One-Stop Broadcast Solution Gives Students Competitive Edge at University of Montana

Students in the Radio and Television program at the University of Montana are a lot like students across the country. They twitter, they text, they blog; they are glued to Facebook and MySpace. Their lives are often structured around the latest technology, and they expect their academic and professional lives to include frequent and immediate access to information.

So when the University of Montana’s Radio and Television department overhauled its facilities in 2007 with a complete Avid broadcast solution, it provided its journalism students with more than hands-on access to state-of-the-art broadcast technology. The university tapped into its students’ current learning styles, engaging them with the curriculum like never before.

“Our students live in a world where everything is about instant communication,” says Ray Ekness, associate professor and chair of the Radio and Television department. “With the Avid setup they can do everything now. They can sit down and edit, create graphics, do playback or closed captioning. Everything is in one location and can be done immediately. It makes our whole curriculum easier to teach and easier for them to understand.”

We want to turn out professional broadcasters. That’s why we went with Avid.- Denise Dowling, Associate Professor, Radio and Television Department, University of Montana

Seamless Collaboration

With Avid’s end-to-end broadcast solution, the 150 broadcast majors can seamlessly move media through the entire news production and management process, creating short television news segments, half-hour magazine shows, and documentaries that often air on local PBS and other major network affiliates in Montana. The Avid workflow handles all of their broadcast needs, including ingest, editing, graphics, scriptwriting, newsroom management, and playback.

“We wanted to build a forward-looking newsroom with a tapeless, integrated workflow,” says Ekness, who was a 20-year veteran of the broadcast industry before switching to teaching full time. Now, with the Avid broadcast solution, students can instantaneously share projects and media without any downtime, moving easily from capturing and editing material to creating and airing complete news packages. “Avid had all the components we needed  iNEWS, NewsCutter, Media Composer, Deko Select, ISIS storage. They had the whole package for us.”

Prior to installing the Avid broadcast solution in 2007, the School of Journalism, which contains the Radio and Television department as well as Print Journalism, Broadcast Journalism, and Photojournalism programs, was housed in two different buildings on opposite sides of campus. The new Don Anderson Hall brings all of the journalism students together under a single roof, providing for cross-pollination of the various programs.

“These days, if you work with print, you are using video. If you are on the television side, you are posting to the Web and writing longer stories,” says Ekness. “Audio, video, Web, promotions are all tied together. It’s a good time to move together and mirror what’s happening in the real world.”

The Avid Unity ISIS shared-storage system is a large reason why students can collaborate easily among the various disciplines. The university’s ISIS system includes 16 TB of shared storage that can be accessed from several different locations  the newsroom, the control room, a classroom/media lab, individual editing suites, and professors’ offices  so students and teachers can simultaneously share projects and media.

The ISIS infrastructure is also HD capable, so students can learn how to handle the full range of standard-def and high-def projects. Students currently use Sony DSR-PD170 cameras, but will switch to Sony XDCAM cameras in early 2009, shooting on HDCAM and HDV tape. They will also start using the Avid DNxHD codec next year, which will enable them to edit in HD and screen visually crisp and clear HD files without having to dramatically increase their storage capacity.

The HD experience is especially relevant for current graduates, says associate professor Denise Dowling. “One of our goals it to prepare our students to take their first jobs in the professional world,” she explains. “As stations make the switch to HD, our students are ready to manage those newsrooms because they’ve done it here.”

Multiple Tasks, One Workstation

The newsroom is at the heart of the university’s broadcast workflow with 27 iNEWS newsroom computer workstations. Some workstations also have NewsCutter software, which links with the iNEWS system for full-featured editing. “You can sit at any computer with NewsCutter and review footage, voice-overs, teasers, bumps, or entire packages,” says Ekness. “Then with iNEWS you can write a script and just send it off.” The control room contains several Deko Select graphics systems used for lower-thirds and closed captioning and Thunder systems for playout. Longer-form projects can be edited in Media Composer suites.

Dowling believes that the integrated Avid broadcast environment, which makes it easy to connect all of the different pieces in the newsroom workflow, breaks down traditional barriers of how and where broadcast work is performed. Now each student can handle multiple tasks that were formerly spread across the newsroom operation. “All of that work used to take a couple of people and be done in different locations,” says Dowling. “Now each student is solely responsible for all of these different functions and can do them from a single workstation. Working this way they have to take more responsibility for their projects. There is no one else to blame if the CG has a misspelling.” PBS affiliate and two weekly three- and four-minute news segments for other major network affiliates. These segments are also posted online on the university’s video blog. Students also produce audio reports for KBGA, the student-run radio station, and the local National Public Radio affiliate, KUFM.

Seniors work on one-hour documentaries as well, such as the recently completed Dear Mom, a film about mothers in prison. Several student-produced documentaries have received acclaim, winning student awards from the Northwest chapter of the National Academy of Arts & Sciences and from the Broadcast Education Association.

Our students live in a world where everything is about instant communication. With the Avid setup they can do everything now.- Ray Ekness, Associate Professor and Chair, Radio and Television Department, University of Montana

The Real Deal for the Real World

With these hands-on experiences, it is not surprising that broadcast graduates often find success. “We had a student go on to be a producer for Dateline NBC. Another graduate is an anchor on Up to the Minute [a CBS news update],” says Ekness.

Graduates themselves have acknowledged the importance of having Avid broadcast experience. Ekness explains, “[Before we installed the new workflow] we asked a recent graduate to fill out an evaluation form about his final internship program. We asked, ‘Name one thing you wished you had learned to prepare for your internship.’ He wrote one word: ‘Avid.’”

While the university’s IT department was initially concerned about the cost of the Avid systems, Ekness knew his students needed Avid broadcast experience to be competitive. Dowling, who also spent 20 years in broadcasting before turning to teaching, agrees, “We want to turn out professional broadcasters. That’s why we went with Avid.”

CREDIT: Courtesy of University of Montana School of Journalism