Established in 1955, Estonian Public Broadcasting (ERR) is the only public service broadcaster in Estonia. To facilitate an "access for everyone" ethos, its programming is aimed at all ages, and spans news, education, science, culture, lifestyle, current affairs, entertainment, children’s and sports. It also airs content acquired from international production companies and distributors.
In 2008 it expanded its programming by opening a second channel, ETV2. But its ambition for growth was hampered by operational inefficiencies around content management and distribution. It needed a more efficient way to access and manage its programming archive to help streamline the distribution of its content. Also, recognizing that viewers were driving the move to an anytime, anywhere content model, ERR wanted to maximize the potential of its media archive and launch an online portal.
System scalability and functionality was also a crucial requirement as ERR needed a media asset management workflow that could not only satisfy existing content management needs, but could also grow with future requirements. After assessing other solutions on the market, ERR was seduced by the benefits of Avid EverywhereTM and the Avid MediaCentral platform.
With Avid Interplay | MAM from the Avid Media Suite at the heart of its workflow, ERR has full visibility and access to its catalogue of archived (spanning 50 years) and current media assets. Viljar Mee, head of development at Estonian Television, takes up the story: “With 50 years and thousands of hours of ERR productions currently turned to digital format, the Avid workflow enables us to efficiently tag, store and organize our archive. Add to these metadata capabilities the rights management features, and our online portal management team knows exactly which content has the rights to go online as soon as the assets are logged. This process has hugely streamlined how we’re getting content online, and ensures that our production teams can concentrate on generating high-quality and engaging content.”
The Avid workflow enables us to efficiently tag, store and organize our archive…this ensures that our production teams can concentrate on generating high-quality and engaging content.
VILJAR MEE, HEAD OF DEVELOPMENT AT ESTONIAN TELEVISION
With an Avid workflow powering ERR, the broadcaster has seen productivity and efficiencies increase year-on-year. In an average day, it ingests 500GB of content, approximately 20 hours of footage and has over 140,000 media assets in its archive.
Mee concludes, “Before our investment in Avid, it wouldn’t have been possible to efficiently categorize and label our archive to find everything, let alone repurpose it for publishing on the web. Now, with these operational efficiencies, we can handle our growing linear and online presence with ease. And with late 2015 seeing the launch of a third channel, ERR is continuing to go from strength to strength with this future-proofed MAM system.”