The platform our stations run on is the same platform we design, write and maintain. There is no vendor between the people operating the service and the people who can change it.
Why in-house
Off-the-shelf broadcast automation is sold to organisations with an engineering department and a procurement cycle. Our requirements were short and almost none of them appeared on a feature matrix, so we built to them directly.
What that buys
We can change the system on a Tuesday afternoon. When something breaks at four in the morning, the person who gets the alert can read the code that caused it.
API first
The website, the apps and the playout all read the same data from the same place, so there is one version of what is happening rather than four.