ORLANDO, Fla., July 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- In an unprecedented
digital and broadcast event, WKMG-TV News 6 produced over 100 hours
of livestream content for ClickOrlando.com during the station's
annual coverage of the Lake Eola "Fireworks at the Fountain" on
July 4. This online streaming project
harnessed live video from over 25 different camera angles and
sources, allowing online viewers to be in the "Director's Chair"
and select from the variety of angles, including the first-ever
streams directly from mobile phones of reporters and producers in
the field.
The WKMG-TV News 6 coverage of the fireworks was a test event
for demonstrating new live technologies as part of VIDEO 2020,
Graham Media Group's Total Video Transformation project that aims
to reduce the complexity required for reporters and other content
producers to publish video content and to reach their audiences
faster with meaningful content. Throughout VIDEO 2020, Graham Media
Group has collaborated with several partners including Google and
YouTube, Amazon Web Services, and The Washington Post's Arc
Publishing to leverage technologies born outside of the traditional
broadcasting ecosystem to create and produce video livestreams.
One of the new technologies debuted at this event was Broadcast,
a first-of-its-kind mobile app that allows journalists to stream
high-quality live video to multiple sites and social platforms
simultaneously. The Washington Post's Arc Publishing worked closely
with the Graham Media Group team to develop this powerful
application.
"It allows me to deploy my staff in ways I never could before,"
said News 6 news director Allison
McGinley of the new Broadcast app. "Leveraging this
technology in breaking news situations--when minutes count--will
allow News 6 to get critical information to our viewers much faster
and more efficiently. Now everybody in my newsroom is a
reporter."
A dozen reporters were located around Lake Eola utilizing the
Broadcast application to gather live shots for the full event.
WKMG's engineering and IT teams set up cameras to feed additional
angles during the event, including a wide-angle barge cam, and a
360 degree camera to allow viewers to turn the direction of their
view.
"It's amazing where things are going," said News 6 anchor and
reporter Matt Austin. "We normally
work in this big technology hub with control rooms, servers and
studios. Turns out we can do nearly the same thing on location! The
future of news is mind blowing," said Austin, who went live from
his mobile device multiple times during the event.
Up to 17 simultaneous livestreams were all ingested into
cloud-based AWS Media Services and were available for the audience
to watch while they were live, essentially choosing their own
adventure in watching the fireworks. Additionally a digital-only
broadcast was produced from laptops at the event.
"The technology and platforms that we are using are useful in
coverage of big events, but to us they represent the future of how
local news is going to be covered," said WKMG VP & general
manager Jeff Hoffman. "In a breaking
news situation, for instance, you really want to dedicate as many
resources as you can to covering the story. These enabling
technologies will give our viewers a real time comprehensive
experience. This is the index of our possibilities in covering
local news."
This event was made possible by a Google News Initiative YouTube
Funding Grant. These grants were issued to help newsrooms and
publishers strengthen their online video capabilities and
experiment with new formats for video journalism.
"Being able to push the boundaries of how our newsrooms can
cover their communities is the real benefit of having a partner
like Google assisting us in this livestream project. The grant has
allowed us to experiment inside of this overall project and
accelerate getting the final products in the hands of our newsrooms
and reporters," said Catherine
Badalamente, VP and chief innovation officer for Graham
Media Group. "Having our reporters in the field with the ability to
send video anywhere in the world supports our core mission at
Graham Media Group. With partners like Google, AWS, The Washington
Post/Arc Publishing and Grabyo, we have a clear line of sight into
the future of how journalists will serve their communities."
Graham Media Group, a subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company
(NYSE: GHC), operates seven local media hubs - each in a
top-70 market and all recognized as news
leaders: KPRC–Houston, WDIV–Detroit
and WSLS–Roanoke (NBC); KSAT–San Antonio
(ABC); WKMG–Orlando
(CBS); WJXT–Jacksonville (fully local),
and WCWJ–Jacksonville (CW). Based in Detroit, Graham Digital is a digital
media and technology development group widely recognized as a
leading industry innovator. Social News Desk,
headquartered in Atlanta, provides
its 2500+ worldwide newsroom-customers with a single dashboard to
publish, measure, curate and monetize local news content on social
platforms.
Website: https://www.grahammedia.com/
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SOURCE WKMG-TV