Signiant has supplied and installed a content supply chain management solution for Premier Media Group (PMG), Australia’s leading sports producer and broadcaster as it moves to replace existing tape-based workflows.
PMG, part-owned by News Limited in Australia, compiles and produces Fox Sports News and the Fox Sports channels, broadcasting an average of 20 hours of live sport per day. PMG also produces Fuel TV and the HOW To Channel in addition to creating content for mobile and web. While the majority of PMG’s content is live, or replay of live, it receives roughly 4000 hours per year on magnetic media from providers around the world. In addition PMG is often required to provide content to rights holders or sporting bodies, so it also sought a solution for its own content delivery that would eliminate a number of unsustainable FTP-style solutions.
The technology team began investigating a cost-effective, simple and scalable solution that would greatly reduce the amount of magnetic media, provide a peer-to-peer delivery solution, and preferably work on one platform to simplify management and future development. After considering various providers – both optimised broadcast media solutions and more generic file or content delivery solutions – PMG selected Signiant as its preferred provider.
Tony Scanlan, Chief Technology Officer, PMG, said: “The benefits that Signiant offered made the choice pretty easy. Firstly the solution will vastly reduce the amount of content delivered via tape, thus saving us significant time and money by reducing manual processing, and streamlining the entire process. It will also provide a homogenous platform for all inbound and outbound electronic content transactions.”
Fox is already a Signiant customer worldwide and, while this was not the deciding factor in PMG’s choice, it was certainly a consideration. “We receive a diverse amount of content from various sources across the globe so we had to think of the bigger picture, but with the Signiant solution we will be able to deploy peer-to-peer content networking within the FOX, Sky and the wider News family in addition to easily exchanging content with other key Signiant partners,” said Scanlan.
PMG will deploy Media Agents at larger content providers to allow agent-based collection and automated workflow processing – integrating content collection with smart workflows to include automated QC. Smaller content providers will be serviced using the Media Exchange web-based application. The Signiant solution will be deployed across both PMG’s sport and general programming, and will also be used as a wider business solution covering not only production but also promos and marketing.
Nick Hardcastle, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Signiant, said: “We have worked hard to create a workflow that fits PMG’s vision for a new tapeless environment, and are delighted with the results. For an organization of PMG’s stature to choose Signiant to streamline its content processes further underlines our status as industry leaders in this field.”
