would allow files to be moved automatically from offline to online storage as needed (hint hint, Mark…).

Jim Connors discussed some of the other newer features of ProTrack such as the disaster recovery service (a separately purchased module) and stressed Myers’ desire to build the ProTrack community through the ProTrack website. (Side Note: PBS is also stressing the importance of community through PBS Connect). There was also much discussion on the work ProTrack will be doing regarding NGIS (see NGIS post).

I asked a couple of questions pertaining to mass attachment creation, but did not get a chance to ask about distinguishing SD and HD satellites between channels. I will be sure to ask at the booth tomorrow.

All in all, perhaps the most informative and useful session of the day, mostly because of my extensive daily use of ProTrack.

Vegas Vacation: Day 2 April 15, 2009

I tried to take Joan’s advice and stay away from the blog and just enjoy my vacation, so that’s what I did.

Basically, Cait and I spent the day relaxing. We had an enjoyable breakfast, then spent some time at the pool. The weather today, however, resembled Ohio more than it did Las Vegas, so our time was mostly spent in the hot tub.

We took a walk down the strip in the afternoon, attempting to register for the PBS Conference at Caesar’s Palace. We went in the wrong door and ended up wondering around aimlessly in the Forum Shops (the mall part of Caesar’s). We eventually found our way to the PBS registration, atop an incredibly large run of escalators.

While walking the strip, we were noting the different buildings we were passing, and initially didn’t notice a camera crew shooting an interview a few feet away. Luckily, we caught ourselves before we got too far into the shot and moved around the crew. As we were passing, I noticed the crew was from the Tonight Show, and the interviewer was Mo Rocca (from VH1 and Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart fame). Mo came to O.U. in 2003 for a performance at Mem.Aud, so it was cool to see him a little closer. I didn’t get a chance to meet him; didn’t want to interrupt the interview.

We saw the Amazing Jonathan (magician/comedian) later that night. It was a small crowd in a small theater, so our seats were quite nice. I’ve seen all of his Comedy Central specials, so it was cool to get to see him in person. He basically did the same shtick.

After that, we spent a quiet evening back at the hotel. I turned in semi-early to get ready for the PBS TechCon, which would begin the next day.