A year ago, RTÉ won an IBC Innovation Award for its FAST project: file acquisition and server technology. FAST is powered by our Mediaflex product, and integrates the whole of the content management process. In our conversation on stage, Myles and I will be looking at how the system has bedded down, now they have a full year’s experience.
RTÉ is the national broadcaster in a relatively small country. Its audience expects the very best from RTÉ, but it also has the ability to watch not just commercial rivals: British channels including BBC are also available.
First, RTÉ had to migrate its three channels to HD. There was no point in investing in HD VTR’s which will be obsolete soon, so to get to HD it also had to move to a completely file-based, server infrastructure.
Having made that decision, it was again logical to move to file delivery for all content. That allowed them to be aggressive with scheduling, often showing major US series the day after they premiere, beating other channels and meeting audience expectations.
RTÉ saw FAST as a key project for the business, and wanted much more than a simple asset management implementation. We (TMD) worked with them to provide an environment in which they can define their own workflows, and draw from the metadata a lot of business analytics.
The result is a unified content system which is delivering against tight financial targets – saving close to half a million euros in its first year – as well as giving all departments in RTÉ easy control over planning, scheduling and delivering content which engages with its audience.
