News & Views

What’s new in WHATS’ON 2019r2 ?

  • Flexible quota reporting
  • Planning supplemental (bonus & related) content on on-demand
  • Scheduling interstitials as main content on on-demand
  • Specifying the alternative playlist purpose

Flexible quota reporting

As legal obligations, quotas and statistics govern the broadcast business, no broadcaster’s toolbox should be without the WHATS’ON Quota Reporting Engine.

Until now the WHATS’ON Quota Reporting Engine offered a basic set of predefined rules to define, predict and monitor important quotas. As quota requirements vary greatly per country and regulator, and regulators often come up with new ones, broadcasters told us of an ever increasing need to be able to measure quotas against varying attributes.

That is why we now offer a flexible model with quota rules you can completely configure:

  • users can choose whether the planning elements by which the quotas should be measured are transmissions or transmission events;
  • the unit of measurement can be duration or number of elements;
  • results can be expressed as a count or as a percentage;

  • also the total percentage against which the quotas will be measured can be configured;

  • important is the choice of attributes on which the quotas can be calculated. That can be any field that is available under the product, transmission or linked media asset concept.

We are also working on an analytics screen where you will also see the actual elements composing the final result (will be part of the next service release).

Scheduling supplemental content

As changing viewer behaviour tipped the balance to on-demand, we felt the need to further extend the LAVA functionality, especially in the domain of scheduling. This was corroborated by what we heard during customer workshops and by what project teams came up against during upgrades. The extensions relate to scheduling interstitials as main content on on-demand, and planning supplemental content on on-demand.

The new supplemental content functionality is all about making it easier to also schedule bonus and related content when planning the main programmes or episodes, on linear or on-demand.

We typically see two forms of supplemental content: bonus content and related content.

  • Bonus content can consist of interviews, making-of or behind-the-scene recordings, trailers, bloopers … any kind of content that comes together with the main programme or episode but can still be planned and published independently. The bonus link is made on content level. For on-demand transmissions, the linked bonus content can be scheduled directly.

  • Related content is long-form content that is related to the content of a certain programme or episode, and that can also be published independently and ad hoc. E.g. a documentary about World War II after or before the linear or on-demand transmission of the movie Dunkirk. The related content link is made on transmission level.

Scheduling interstitials as main content on on-demand

As we found that broadcasters need to be able to plan trailers, commercials, music clips and other interstitials on on-demand in the same way as they plan the main content, we extended the LAVA functionality accordingly. We introduced a content browser that combines main content and interstitials, enables contract verification on interstitials, and makes it possible to add cast members, press sheets, etc. on interstitial level.

Specifying the alternative playlist purpose

We made it possible to make a clear distinction between long-term schedule versions (for budgets simulations, season templates …) and alternative playlists for one broadcast day. Also, you can now specify a specific purpose on each alternative playlist (e.g. rain delay at Wimbledon). The alternative playlists can be opened directly from continuity to have a better overview. And there is a gadget showing all the alternative playlists and their purpose for that broadcast day.

See the release notes. For more information,  feel free to contact your MEDIAGENIX account manager.

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