Administered by CSI Magazine, the CSI Awards are among the world’s most prestigious media and technology awards. They were introduced to honour technical and product marketing excellence in the cable, satellite, terrestrial broadcasting, mobile and IPTV sectors, and are judged by a panel of experts comprised of practicing and former heads of engineering and operations from some of the world’s most important network operators, as well as respected consultants and senior industry analysts.

BCE participated in the category of ‘Best workflow/asset management/automation solution’. According to CSI Magazine, “Broadcasters have transitioned to data-centric workflows and the challenge is to manage increasing libraries of digital media files and metadata as the transformation to file-based systems gathers pace. Asset management is the process of storing, organizing and retrieving electronic digital assets such as photographs, A/V clips and graphics. Systems are typically deployed to manage digital assets used in the creation of programs or to manage the storage and retrieval of finished programs.”

BCE won the category for its Integrated TV Services for RTL CBS Asia Entertainment Network – a joint-venture between RTL Group and CBS Studios International. The services are a complete revolution for the media industry: the workflow of the RTL CBS Asia Entertainment Network channels has been decentralised, while keeping streamlined processes between the business units, allowing cost reduction at all levels of the company. “Television does not always need heavy infrastructure; it can be thought as a service, giving scalable solutions for the media world,” comments Tun Van Rijswijck, COO at BCE.

BCE’s content management solution is organised around two main developments:

• The MediaCMS allows for managing multiple types of content, triggers work orders, enables fast editing, and automates postproduction tasks and distribution with Movie2Me©, BCE’s proprietary development for file transfers using the Internet.
• The Broadcast software solutions: Athena© for managing the content and its rights, Cronos© for creating long and short-term planning, and Adonis© for creating the running order. All these applications are directly accessible through the Cloud.

In combination with Movie2Me, the MediaCMS and the broadcast software solutions allow a channel to operate from and to anywhere in the world.

The complete content management system and its workflow are a real step forward for RTL CBS Asia Entertainment Network. Being tapeless is just one aspect – the decentralisation of the entire workflow is the real breakthrough.

With the adequate partners, it is no longer necessary to invest in building new infrastructures. In the case of RTL CBS Asia Entertainment Network: no tape, no heavy infrastructure costs and a reduced staff for a HD TV channel in multiple languages, plus catch-up TV and VoD deliveries.