TV Directed By Tweet
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
never.no announced a few weeks ago that Norway’s top commercial broadcaster, TV2 had deployed its interactive technology behind the scenes to create a single management hub for one-click publishing of digital content, regardless of its source or destination.
That same technology – never.no’s Auto Dialog System, Interactivity Desk, and Dynamic Content Scheduler (we played with the Interactivity Desk supporting the TextToScreen initiative during last week’s #ScreenMediaExpo) – is also enabling Norway’s TV2 viewers to use their mobile phones or laptops to make live, real-time contributions during sports talk shows and broadcasts!
Trust us, as Thomas Kuhn might say this represents a paradigm shift in how a broadcaster puts together a TV programme or indeed a whole TV channel.
Håvard Myklebust, managing editor and head of acquisition, TV2 told us “The easy-to-manage never.no system greatly simplifies both our ability to move content around and our interactive offerings,”
He added “Having this single, unified system is a huge improvement to our efficiency, potentially saves us a huge amount of expense, and also enables us to spend more time doing our jobs well and less time developing broadcast software. The interactivity aspect is increasingly important to all our viewers, especially to the younger ones who want to be able to respond when something is said in the studio.”
At TV2, never.no technology takes incoming feeds from as many sources as desired – internal content, Web sites, databases, or even SMS feeds and aggregates them on a single Web interface that is viewed by a technician.
With one mouse click, the technician can then publish content to its destination, with the system automating every step of the process, including graphics interpolation and formatting.
The automated solution supports streamlined production and efficiency because it eliminates repetitive, tedious, and time-consuming hands-on manipulation of individual items – particularly onerous in fast-changing environs like news and sports.
Also, the number of sources is theoretically limitless, while destination platforms could be the TV2 Web site, a news crawl, an in-studio touchscreen wall, or social media platforms.
Currently, TV2 is only using the management hub for sports broadcasts, but decision makers at the broadcaster anticipate the system’s flexibility will be especially helpful when news producers start using the technology this summer to keep up with other breaking stories.
The YouTube video clip above is also very interesting – showing as it does how the behind-the-scenes use of never.no technology allows for managing and routing of content, TV2 is using the never.no technology to enable viewers to use their mobile phones or Twitter to send comments that appear in near real time on the in-studio touchscreen during the live sports talk show.
During a recent Sunday night soccer match, for example, a viewer was able to follow up repeatedly with questions for the commentators.
An interesting feature and for those of you who know your English Football history would have been something damn useful back in 1981 when dealing with Bjørge Lillelien – yes he who famously said (correctly as it turns out) “Your boys took a hell of a beating” 🙁
About TV2
TV2, based in Bergen, is the largest commercial television station in Norway. More than 30 percent of the time Norwegians spend watching TV is spent watching TV2. The station has 65 percent of the market for TV commercials in Norway. TV2 started broadcasts in September 1992.
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