This would have been a quadrennial year with major events such as the Tokyo Summer Games and the European Championship taking place. But let’s keep looking at the bright side. Next year it will all be back with a vengeance and you might not know where to park it all.
Let’s look back at the FIFA World Cup of 2018 for an example of what you might do. In the build-up to this event, A+E Networks UK/HISTORY used WHATS’ON to create a special pop-up channel which scheduled football-related programming and had all the relevant metadata copied to it. The channel was configured and ready to go within a few hours and ran for 14 days. This allowed the customer to focus dedicated content on a targeted event for a specific period of time.
This is a perfect example of how WHATS’ON enables media companies to create and remove channels at the drop of a hat. With efficient management of multiple versions and channels, WHATS’ON can also help them faultlessly connect the right audience to the right (localized) content version.
Several MEDIAGENIX customers scheduled their FIFA World Cup coverage over both linear and non-linear channels with WHATS’ON, adapting their content to the destination communication devices, in a technical way, but also from an editorial point of view. The Facebook story format is not the long-form format on a website or a connected TV.
«The pop-up channel was configured and ready to go within a few hours with all the metadata copied to it.»
A few years ago, merging linear and non-linear management, WHATS’ON became the only true transmedia content lifecycle management solution, managing the linear, on-demand and digital world with the same flexibility, power and error checking options.
WHATS’ON simply treats VoD publications the same way as linear transmissions, be it with VoD-specific fields such as (online) categories and price codes and the publication end date. Multiple transmissions can be created with one click, for both VoD and Linear channels, in accordance with applicable rights, restrictions and business rules. No need to enter the data all over again: everything is replicated, but can be deviated from for every separate transmission. There are all kinds of automated checks to make sure everything is in accordance with the contracts, and the correct media asset with the correct components is linked to each transmission. Catch-up transmissions are linked to the linear transmission and are kept in synch thanks to the calculated relative start and end date.
For many customers WHATS’ON is the ultimate orchestrator of their broadcast operations. WHATS’ON can also integrate with any system under the sun to receive the data required for personalised recommendations.
With diverse sports-only customers in Europe, MEDIAGENIX has studied their specific challenges and devised effective solutions from a scheduling and metadata perspective.
Alternative transmission schedules can be made and updated using the normal scheduling tools. This way the broadcaster can create, try out and measure what-if scenarios, and prepare significant changes in a transmission schedule which can then be updated in one single operation. Also, full-fledged substitute playlists can be created to prepare for contingencies or airing changes on broadcast day, for instance when covering live sports events with an uncertain duration.
WHATS’ON extends the broadcaster’s flexibility to respond to last-minute changes. Whenever weather conditions, editorial decisions or match developments require last-minute changes, WHATS’ON pushes these updates to Playout to update the current playlist. Also, the system offers a live EPG feed to keep the sports fans well informed of all programme changes in the playlist.
WHATS’ON not only offers the flexibility and openness to ensure smooth operations, its Sports module allows users to draw up sports calendars that contain all the events, leagues, teams and venues, to automatically schedule these events via burst planning.
