 |
In terrestrial radio and television broadcasting, centralcasting refers to the use of systems automation by which customised signals for broadcast by multiple individual stations may be created at one central facility.
|
In terrestrial radio and television broadcasting, centralcasting refers to the use of systems automation by which customised signals for broadcast by multiple individual stations may be created at one central facility.
Centralcasting is a form of broadcast automation which operates on the presumption that large quantities of content are similar and are handled in a consistent or repetitive manner across multiple stations in a broadcast station group. While each individual station has its own digital on-screen graphic logo, call sign and identity, much of the content on a typical affiliate station consists of a common television network or syndicated programming with a small number of local broadcast programming time blocks employed for television news and sports television coverage, public affairs programming or local television commercials.
Traditionally, many operations at an individual broadcast station were handled manually by broadcast engineering technicians at the local station. Network feeds would arrive by satellite; these would contain time cues to indicate when the station could switch to a prerecorded local station break from a videotape recorder, a local station ID from a character generator or a local program such as a newscast. Syndicated programming would arrive separately, either recorded in advance from satellite for tape delay or transported on prerecorded media. Local advertisements would be stored on tape cartridges ("carts") which would need to be inserted in the correct timeslots manually. A station could not operate unattended, even if it were merely retransmitting a network television programme originated elsewhere.
Broadcast automation relies on computers to store and retrieve video, largely eliminating the use of individual videotapes and allowing switching and retrieval of stored programming, advertising and titles to take place automatically. The server would operate from stored playlists, in which each programme, each commercial advertisement, each live or network feed and each station break had been configured in advance.
In some cases, broadcasters have operated groups of multiple stations at the regional or national level from one central facility, removing many tasks which were formerly done locally. These operations normally take one of two forms:
Many traffic and operations tasks, such as acquiring programming, selling advertisements, scheduling and keeping records of what was broadcast and billing advertisers take place behind the scenes, yet are also suited to automation and central operation by regional broadcast station groups. If computers handle scheduling of individual broadcasts, advertisements and local identification, a computerised record of what has been broadcast can easily be extracted for use at a central location to bill advertisers for broadcast time. Central operation of non-broadcast business functions removes the need for these tasks to be carried out at each of the multiple local stations.
For some broadcasters, centralisation of broadcasting operations has reduced the number of people required to operate a station, with some saving in cost. The removal of the space used by master control can then be co-opted for newsroom or studio expansion. This must be carefully balanced, however, against the cost of the extra communications links required from the local station to the hub; these often are optical fibre, microwave or (occasionally) satellite and can be costly if large amounts of digital video must be carried great distances.
By shifting many of the control tasks to a central hub, centralcasting may also reduce the investment which must be made in equipment for each individual local station in the group for upgrades such as digital television broadcasting as less equipment is required at each local station site. [1]
Centralcasting can also be used as a way to control a station's local operations remotely during off-hours (such as late night, where there may be no one or just a skeleton crew at the local site). This can allow a station to operate on an "auto-pilot" basis during off-hours in which it otherwise may have needed to sign-off.
An over-reliance on automation (and a reduction in the number of people at the local station) may leave an individual station less able to respond to local breaking news, such as tornadoes or other natural disasters which require local, live and immediate coverage. Individual local stations must also retain enough equipment to handle Emergency Alert System messages, routing them automatically to any remote locations being used to encode the final broadcast signals. [2]
The use of large amounts of centrally assembled programming may also reduce local diversity, turning a station into little more than a semi-satellite of a main broadcaster in another city. In some cases, individual stations in a group were formerly required to maintain nominal main studios in or near their respective communities of license but originated little or nothing from these facilities once most broadcast-related tasks become centralized. Often for smaller networks which maintained these minimum studios, there was no room devoted specifically for studio use, and the 'studio facility' was merely an office suite for the reasons of minimum compliance, hosting a public file and serving merely as a telephone/mail correspondence point, with its transmitter site hosting the EAS rack, along with a television camera to suffice the studio requirements (even if the signal would be merely redirected to another station giving emergency news and information). The Main Studio Rule was repealed by the FCC in 2019, with some station groups closing these small main studios for full remote centralcasting. [3]
Broadcast centralisation can create problems when one station in the group is sold (as the local master control functions which had been centralised must be restored before the local station is a viable stand-alone entity). There also needs to be some means to remain on-air locally if the link to the central hub is lost, lest a single point of failure take down all stations in the regional group.
Individual users of centralcasting facilities include:
Some groups, such as Sinclair Broadcast Group, have attempted to centralise not only routine operational tasks but also the production of local news. [24] The News Central format, which Sinclair abandoned in 2006, [25] involved inserting small blocks of local content into an otherwise-national newscast, [26] which would then be presented to local viewers as having been generated at the local station. [27]
The resulting product contains largely the same content (and potentially the same journalistic biases) in each market in which it appears, [28] raising objections from proponents of localism and opponents of concentration of media ownership.
The reduction in local broadcast-related jobs as tasks are moved to central locations has also drawn objections from trade unions. [29]
A television broadcaster or television network is a telecommunications network for the distribution of television content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations, pay television providers or, in the United States, multichannel video programming distributors. Until the mid-1980s, broadcast programming on television in most countries of the world was dominated by a small number of terrestrial networks. Many early television networks such as the BBC, CBC, PBS, PTV, NBC or ABC in the US and in Australia evolved from earlier radio networks.
Public broadcasting involves radio, television, and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service. Public broadcasters receive funding from diverse sources including license fees, individual contributions, public financing, and commercial financing, and claim to avoid both political interference and commercial influence.
WGBH-TV, branded GBH or GBH 2 since 2020, is the primary PBS member television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
Rocky Mountain PBS is a network of PBS member television stations serving the U.S. state of Colorado. Headquartered in Denver, it is operated by Rocky Mountain Public Media, Inc., a non-profit organization which holds the licenses for most of the PBS member stations licensed in the state, with the exception of KBDI-TV in Broomfield, which serves as the Denver market's secondary PBS station through the network's Program Differentiation Plan. The network comprises five full-power stations—flagship station KRMA-TV in Denver and satellites KTSC in Pueblo, KRMJ in Grand Junction, KRMU in Durango and KRMZ in Steamboat Springs. The broadcast signals of the five full-power stations and 60 translators cover almost all of the state, as well as parts of Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska and New Mexico.
Broadcast automation incorporates the use of broadcast programming technology to automate broadcasting operations. Used either at a broadcast network, radio station or a television station, it can run a facility in the absence of a human operator. They can also run in a live assist mode when there are on-air personnel present at the master control, television studio or control room.
Master control is the technical hub of a broadcast operation common among most over-the-air television stations and television networks. It is distinct from a production control room (PCR) in television studios where the activities such as switching from camera to camera are coordinated. A transmission control room (TCR) is usually smaller in size and is a scaled down version of centralcasting.
A television studio, also called a television production studio, is an installation room in which video productions take place, either for the production of live television and its recording onto video tape or other media such as SSDs, or for the acquisition of raw footage for post-production. The design of a studio is similar to, and derived from, movie studios, with a few amendments for the special requirements of television production. A professional television studio generally has several rooms, which are kept separate for noise and practicality reasons. These rooms are connected via 'talkback' or an intercom, and personnel will be divided among these workplaces.
Equity Media Holdings Corporation was a broadcasting company based in Little Rock, Arkansas that owned and operated television stations across the United States. Prior to March 30, 2007, the company was known as Equity Broadcasting, a name later used for its broadcast station subsidiary. The company had a focus on Hispanic and Asian American communities in large markets while owning a combination of English-language network affiliates in medium and small markets.
Spectrum News 1 Rochester is an American cable news television channel owned by Charter Communications through its acquisition of Time Warner Cable in May 2016, as an affiliate of its Spectrum News slate of regional news channels. The channel provides 24-hour rolling news coverage focused primarily on Rochester, New York and the nearby Genesee River and Finger Lakes regions.
Arkansas PBS is a state network of PBS member television stations serving the U.S. state of Arkansas. It is operated by the Arkansas Educational Television Commission, a statutory non-cabinet agency of the Arkansas government operated through the Arkansas Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which holds the licenses for all of the public television stations based in the state. The commission is managed by an independent board of university and education officials, and gubernatorial appointees representing each of Arkansas's four congressional districts. Along with offering television programs supplied by PBS and various independent distributors, the network produces public affairs, cultural and documentary programming as well as sports events sanctioned by the Arkansas Activities Association (AAA).
News Central is an American series of primetime newscast television programs on television stations owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group. The programs mixed locally produced news with nationally produced news and an opinion segment from Sinclair's Hunt Valley, Maryland studios, along with weather segments customized for each market also originating from Hunt Valley. News Central was broadcast between October 2002 and March 2006.
In the broadcasting industry, an owned-and-operated station usually refers to a television or radio station owned by the network with which it is associated. This distinguishes such a station from an affiliate, which is independently owned and carries network programming by contract.
In broadcasting, channel playout is the generation of the source signal of a radio or television channel produced by a broadcaster, coupled with the transmission of this signal for primary distribution or direct-to-audience distribution via any network. Such radio or television distribution networks include terrestrial broadcasting, cable networks, satellites, Internet Protocol television, OTT Video, point-to-point transport over managed networks or the public Internet, etc.
KRCG is a television station licensed to Jefferson City, Missouri, United States, serving as the CBS affiliate for the Columbia–Jefferson City market. Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station maintains studios and transmitter facilities on US 54 in the nearby town of New Bloomfield.
Retro Jams was a music video network that played music videos from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, with the vast majority of clips used in the public domain to reduce and avoid performance and rights fees. Established in 2007, it was owned and operated by now-defunct Equity Media Holdings. Retro Jams was formerly carried full-time as a free-to-air TV channel on various Equity-owned terrestrial low-power television stations nationwide. Blocks of programming on sister network Retro Television Network also featured Retro Jams, either with videos pre-programmed or requested live by viewers.
In the broadcasting industry, a network affiliate or affiliated station is a local broadcaster, owned by a company other than the owner of the network, which carries some or all of the lineup of television programs or radio programs of a television or radio network. This distinguishes such a television or radio station from an owned-and-operated station (O&O), which is owned by the parent network.
Spectrum News is the brand for a slate of cable news television channels that are owned by Charter Communications through its acquisition of Time Warner Cable in May 2016. Each of the 17 regional channels primarily focus on local news, weather and sports coverage in their given areas, in addition to national and international news stories. With the exception of NY1 and the Spectrum News channel for Dallas-Fort Worth, all of the channels are available only via Charter-owned pay television in their respective markets, not appearing on Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-verse, DirecTV or Dish Network.
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educational programs to public television stations in the United States, distributing shows such as Frontline, Nova, PBS News Hour, Masterpiece, Sesame Street, and This Old House.
CKY-DT is a television station in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, part of the CTV Television Network. The station is owned and operated by network parent Bell Media, and maintains studios on Graham Avenue in Downtown Winnipeg; its transmitter is located near Lord Selkirk Highway/Highway 75 in Ritchot.