Born three years ago starting from scratch, this sports channel has shifted the workflow in the hands of the journalist. An evolution linked to the good results; a technological performance achieved thanks to faster PC processors.
Francesco Donato of SKY SPORTS NEWS HD says: "The technology allows us to do many more things, we can send more news with less equipment.
December 2014
The scenario is that of "rolling news" that requires an efficient workflow, faster and faster, on three scenarios, three steps: in the past it was the traditional style, the launch in 2011 and in 2014 the system was stressed following the evolution of the control room to obtain better results.
The traditional control room is born with a certain complexity and a number of operators, with many people and little efficiency, many limitations, many devices, great complexity, rich graphics but based on big manual intervention. Everything has to be orchestrated to restore consistency in the results and timing, the intervention of the journalist and all the details must be synchronous with the ancillary topic (news, images, associated data).
Statistics etc involve a greater use of human energies but with poor uniformity of the product, creating many potential errors in shooting, framing anchors etc, if not orchestrated by an automated system making the management.
In 2011 we moved to the concept of automation, carrying everything in the hands of the journalist: the creator who knows how and when to publish the information, prepare the news from the desk with the text, add graphics and also ensure the publication. I.e. he is able to feed the run-down with all the details that serve to operate the show.
Three years ago, the step was to liberalize the ability to directly manage the show without having to call into action other "actors" in the production chain, potential sources of errors and slowdowns.
So a new way to manage the show, thanks to automation, also inventing the new process function of the "show design" that provides the same level of quality with fresh information and lots of creativity but with a creative footprint in common. The show design control was introduced for this reason. A certain type of quality image is well maintained and a certain result is serial, and becomes a "common style".
Avoiding the interpretation, the personal style of the journalist, we tried to avoid the lack of qualitative uniformity, often missing in the past; in fact, such changes were not an advantage.
On an always very high creativity basis, and common to everyone, we got to avoid mistakes and make it "less different" while generating contents.
So the basis concept is technology in the service of the workflow for even better results. Even the high-end graphics is integrated with both video and datas.
For example, each opening is synchronous with the text data with the image on the air, so the user at a glimpse knows all about this topic.
It was therefore decided to stress the system and ourselves. The solution today is a PC, operated by a single person, controlling the entire edition of each sports news without the need for much more. The workflow is: the journalist prepares the rundown in the newsroom, adds graphics, adds the link to the database containing the statistical data published automatically, adds robotic movements of the cameras in the studio and at the end he publishes a rundown order through an interface starting playout.
So the reporter prepares programs that are broadcast also (in part) on different media and all these processes are managed entirely by a single journalist who runs the rundown independently. The advantages are many, enormous speed, total management without external intervention, possibility of interaction with other IP-based services and you switch to a non-baseband output but in IP; it involves the final output of the linear tv channel but also on everything, web platform, multimedia mobile apps, etc."
