Argentem™ TV Automation Systems News

► ATBTRAFFIC On-Air at KPST

Argentem announces that Puget Sound Television (KPST) of Redmond, WA has gone live with the ATBTraffic sales, traffic, billing and reporting platform for its KPST and Azteca stations.  It is integrated seamlessly with Argentem’s Argus on-air automation which operates the stations in a fully unattended mode.

ATBTraffic has allowed KPST to deal with an ever increasing commercial volume with no additional staff. Rapid scheduling and management of all on-air material combined with real time, web-browser based reports provide KPST with the ability to deal with last minute changes and maximize their inventory.

Online reports are instantly accessible and always up to date. Management, Sales and Traffic departments at KPST have full visibility of avails, revenue, program and spot rates and historical point-in-time comparisons. All reports are available on both PC and Mac platforms throughout the station.

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► ATBTRAFFIC Wins Broadcast Engineering NAB2009 Pick Hit Award

Broadcast Engineering has announced that ATBTraffic from Argentem has won a Pick Hit award at NAB2009. A panel of independent judges toured the show floor for three days, looking for innovative products and technology. The judges then met to make their selections based on several criteria, including the technical and financial improvements the product can bring to a facility’s operation. Broadcast Engineering editors and publishers have no vote in the selection process.

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► Churchill Media Achieves Unattended Operation with Argentem

Churchill Media, based in Eugene, Oregon, has implemented the Argentem Argus Automation platform for its stations KXOR, in Eugene, Oregon and KXPD, in Portland, Oregon.

Churchill’s key objective was to achieve an unattended master control operation for its stations, both of which are affiliates of the Azteca America network.

Adam Falk, Director of Technical Operations for Churchill Media, said "Our goal was to automate both KXOR and KXPD to the extent that they were totally unattended. Argentem have met the challenge and delivered a stable, reliable system that was within our budget. Churchill Media needed to provide for precise spot placement and log reconciliation for national advertisers to even look at buying our station.  Argentem software integrated with our video server, CG system and Traffic system easily and quickly.  We run two stations without a manned master control.  We have people assigned to log in and remotely view and adjust the daily playlist as needed to compensate for log changes from Azteca."

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► GemsTV Automates with Argentem

GemsTV, the United Kingdom's leading dedicated television home shopping retailer of colored gemstone jewelry, has automated it’s US TV shopping network with Argentem’s Argus TV Automation System.

GemsTV has grown to an estimated audience of 34 million FTE subscribers since extending its TV shopping network into the United States in November 2006. GemsTV’s success is driven by its delivery of exceptional value to customers. They have eliminated the need for multiple intermediaries through a vertical integration of the traditional gemstone and jewelry supply chain.

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► LOW COST VIDEO SERVER BACKUP OPTIONS

Improvements in video server reliability have changed the way many organizations plan their playout facilities. Today’s video servers have capacities of many hundreds to thousands of hours of storage. If a suitable backup and restoration procedure does not exist, rebuilding a video server’s content can be a time consuming, costly and daunting task, not to mention the loss of on-air revenue.

If your organization’s budget does not allow for a backup video server, a great way to achieve redundancy is to use a JBOD (Just A Bunch of Drives) array. These arrays are low cost and offer significant protection for a video server’s media assets, at a fraction of the cost of a second video server.

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► Fail-Safe Commercial Spot Automation with 360 Systems Server and Argentem

One of the most costly failures for a television broadcaster is not airing commercials. It means revenue loss and the high cost of make-goods. Last year our station, WKPT-DT/WAPK-DT, had to pay the price for a catastrophic system failure, and as a result we installed a far more robust and dependable video server solution for less money than expected.

WKPT-DT is Tennessee’s first digital television station. In addition to the main station on Channel 19, we also broadcast SD programming over WAPK-TV Channel 36. We operate all programming and commercial spot servers for both stations from the main broadcasting center in Kingsport, TN.

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