Seattle-based Fisher Communications is deploying Digital Nirvana’s Monitor IQ Essentials 3.0 as the station group’s platform for regulatory compliance and loudness monitoring.
Monitor IQ provides Web-based, HD/SD channel monitoring, logging, compliance and diagnostics/QC, as well as archiving of content recordings for up to 90 days. Monitor IQ Essentials is one of four versions designed to tailor Monitor IQ to the varying requirements of broadcasters.
“So far, we’ve installed Monitor IQ at three of our stations, including KOMO-TV4 in Seattle and KATU in Portland, OR, in 2011, and KBAK-TV in Bakersfield, CA, this year. Our plan is to eventually deploy it across the entire station group,” said Lee Wood, regional director of engineering for Fisher Communications, which operates 13 full power and seven low power television stations across the country.
To verify regulatory compliance or diagnose technical issues on the recorded air-checks, Monitor IQ lets station engineers and operators watch HD video and listen to individual audio channels to check the quality viewers experienced during the live broadcast.
They can also double-check the presence of vital metadata, such as closed captions, the Nielsen NAVE II Watermark, and picture identifier data (PID) embedded in the transport stream, as well as loudness levels now regulated by the U.S. CALM Act.
“All of our stations will use Monitor IQ primarily for regulatory compliance and loudness monitoring of our off-air HD and SD DTV channels,” Wood added. “Also, should a question ever arise as to whether a commercial spot ran as scheduled, Monitor IQ lets us to create a Windows Media video clip of the ad in the context of the programming to prove it ran as planned. Having this capability protects and preserves strong customer relations, revenues, and our credibility.”
While each Fisher station will manage and maintain its own compliance air-checks independently, station group management can check anything in any of their stations’ Monitor IQ databases remotely.
With its Web-based access and intuitive search tools, Monitor IQ ensures that any desired video segment will be readily accessible, easy to find and viewable from any browser. Searching is based upon keywords, titles, subtitles, descriptions, textual metadata, closed-caption text and imported logs, with filtering by time, date and channel. Recordings can be edited, clipped, stored and sent via e-mail or FTP.
