In the last decade, most of the major corporations and audiovisual channels have fully embraced digital transformation, that is, to offer their content through different media and digital tools in addition to their traditional linear offer, whose demand is progressively decreasing.
Thus, in 2021 it is not surprising that every cable operator or traditional TV channel will have its own VoD or OTT where most of its own content will end up, either simultaneously with its linear broadcast or shortly thereafter. Although many companies initially treated it as a free alternative whose use and promotion would be marginal, the shift towards on-demand consumption driven by giants such as Netflix and other companies, coupled with the acceleration that last year meant for these media, is attracting more and more attention, and more and more companies are beginning to study its profitability through subscription models or third-party platforms (mainly YouTube and Twitch), not only as an additional monetization window, but as the future core of their business
Linear and non-linear coexistence, an unexpected planning responsibility
For now, both media coexist with their respective audiences, but the statistics seem to indicate a clear trend: the younger generations no longer consider access to linear television an obligation, and content (be it news, entertainment or live events) must be delivered to their smartphones, computers and tablets. However, setting aside the viewer for a moment, what does this transition mean for the operators that manage and program all this media?
The answer seems obvious: for many, it implies an additional workload, particularly if they do not have the right software tools to carry it out in the best possible way. In addition to their daily tasks of elaborating broadcast schedules, collating rights contracts, assessing the profitability and value of advertising space and ensuring that content is delivered smoothly, we can add up a requirement for a whole niche audience to have access to it almost immediately.
VSNCrea: the most dynamic Broadcast Management System (BMS) on the market
That is why VSN’s Broadcast Management System tool, VSNCrea, has separate modules for linear and non-linear programming. Its operation is simple, since both are based on another module: the catalog. The whole management process starts there, since the module reflects the contents ingested into the system through a placeholder. From there, the user can choose whether to program them through the linear module, the non-linear module, or both.
In the specific case of non-linear programming, the planner only needs to choose the date and platforms on which the content will be published, simultaneously choosing a date of depublication to avoid possible legal conflicts. The module also takes care of transcoding the content according to the target platform, as well as integrating tags, categories and playlists in the platforms where they are available, such as YouTube.
In addition, there is a dependency feature that will be of great use to many planners who have to respect the linear live scoop: they can schedule non-linear content to be published only after its linear broadcast, avoiding potential conflicts at a stroke.
Finally, the Catalog module of the traffic and scheduling system not only allows the management of pre-scheduling, but also the consultation of the global status of a production, in other words, where it has been broadcasted or published, as well as different statistics, allowing the user to analyze data that can then easily complement the more detailed monetization and performance information of the Analytics module.
In short, VSNCrea is a dynamic tool that allows to optimize and automate many of the daily functions of a content planner, but its dynamism does not end there: its availability in the cloud, its web accessibility and its possible contracting under SaaS also make it an incredibly flexible system, ready to manage the broadcast in any circumstance.
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