VIRGINIA BEACH, VA.—The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) is one of the world’s oldest and largest providers of faith-based television programming, delivering content to roughly 200 countries throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Its international department is responsible for delivering programming to all foreign CBN affiliates and subsidiaries. Programs include the 3D animation series “Superbook,” which is broadcast in approximately 50 languages in more than 90 countries, and other CBN content, such as the international edition of “The 700 Club” (one of the longest-running programs in broadcast history) and “Turning Point,” a testimonial-oriented show.
CBN recently adopted Signiant’s Media Shuttle to accelerate file transfer and ensure the seamless delivery of content to multiple countries. Before Media Shuttle, a team headed up by Michael Trauffer, senior video editor & post production system administrator at the Christian Broadcasting Network, used FTP to deliver HD files overseas. But FTP was too slow, especially when dealing with large files, long distances and customers' variable bandwidths. One example Trauffer gave was a producer in the Philippines needing to wait overnight for an 18GB file download from the FTP server—a task that now takes less than an hour with Media Shuttle.
Another issue? Some of CBN's clients are in countries with unreliable power. This can result in small transfer windows and frequent connectivity interruptions. For example, if a program recipient is five hours into a six-hour file download, but then the power goes out, the person will need to start the time-consuming FTP download process from the beginning when the power returns.
But with Media Shuttle’s Checkpoint Restart feature, interrupted transfers are restarted from the point where they stopped. Thanks to this and Signiant’s file acceleration technology, CBN has experienced far shorter international transfer times than ever before.
CBN originally explored using a solution from one of Signiant's competitors since CBN was already using the product to move domestic files. While this particular solution improved speeds and solved the reliability problem resulting from frequent transfer interruptions, it also introduced new challenges.
Specifically, Trauffer said the alternative solution was “very cumbersome” and “user unfriendly”. Then there was the cost associated with the solution's bandwidth-based license. The expense to upgrade CBN's system to support the bandwidths it needed for international distribution was significantly higher than the cost of adding Media Shuttle.
Media Shuttle offered CBN a substantially more affordable model based on active users and with no restrictions on bandwidth or file sizes. This aligned better with CBN’s budget and its international needs. As a cloud-native SaaS, Media Shuttle is also easy to deploy and maintain. Its intuitive, user-friendly, web-based interfaces require virtually no training. Plus, Media Shuttle still allows CBN to keep its files in on-premises storage. This made Media Shuttle a far better fit for rolling out to end users at CBN’s partners and customers in far-flung locations all around the world.
“We integrated Media Shuttle into our overseas distribution workflow and our clients haven’t been happier. Single hour downloads compared to overnight FTP downloads; this product is indeed the fastest file transfer system we’ve experienced. For me, Media Shuttle was very simple to figure out. It was very straightforward, and I honestly have never used a file transfer tool that is as easy and reliable as this is,” said Trauffer.
Trauffer also enjoys Media Shuttle's email notifications feature: “If I send a batch of files, Media Shuttle will alert me as each file is being downloaded. So it lets me know, for example, that Israel is getting their files, or have received these two and are working on a couple more. I don’t have to keep logging into the system to see what is going on, or sit there and wait for an email seven days later saying “oh, I haven’t been able to get the files, the link expired.” Instead, I can actually see the progress, which is great.”
Thanks to Media Shuttle, CBN is now able to deliver content to the affiliates and subsidiaries it serves in over 200 countries seamlessly and efficiently.
Click here for more information on Media Shuttle.
Jon Finegold is the chief marketing officer for Signiant
