13 key strengths of WHATS'ON VOD Scheduling

1. Create on-demand schedules for multiple platforms, devices and outlets.
2. With rights verification and business rules monitoring.
3. For Catch-Up/Preview/Start-Over services: define the availability of content on the on-demand platforms directly from within the linear schedule.
4. Multiple file format management driven by VOD schedule and integrated with asset management.
5. Drive the transcoding and material workflow.
6. Prepare delivery to multiple platforms.
7. Publish schedules to CableLabs export.
8. Use the same tools and screens for your linear schedules.
9. Create and organize multiple plans, scenarios and galleries; swimlane & timeline views, node and tile assignments; rankings: manual, marketing-based, semi-automatic or algorithmic. 
10. View linear and nonlinear scheduling data in real time without any need of WHATS'ON knowledge.
11. Make strategic decisions on content use.
12. Get real-time visibility on present and future content performance.
13. Use easy, web-based apps for cross-functional collaboration and metadata enrichment.
    

Always know the value of stock and schedules, and your Content ROI

When taking decisions affecting long-term planning, acquisitions or productions, management will want to do that on the basis of a proper trend analysis of stock use in the past. Also, at the end of a financial period (month, six months…) a company is obliged to review its financial status.

With WHATS’ON you know the value of schedule and stock at any moment in the past, present and future, and you can provide accurate reports for reviews, monthly closings, stock trend analysis and informed management decisions. 

You can set up amortization rules,  create multicurrency payment schedules and manage your commercial inventory.

Finally, you can calculate the achieved ROI on different levels (transmission, day, channel, contract …).

Take control with WHATS'ON Content Cockpit

This AI-assisted management web tool for Content ROI optimization:

1. provides AI-assisted content-marketplace guidance to find more strategically aligned content faster on the market and negotiate a better price;
2. enables smart content-catalogue simulations to optimize schedules, gain greater insight into stock value, and make better use of available stock;
3. utilizes insights on past and future schedules to produce increasingly accurate predictions of viewer demand and potential revenues via content-performance monitoring;
4. provides data insights on ROI per title, revenues generated, and remaining monetizable value via Content ROI analysis;
5. predicts potential audience engagement returns for content available on the market, in stock and planned across multiple channels, and provides actionable data to improve monetization potential.

10 key strengths of WHATS'ON Rights Management

1. Generate financial events for acquisitions, amortizations and rights usage in the schedule. 
2. Measure and analyse the schedule based on volume, cost and duration. 
3. Calculate, analyse and report on ROI and remaining monetizable value based on the rights and schedules. 
4. Report on different levels: days, contracts, programmes or corporate level.
5. Estimate and benchmark license fees for negotiating purposes.
6. Check whether the quality of stock and schedule is in line with the programming department’s quality requirements.
7. Monitor whether the schedule cost stays in line with the programming budget.
8. Assess the cost/revenue ratio for content.
9. Gather market data to negotiate a better price.
10. Predict potential revenues.

Streamline the material workflow

When you are juggling with multiple formats and different video, audio or subtitling versions to schedule your content on diverse publication systems in diverse countries, more automation is your salvation.

For VOD, get the drag and struggle out of the complex process of having every piece of content prepared and rendered into one file—complete with promotions, branding and commercials—that has the correct format for the diverse platforms. Be in control of the whole process end to end, and have the files sent to the respective publication systems with descriptive data about when and where the content should be made available.

For linear channels, WHATS’ON supports any number of video, audio and subtitling components for the same product. Fully aligned with the current MAM systems, WHATS’ON interfaces with these systems to integrate the file-based workflow (ingest requests, automatic status updates).

7 key strengths of WHATS'ON Material Management

1. Order, chase and receive physical materials from distributors.
2. Organize, manage and monitor the whole workflow of video, audio and subtitling components and their metadata.
3. Manage and monitor visioning status and technical data. Register frame-accurate durations.
4. Multiformat workflow driven by the VOD schedule, integrated with asset management.
5. Drive the encoding/transcoding workflow.
6. Segment the product to serve the needs of any individual publication.
7. Prepare delivery to multiple publication systems.

Build your audience

With stiff competition and an increasingly fragmented viewing audience, it is key to inform your target audience about your content and draw attention to important transmissions. To reach that audience, it will no longer do to plan promos on an ad hoc basis.

That is why WHATS’ON provides the tools for campaign style planning of promos in a cross-channel and multimedia environment. With WHATS’ON you can schedule promos—automatically, manually or combined—based on predicted ratings and campaign targets, and in line with regulations and context-sensitive restrictions. You can monitor and optimize campaign performance up to the last minute. WHATS’ON integrates the entire workflow from defining the targets up to production, campaign scheduling, publication and analysis.

Keep the overview

WHATS'ON Trailer Grid is the screen on which you can easily schedule promos and where the people who schedule the primary events have an overview that includes the secondary events.

Streamline all your promotional activities with WHATS'ON Promoplan

WHATS'ON Promoplan is the standalone application for strategic promotion planning that enables your marketing organization to draw up an optimal promotion plan for all the promotion efforts of the organization and manage the complete promotion lifecycle, from the definition of the goals to building and executing media plans.

This single tool enables coherent management of:

• what is offered when;
• the strategical and tactical goals for the promotion campaign;
• the media vehicles used to obtain these goals;
• the budgets and resources allocated to make and deliver the promo material.

8 key strengths

1. Strategically plan promotion campaigns across channels and media.
2. Monitor and manually optimize campaign performance (ratings) up to the last minute and have automatic adjustments to schedule updates.
3. Automatically schedule trailers based on predicted ratings and campaign targets, in line with regulations and context-sensitive restrictions.
4. Combine automation with manual ad hoc scheduling.
5. Automatic bumper scheduling with copy rotation based on branding rules and sponsor contracts.
6. Have an overview of all past and future promotional activity of the organization.
7. Manage per promotion plan a media plan over multiple media vehicles
8. Manage per media vehicle the available inventory over all active media plans.

Stay within legal boundaries

You can have WHATS’ON warn you whenever your VOD or Linear content is scheduled in conflict with any applicable parental guidance rules (Compliance). The lenience with which content is viewed in terms of mature content can vary greatly from region to region and between different channels and platforms. Also, WHATS’ON will ensure your scheduling observes licence conditions and government regulations.

Key strengths

• Ensure your scheduling is in line with licence conditions and regulations.
• Configure the criteria on which to define the parental rating for every regulator (Compliance). Support the decision process to get at an overall rating and document the scenes and extracts that underlie the ruling.

Efficiency leaps in VOD publication, contract approval and subtitling

The three most popular use cases for the WHATS’ON Orchestrator are VOD publication, contract approval and subtitling.

VOD publication

Touchless workflow to prepare the data —executing transcoding, image resizing or encryption— and move files.

Contract approval

The automated contract approval process starts with notifying the person that needs to approve or reject the contract, and providing metadata. This person has it on their task list and gets a reminder after a preset time. The whole process up to financial approval and board approval (if required) is monitored.

Subtitling

When a user indicates that a product needs to be subtitled, this triggers an automated process that consists of 3 steps:

1. Defining how this request will be fulfilled: buying, subcontracting or producing the subtitles.

2. The actual process of producing, buying or subcontracting the subtitles.
3. Reviewing the subtitles and delivering them to where the playout system can pick them up.

The status of the subtitling component changes accordingly.  

10 key strengths of WHATS'ON Reporting

1. Support your users with the generic XML-based reporting tool for standard or customized reports and print-outs.
2. Facilitate daily work with compact gadgets giving a handy, configurable overview of data that is of interest to the user.
3. Build, view and export your own power reports, with self-defined summary lines based on any criteria, if desired on multiple levels.
4. Integration with BI tools.
5. Schedule automatic reports.
6. Email integration for manual and automated reports.
7. Define, predict, analyse and track legal requirements in the schedule, and define quota rules on multiple country-specific dimensions.
8. Manage and report copyright information about music, video, images, art, literature and other works in published content.
9. Report on simulations and predictions to optimize Content ROI.
10. Present filtered scheduling data for strategic decision making.