There are many legacy broadcast automation systems still operational around the world today. However, many of them are at “end of life” or very near it. Getting support and/or parts for these systems is becoming increasingly difficult, leaving broadcasters feeling increasingly exposed. Being a risk-averse group by nature, it’s no secret that many broadcasting companies are actively seeking to replace these legacy systems, and as a result, there’s no shortage of companies ready to step in to help. This case study explores the migration from old to new at KCET in California.
KCET, part of the KCETLink Media Group, is the largest independent public television station in the US, servicing Central and Southern California. In addition to broadcasting programs from around the world, they produce and distribute award-winning local programs, which are watched by an average of 2.2 million viewers per month. As the most-watched public television station in Southern California, KCET also has the largest geographic reach of any public station in the entire state.
KCET decided to replace their legacy ADC automation system during their move to a new facility, which was being built from the ground up. With only 12 months to architect, acquire, build out, install, commission and launch a completely new facility, the project presented some interesting logistical and technical challenges. The requirement for live events, production studio content, complex and simple pass-through services required a comprehensive and flexible automation system. After an RFP process considering many solutions, KCET settled on Pebble Beach System’s Marina automation solution.
“Clearly, the choice of automation system was a key decision for us, and our engineering and master control operation teams participated directly in the process of evaluating solutions, quickly narrowing the field down to Avid, Pebble Beach Systems and our incumbent provider, Harris Broadcast,” said Gordon Bell, Senior VP of Engineering, Operations and IT at KCET.
Pebble Beach Systems’ Marina enterprise automation system was selected after analyzing several aspects including physical and software architectures, resiliency and serviceability, operational learning curve and user interfaces, plus the ability to keep up with realities of KCET’s “Rethink TV” initiatives. A major emphasis was also placed on both local and remote support capabilities.
An initial concern from Bell and his team was how to migrate the entire ADC database, with years of accumulated metadata methodically entered by operators, into the new Marina system without losing anything. This included descriptive metadata, which accurately identified important assets, as well as segment timings describing exactly where and to start and stop playback from each asset, for seamless transitions between content. Thanks to Pebble’s comprehensive migration tools, the entire ADC databases transferred flawlessly to the Marina system.
“The ease in which we migrated all the data, including the descriptive and segment timing metadata from our legacy ADC system, to Pebble’s Marina shortened the time span between installing the automation system and being on the air with it,” said Bell. “Without the Pebble migration tools and assistance of their highly responsive team, we would not have made our aggressive switch-over date.”
Equally important to the team at KCET was managing the change for the operators in a way that would minimize training time and instill confidence in the use of the Marina system from day one. Part of the initial appeal of the Marina User Interface was the flexibility to closely mimic a legacy system UI to aid in initial training and uninterrupted operation. Over time, additional data and augmented feature sets have been revealed to operators by the system’s administrators. When a user logs on, an individual UI layout for each operator interfacing with Marina is displayed.
The Marina system also allowed KCET to move from one-way proprietary ADC playlists coming from their Myers ProTrack traffic system to a more up-to-date two-way communication using the BXF interchange standard. Now, any changes to program timing by an operator automatically flow back into the ProTrack system.
A key requirement for KCET was the ability to handle a rather complex operation that is performed five or six times a day. KCET uplinks the BBC World News to all PBS stations. This requires ingesting an encrypted satellite feed from the BBC, while also playing the BBC opening sequence off the server, playing underwriting funder information, and then playing the world news from the server while it continues to record the feed. The delay from the live BBC satellite feed is about 2 minutes. “Some of the competing automation systems we were investigating couldn’t handle this without a lot of duplicated lists and some couldn’t do it at all,” says Bell. “With Marina, we can do everything in one simple list, for both play and record lists.”
“There are a lot of things we appreciate about the Marina system, like its intelligent routing that allows multiple switches to take place on a single line,” says Bell. “We also like the live events features such as ‘join in progress’, which makes it easy to rejoin a scheduled program when a live event runs long. It’s a solid system, and it’s working well for us.”
Managed devices include an Imagine routing system with Icon Master switchers, dual redundant XOR UML servers, and Avid Airspeed.
“Clearly, the choice of automation system was a key decision for us, and our engineering and master control operation teams participated directly in the process of evaluating solutions, quickly narrowing the field down to Avid, Pebble Beach Systems and our incumbent provider, Harris Broadcast,” said Gordon Bell, Senior VP of Engineering, Operations and IT at KCET.
Pebble Beach Systems’ Marina enterprise automation system was selected after analyzing several aspects including physical and software architectures, resiliency and serviceability, operational learning curve and user interfaces, plus the ability to keep up with realities of KCET’s “Rethink TV” initiatives. A major emphasis was also placed on both local and remote support capabilities.
An initial concern from Bell and his team was how to migrate the entire ADC database, with years of accumulated metadata methodically entered by operators, into the new Marina system without losing anything. This included descriptive metadata, which accurately identified important assets, as well as segment timings describing exactly where and to start and stop playback from each asset, for seamless transitions between content. Thanks to Pebble’s comprehensive migration tools, the entire ADC databases transferred flawlessly to the Marina system.
“The ease in which we migrated all the data, including the descriptive and segment timing metadata from our legacy ADC system, to Pebble’s Marina shortened the time span between installing the automation system and being on the air with it,” said Bell. “Without the Pebble migration tools and assistance of their highly responsive team, we would not have made our aggressive switch-over date.”
Equally important to the team at KCET was managing the change for the operators in a way that would minimize training time and instill confidence in the use of the Marina system from day one. Part of the initial appeal of the Marina User Interface was the flexibility to closely mimic a legacy system UI to aid in initial training and uninterrupted operation. Over time, additional data and augmented feature sets have been revealed to operators by the system’s administrators. When a user logs on, an individual UI layout for each operator interfacing with Marina is displayed.
The Marina system also allowed KCET to move from one-way proprietary ADC playlists coming from their Myers ProTrack traffic system to a more up-to-date two-way communication using the BXF interchange standard. Now, any changes to program timing by an operator automatically flow back into the ProTrack system.
A key requirement for KCET was the ability to handle a rather complex operation that is performed five or six times a day. KCET uplinks the BBC World News to all PBS stations. This requires ingesting an encrypted satellite feed from the BBC, while also playing the BBC opening sequence off the server, playing underwriting funder information, and then playing the world news from the server while it continues to record the feed. The delay from the live BBC satellite feed is about 2 minutes. “Some of the competing automation systems we were investigating couldn’t handle this without a lot of duplicated lists and some couldn’t do it at all,” says Bell. “With Marina, we can do everything in one simple list, for both play and record lists.”
“There are a lot of things we appreciate about the Marina system, like its intelligent routing that allows multiple switches to take place on a single line,” says Bell. “We also like the live events features such as ‘join in progress’, which makes it easy to rejoin a scheduled program when a live event runs long. It’s a solid system, and it’s working well for us.”
Managed devices include an Imagine routing system with Icon Master switchers, dual redundant XOR UML servers, and Avid Airspeed.