Wikipedia

Centralcasting

This article is about broadcast automation. For the cinematic talent agency, see Central Casting.

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.

Definition

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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.

Central control

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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:

  1. A fully centralised operation may have local stations which function as little more than a local news bureau and a transmitter site. The local station sends its news footage to the central hub, which inserts it (along with local advertising and station identifiers) into a national network or syndicated programming feed. All video is stored in one central location. The resulting broadcast video streams are centrally assembled then sent directly to local station transmitters by the central hub.
  2. A less-centralised approach involves installing servers at local broadcast station sites which may be controlled either locally or remotely. The central hub would be able to send video to the local station, along with playlist information, and local facilities would then be used to store and rebroadcast programming.

Non-broadcast operations

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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.

Advantages

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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.

Drawbacks

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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.

Users

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Individual users of centralcasting facilities include:

Controversy

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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]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ IP-based centralcasting, Mark Warner, Broadcast Engineering, Jun 1, 2008 Archived January 30, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ Barix IP Audio Devices Gaining Popularity in EAS Applications, Broadcast Equipment Guide, April 13, 2007 Archived January 19, 2013, at archive.today
  3. ^ The FCC's main studio rule: achieving little for localism at a great cost to broadcasters, Silverman, David M. - Tobenkin, David N., Federal Communications Law Journal • May 2001 Archived August 13, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ "Harris Drives Cox Centralcasting". TV Technology. 29 November 2010. Archived from the original on 11 June 2015. Retrieved 19 February 2013.
  5. ^ "KHQ Launches Centralcasting With ABS". TVNewsCheck. Retrieved 18 May 2013.
  6. ^ "Retrans Deal Drives Cowles Centralcasting". TVNewsCheck. 14 July 2011. Retrieved 18 May 2013.
  7. ^ "EQUITY MEDIA HOLDINGS CORP, Form 10-K, Annual Report, Filing Date Mar 31, 2008" (PDF). secdatabase.com. Retrieved May 15, 2018.
  8. ^ "Fisher Chooses Omneon For Centralcasting". TVNewsCheck. 7 November 2007. Retrieved 19 February 2013.
  9. ^ "O'Shea New Fox Stations Master Control". TVNewsCheck. 25 August 2011. Retrieved 26 May 2013.
  10. ^ "Loral Skynet to Provide Hearst-Argyle Television With Customized Satellite Based Solutions". The Free Library. 8 April 2002. Retrieved 19 February 2013.
  11. ^ TECH ONE ON ONE WITH NTC'S ETHAN BUSH: IS KQED THE STATION OF THE FUTURE?, TVNEWSDAY, Jul 26 2007
  12. ^ "Harris Corporation to Deliver ONE Broadcast Solution to Meredith for New Atlanta Centralcasting Hub". Archived from the original (21 September 2009) on 11 April 2013. Retrieved 11 February 2013.
  13. ^ "NBC Selects Marconi For New National Broadband Video Distribution Network". PR Newswire. 4 February 2002. Retrieved 19 February 2013.
  14. ^ Ackerley links member stations via centralcasting; DigitalBroadcasting.com; May 17, 2001 Archived July 10, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  15. ^ "Cutting Back on Master Control". 15 June 2020. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  16. ^ Behrens, Steve (3 October 2011). "CPB to equip 2 pubTV facilities as multistation master controls". Current.org. Archived from the original on 1 October 2012. Retrieved 11 February 2013.
  17. ^ PBS offer: automated control room in a box, Steve Behrens, Current, Dec. 1, 2003 Archived January 1, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  18. ^ CBC/Radio-Canada's move to centralcasting, Sep 1, 2005, Broadcast Engineering, CBC/RADIO-CANADA BROADCAST ENGINEERING GROUP Archived January 30, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  19. ^ "Sinclair Speeds Centralcasting". Broadcasting & Cable. 5 January 2003. Retrieved 11 February 2013.
  20. ^ "Behind TEGNA's 'Hub-and-Spoke' Master Control Facility". 16 March 2021. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  21. ^ a b Kerschbaumer, Ken (5 October 2005). "Straight Out of Centralcasting". Retrieved 11 February 2013.
  22. ^ http://centralcast.org/
  23. ^ "N.Y. Public Broadcasters Centralize Master Control | TvTechnology". Archived from the original on 2016-10-25. Retrieved 2016-10-24.
  24. ^ Managing Television News: A Handbook for Ethical and Effective Producing; page 227; B. William Silcock, Don Heider, Mary T. Rogus; Routledge, 2007; ISBN 978-0-8058-5373-5
  25. ^ A Centralcasting Postmortem and a News-Share Projection: Using Market Theory to Assess Alternative Local Television News Strategies; AEJMC Annual Convention - Radio-Television Journalism Division, August 2–6, 2006
  26. ^ Online Focus: CENTRAL CASTING, PBS NewsHour, December 11, 2003
  27. ^ "LOCAL NEWS, FROM FAR AWAY: "Centralcasting" saves money but could impair coverage, Deborah Potter, American Journalism Review, April 2003". Archived from the original on 2009-02-01. Retrieved 2008-12-29.
  28. ^ TV News That Looks Local, Even if It's Not, JIM RUTENBERG / MICHELINE MAYNARD, New York Times, June 2, 2003
  29. ^ Union appeals CRTC ruling to Federal Court of Appeal, April 2008, Canada NewsWire
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