WOOD-TV Keeps Election Night
Drama Out of the Newsroom
Election Day is always a stressful time for television news operations as reporters and producers look to keep on top of ever-changing exit polls and vote tallies. Like the candidates themselves, for television news stations, the goal is to win a race. And triumphant ratings often depend on the same thing as political success: namely, a clear message that can cut through the noise and clutter of hype.
While Election Day madness is frequently captured in television news reports, the real pandemonium is often behind the scenes. Graphics professionals, producers, and reporters must use every tool at their disposal to ensure they're telling the story clearly and accurately - both through their reports and the graphical data viewers see on screen - while keeping pace with continually updated voting results.
Keeping ahead of the competition and easing the election night workload are two reasons that the staff at WOOD-TV, the NBC affiliate in Grand Rapids, Mich., decided to use the Avid Deko and DekoCast on-air graphics systems and the Avid LeaderPlus election management solution this November. Operations technology director John Joy and the rest of the WOOD-TV team felt a certain sense of pride in putting the DekoCast and LeaderPlus systems to the test - since the station helped refine the combined systems' winning formula when it was selected as an Avid beta test site.
"With Avid DekoCast we can have a slightly different look for each station and call them up at the push of a button."
- John Joy, Operations Technology Director, WOOD-TV
The Foundation for Success
The Avid LeaderPlus newsroom election management system is designed to make it easier for broadcast television and cable networks that rely on accurate and timely election data to keep viewers constantly informed of the latest results. The LAN-based program operates on a Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 server platform, which is connected to a network hub to communicate to multiple workstations. With this setup, the LeaderPlus system allows election results to be easily integrated into a newsroom's entire workflow. At WOOD-TV, this includes Avid iNEWS newsroom computer systems, DekoCast and Deko 3000 on-air graphics systems as well as Thunder XL live production servers.
The LeaderPlus workflow begins with election setup, which consists of inputting the wire races the station wishes to track into the database. The LeaderPlus system then automatically pulls the appropriate wire codes directly out of a feed capture that contains sample wire data, eliminating the chance of manual entry errors. "In fact, we also send people out with laptops to the individual counties to enter results into our LeaderPlus database," explains Joy. "This limits the number of phone calls coming into the building, and that's important on election night." Adding even more flexibility is the ability to organize races in any order desired, which helps stations target their specific coverage areas more directly.
Once election night is underway, a LeaderPlus Producer Screen keeps newsroom personnel on top of the races and can even display results directly to on-air anchors and reporters via their Talent Screens. Data can also be pushed through to multiple graphics systems that can instantly populate pre-built graphic templates. Web sites can also be instantly updated, maintaining the graphical look-and-feel of the corresponding station's newscast. With the capability for these multiple graphical outputs, the LeaderPlus system ensures brand consistency across all distribution points - another benefit for stations seeking to stand out from the competition.
"With LeaderPlus keeping track of all the elections through its giant database, we can have the data output to the DekoCast [system for on-air broadcast] and to the station's Web site immediately," says Joy.
"On election night a graphics operator will drive the Deko 3000 from the iNEWS [platform], but the results will be pulled in from [the] LeaderPlus [system]."
- John Joy, Operations Technology Director, WOOD-TV
Consistent Look, Fast Updates
Both LeaderPlus and the Avid on-air graphics products integrate with many newsroom computer systems (NRCS). The WOOD-TV newsroom has 60 Avid iNEWS NRCS licenses, giving newsroom personnel the ability to tightly integrate workflows with the station's DekoCast, Deko 3000, LeaderPlus, and Thunder systems. The newsroom handles newscasts for WOOD-TV and two other local stations: WOTV (an ABC affiliate) and WXSP (a MyTV Network affiliate). All of the stations are owned by Providence, R.I.,-based LIN Television.
"Master control loves the DekoCast [automated edge-graphics system]," says Joy. "It gives them a consistent way to do crawls for all three stations. We can have a slightly different look for each station and call them up at the push of a button on the master control switcher."
Intelligent templates featured in Deko products come in especially handy for other continually updated graphical data such as election coverage, allowing for consistent styles to be changed and applied across multiple templates. Advanced composition tools, such as text that fits-to-fill a layer boundary or auto-branding frames, can apply station- or network-branded looks for every visual element, whether a typed character of text, or a still image or motion graphic fulfilled via news automation graphic designs.
"We try to keep a consistent look with templates, consistent with graphics we use for pre-election coverage," says Joy. "It's important to have viewers be familiar with our look, which means giving them as much information as possible without being cluttered and difficult to read."
The Deko lineup also allows for 2D and 3D animations on text, images, and even video clips to be linked with sound effects. Users can also scrub to preview animations in real time. At WOOD-TV, animations and video packages are stored on an Avid Thunder XL server. "It's interfaced with the production switcher so the technical director can trigger and play animations from any of four channels," says Joy.
Differential motions are also an important feature in Deko 2D and 3D graphics systems that set them apart from the competition when it comes to election coverage. Differential motions allow users to create logical graphic transitions by addressing only the layers where screen pixels have changed and automatically animating those layers only.
Three Avid DekoCast units are located in master control to handle downstream graphics and lower-thirds that cycle through all of the races. A fourth is located in the production control room and displays more results into a lower right bug. For the November 2006 elections, WOOD-TV added a DekoCast HD model to display results in high definition during NBC's primetime coverage.
Later on during election night, when all of the information comes together, the speed and efficiency of this broadcast setup become key. "On election night a graphics operator will drive the Deko 3000 from the iNEWS [platform], but the results will be pulled in from [the] LeaderPlus [system]," says Joy. The producer will also be able to link the full-page graphic containing results to a news story so that if the story floats to another place in the on-air rundown the graphic will move with it.
"With Deko and DekoCast [systems] we're able to keep a consistent look between devices," says Joy.
With this integrated Avid newsroom workflow, WOOD-TV can produce eye-catching, informative, and up-to-the-minute election coverage, making it an unqualified winner on election night - and beyond.
* CREDITS: Courtesy of WOOD-TV8, Grand Rapids, Michigan