Most broadcast automation is sold to stations with an engineering department, a transmission provider and a procurement cycle. We have four services, one platform and a team small enough to fit in a room.
What we actually needed
The requirement list turned out to be short, and almost none of it was on the feature matrix of the systems we looked at:
- One scheduling model across four services, not four installs
- Handover that fails safe when a source disappears mid-item
- Logging that satisfies compliance without a separate product
- An API, so the website and the apps read the same data the playout does
What it cost
Writing it ourselves took longer than buying would have. What we got back was the ability to change it on a Tuesday afternoon, which has turned out to matter more than the licence fee ever did.