PBS Case Study
Goals and challenges
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) has over 350 member stations that have their own producers, broadcast content, and web sites. Member stations broadcast shows produced by the PBS corporation, and also share a huge amount of content with other member stations.
When PBS approached thePlatform, they had players on the corporate site and diverse players on member station sites; they needed to standardize players if they were going to share content on a large scale. However, they didn’t want to standardize storage providers, as member stations wanted to retain the content delivery mechanisms they already had in place.
PBS’ goals for their new digital content initiative were:
- Get a large portion of PBS national content online
- Move all video into common management system for consistent administration, tracking, distribution, and policy management
- Deploy an account structure that let member stations and content producers such as Nova share video to a main distribution account
- Make it just as easy for members to share broadband video content as they do broadcast content
- Support storage and delivery using multiple CDNs
- Provide local stations with players that use the same code base
- Create a user interface that could accommodate users’ behaviors and interests
- Support content producers’ need to protect video rights
- Incorporate underwriting messages into the pbs.org and member stations’ players
thePlatform’s solution
Content ingest
- PBS created three account types in the media publishing system (mps):
– One Parent account, a top-level account that contains all subaccounts, user permissions, and server definitions.
– Content Provider accounts, which stations and producers use for video ingest and management.
– Distribution Partner accounts, which aggregate content from all content providers so that it can be shared to others. - Using Distribution Partner accounts gives member sites a lot of sharing options, such as wrapping local content with national programming.
- To help PBS control access to publishing, republishing, deleting, and expiring content, a third-party design company developed an ingest tool for content and metadata upload and registration, and an administrative web site for stations and producers. Stations can also use our APIs to add new media to their accounts.
- PBS uses a Connector to validate the content and metadata being ingested. To make sure that the video being shared with the distribution account has the correct parameters, the Connector confirms that all of the required media files and images exist, that the bitrate is included and in the correct range, that the thumbnail dimensions are adequate, and that mandatory fields such as “title” and “description” are populated.
- PBS national content destined for broadband players is captured by PBS operations center from tape, transcoded, and placed in a common directory. The PBS content team uses a custom CMS and thePlatform’s API to ingest the video to Content Provider accounts and the content is then shared through a common feed.
Publishing
Server objects are defined in the parent account and exposed to the content provider accounts individually. Each member station can use its own CDN and settings for local content and allows sharing for national distribution.
Publishing approval is required on national content, but not local content, ensuring national video quality and easier management of high-volume local content.
Stations query a single feed for national or local content and then can review the resulting catalog, choose a clip, and publish it to their site’s player.
Presentation
A third-party design company used our Player Development Kit (PDK) to design the player on pbs.org.
To accommodate an audience often looking for content by subject, the program library is browsable by programs, topics, or collections, and selected videos are presented in a feature “carousel.”
Brandable PDK players were given to a dozen member stations, and more stations will onboard over time.
PDK players pull content from thePlatform’s Feeds Service, and stations can filter this feed for national or other members’ content.
Stations using the PDK player who want to embed specific videos on their web site can browse the video catalog in the player, click on the get link button, and then copy and paste the iframe or direct link into their sites.
Licenses
To let content providers protect rights to their video and decide who can use their media, PBS uses geotargeting, which filters by either member station or by media file to protect rights to programs.
To further control content sharing, content providers can also use content availability, expiration restrictions, and station-level blocking of any of the 167 member stations currently using the PDK player.
Underwriting
On the national site, PBS uses mps playlists to wrap video with pre- roll underwriting messages. Using mps playlists along with an ad server, PBS can deliver targeted messages keyed to both programs and individual shows.
Affiliates can use any vendor they want to sell underwriting messages, and can sell messages against their own content.
Benefits and results
Using thePlatform’s services, PBS can give their corporate site and member stations the workflow tools and content sharing options they need to share and deliver their content on a large scale. In addition, the Player Development Kit gives them flexible players that all of their member stations can use to draw a larger audience. See what PBS did with our players on the following sites:
- WTTW’s player carousel for local content:
- http://video.wttw.com/
- WHYY’s take on the carousel and playlist:
- http://video.whyy.org/program/1100713153/
- WNET’s custom PDK design for a locally-produced show:
- http://www.thirteen.org/soul/
