Greenland’s national public broadcaster, Kalaallit Nunaata Radioa (KNR) is unafraid of breaking the mould. KNR is a pioneer in doing things differently, moving away from established ways of working, and investing in disruptive technology enabling the broadcaster to create and deliver content in innovative ways.
KNR operates two television channels and a radio station for which it creates and delivers 800 hours of television and 6000 hours of radio every year. It broadcasts primarily in Kalaallisut, the Greenland native language with some Danish language content on KNR1 which airs 24 hours a day. KNR2 acts as a pop-up channel for live events such as elections.
Broadcasters of all sizes – whether national broadcasters or large commercial media operations – are under intense pressure to produce more content, at higher quality, with shorter lead times. Today’s audiences demand that their content is available across online and catch-up services as well as traditional linear formats. Engaging audiences through social media is now also a given. As a mostly publicly funded service, serving a population of little more than 56,000, the biggest challenge for KNR is meeting all its viewers demands on a small budget with a limited staff – a not inconsiderable task.
“We needed to meet the changing needs of our audience. For years, KNR had been working with outdated technical equipment which held back our users. With nxtedition, we can now put more focus on the content and less effort into making the technology deliver,” said Karl-Henrik Simonsen, CEO, KNR
The essence of what audiences want, regardless of demographic, is excellent storytelling. With no automation capability within its existing system, KNR staff had to spend precious time on manual heavy tasks that distracted from the one thing that they wanted to deliver – great content.
Fast forward to the future
When its legacy equipment reached end of life, KNR grabbed the opportunity to change the way things have always been done with both hands. Discarding approaches used by broadcasters around the world for decades, it took a leap of faith by installing nxtedition as part of its new production infrastructure.
Replacing appliance-based products from multiple manufacturers, the nxtedition system simplifies the broadcast process by virtualising microservices to replace legacy systems.
nxtedition brings together pre-production, ingest, media management, scriptwriting and editing, graphics, prompting, live studio automation and social media. All are controlled from within a single, intuitive user interface, which is designed to be completely intuitive to use. Comprehensive training for a journalist is just two hours: a super-user can learn everything about nxtedition in just 24 hours.
This innovative and disruptive approach from nxtedition draws on the latest in technologies and software development techniques to reinvent the broadcast environment. By establishing story-telling as the principle aim of the process, it establishes the user at the very centre of the story, using the toolkit that nxtedition provides for greater productivity and creativity.
In 2021, the broadcaster chose nxtedition’s end-to-end system as its primary broadcast solution for radio as well as TV and now relies on this streamlined infrastructure and futureproof workflow to support all broadcast, web, and social media production needs.
Simonsen said: “We have seen just how reliable the nxtedition technology is and the way it makes the process of creating and delivering content to digital and terrestrial platforms makes it the best choice for us. We have no hesitation in extending our collaboration with them; nxtedition has great support and deliver what they promise. We look forward to our continued cooperation for many years to come.”
Putting storytelling front and centre
Implementing nxtedition’s story-centric workflow allowed KNR’s production team to put storytelling at the heart of everything they do. Journalists gained the ability to run their programmes themselves, without having to rely on a lot of technical support. The KNR radio station now has the capability to deliver visual radio content, making it more
KNR now benefits from seamless operations across its two sites, removing a previously siloed workflow and allowing productions staff to work smarter. Instead of sending several journalists – TV, radio and digital – to cover events, a single KNR journalist can upload a story to the system that is instantly accessible by all departments, ready for delivery to all platforms. Getting stories out to social channels first is a key part of KNR’s aim and the Greenlandic broadcaster is one of the pioneers in a digital-first strategy. Taking a much more responsive and proactive approach allows KNR to turn content around much more rapidly and focus on telling the stories that matter most to its audience.
Ola Malmgren, CEO, nxtedition explains: “Great storytelling is what audiences come to television for and too often production workflows put the story last. At nxtedition we have changed the game; by allowing journalists to take control of their stories, we are empowering broadcasters to give audiences what they really want – a fantastic viewing experience with an engaging story.”
