CBS News Teams with IBM to Effectively Archive Valuable Digital, Physical Assets
LAS VEGAS (April 06, 1998) – IBM today announced at the NAB98 International Convention and Exposition that CBS News has chosen IBM News Archive Application to effectively manage the entire digital and physical assets of its vast broadcast archive. This solution will help CBS News reduce production and inventory management costs by increasing the efficiency of its archive storage and retrieval system.
With the IBM News Archive application, employees can more quickly store, retrieve, view and order broadcast content online. CBS employees will be able to view digital video clips and images remotely without having to physically order numerous videotapes. CBS News can also more easily re-use and re-package news footage internally for such services as Newspath, its television news service, and for its owned and affiliated television and radio stations. CBS News will also use IBM News Archive to market stock footage to other networks, film production houses and advertising agencies.
“CBS News has the world’s largest broadcast news archive, featuring unique and priceless footage of historical events since the early days of television,” said Steve Canepa, director, Media and Entertainment Solutions, IBM Global Telecommunications and Media Industries. “IBM News Archive will allow CBS News to better access, use and re-purpose this content, an extremely valuable asset.”
“This system has been two years in the making,” said Dan DiPierro, Director of Information Resources and CBS News Archives. “Both IBM and CBS News have invested considerable resources in making sure we came up with a system that will allow us to service both our internal units and external clients with a state-of-the-art digital system to take us into the next century. This will be the cornerstone of our taking the CBS News Archives to a new level of value to the company and to our clients.”
The IBM News Archive application was developed to support the demanding needs of a top organization like CBS News, yet it is user-friendly enough for employees with varying skills. IBM News Archive is open and scalable, making it flexible enough to facilitate future expansion and integrate new technologies. For easy and quick searches and archiving, it features a folder-based workflow, field-value prompting and full-function help facility. Although the application was built to manage a news archive, the system is highly adaptable to manage any media type for any industry.
“The most valuable feature of IBM News Archive is that it saves news organizations time by providing immediate access to archived information and allows their news personnel to manage their time more effectively,” said Canepa.
IBM News Archive Offers Real-Time Content Access
Powerful and intuitive search capabilities allow employees to search via parametric and free text. Parametric searches enable inquiries by pre-coded parameters, such as clip dates, subject names, producers and locations. Free text searches allow queries across text notes, script and other non-coded text fields. In addition, the capability to offer Query by Image Content can be easily added to IBM News Archive. With Query by Image Content, searches can be performed for clips and images
by appearance – such as a red vintage auto or a particular fashion design. An accurate logging and indexing system features full VTR transport control and capture capabilities to allow faster and more complete logging with time codes.
IBM’s solution will help CBS to optimize its physical archive. Once a producer or librarian finds the video clip he or she wants, either through its text description or by viewing it online, a tape can be ordered online and the archivist can fulfill the order through a fully integrated order tracking workflow. The physical tape is checked in and out of the archive using shelf assignments and barcode labeling to assure tight inventory and space control. This will allow CBS News to tighten its inventory controls, reduce its video duplication costs and spend less time searching for the image.
In working with CBS News to develop this system, IBM provided comprehensive application software, systems software, implementation services and support. IBM News Archive is part of the suite of IBM Digital Library applications, powered by DB2, which is used by renowned historical archives to digitize and manage ancient manuscripts as well as by leading movie production companies and advertising agencies to manage brand new content.
The CBS News Division operates a worldwide news organization serving the CBS Television and Radio Networks with regularly scheduled news and public affairs broadcasts – including, among others, the CBS Evening News With Dan Rather, 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, Public Eye With Bryant Gumbel, This Morning, Face The Nation, and Sunday Morning – and special reports. The division maintains 14 news bureaus in the United States and abroad in addition to its world headquarters in New York.
The IBM Global Telecommunications and Media Industries business unit offers a wide range of solutions for telecommunications, cable TV, wireless, broadcasting, publishing, advertising, sports and entertainment industries, as well as Internet service providers in more than 160 countries.
Source: IBM