One of the common features of the pre-show press conferences the day before NAB 2012 was a rush of announcements of “social media aware” systems, writes Dick Hobbs. It seems that the major vendors have finally realised the importance to broadcasters of a social media presence, and are now seeking to automate information feeds to Twitter, Facebook and others. Ross launched a new product to tackle the challenge, Inception (pictured). It puts the packaging process in the hands of the journalists and editors working on the news, so they have control over what happens and when. A particularly effective tool is likely to be what David Ross termed the “call to action”: a tweet can be sent out at a pre-determined time before a story is broadcast. The message might, for instance, say “Breaking news on celebrity scandal: turn on your television now #XYZ TV”. With the Ross Inception system integrated into the newsroom, the story can be floating in the running order, with the tweet sent a minute before it actually airs, even if that time continually changes. Avid put social media as one of the key issues that viewers cared about, and also has new tools to bring the web and social teams onto the same production network as the broadcaster. For Harris, CTO Brian Cabeceiras said “we have talked about ‘television anywhere’ for 10 years. Now all the technology enablers are in place. Broadcasters are no longer just broadcasters.”
