EITB: new radio stage with a renewed production system

The present and future of radio EITB Media goes through a new Dalet system that will coordinate the entire technical flow of production, broadcast and publication. Koldo Lizarralde, deputy director of engineering; and Joseba Orgaz, radio technical chief, convey all the keys to a solution that has just landed at Radio Euskadi (Bilbao).

A strategic project. This is how they define Lizarralde and Orgaz the last major technical renewal initiative undertaken by EITB Media, a company that manages all radio and television entities in the Basque Country.

The renewal of radio content and program production system of the emission centers Radio Euskadi, Basque Country the radio, Radio Vitoria and the delegation of the radio of EITB in Iruña/Pamplona represents a complete update of the processes known to date. The station has looked for a solution that would allow them to renew all their workflows based on pillars such as automation and the reformulation of the operation. Everything had to be more natural, more organic; and, at the same time, it had to benefit from the latest developments offered by technology.

He The document was published in spring 2020, in summer the evaluation tests were carried out for the different candidates and the award took place in fall 2020. The candidate finally selected in this tender based on the award criteria was Telefónica Audiovisual Services (TSA), which presented the product of The valley. At the end of November 2021, the system went live after months of testing and specific configurations at the headquarters of Radio Euskadi in Bilbao. Progressively, it will reach new headquarters in which is a display orderly, exhaustive and cautious of a solution that, to date, has hardly caused any complications.

The needs of EITB Media

EITB Media faced the challenge of renewing its radio production with several requirements that would address some of the most pressing needs for the entity. Summarized below are the project keys: “The idea was to generate a renewal of the tools, a system with new content repositories.” The project would have to propose a new production structure, broadcast and publication to be used fluently by large newsrooms of journalists of EITB Media, more than 250 positions “that not only generate content, but also organize production.”

In this way, little by little the horizon became clearer with the main request of Basque public radio: a agile platform with a deep integration with the rest of EITB tools and resources. Synergies, in this way, would constitute a central requirement. The new system would have to integrate with the generation of stairs, with software like MusicMaster (in charge of musical programming) or with the asset management own who are responsible for publishing content in the different windows of the entity.

taking the leap

Once the tender is held, EITB Media has poured all kinds of resources into ensuring that the integration was a success. The first step was to discover in depth all functions and features of the Dalet system to specify how the group could adapt them to their needs.

Together with the company's product team, with which EITB has had direct communication, each of the solution possibilities was analyzed for five months: from February to June 2021. Automations, UIX configuration and customization, dashboards, API configurations…Everything was put on the table.

This has been the phase to which the most time the organization has dedicated, although experience will allow subsequent deployments to be streamlined. From a more technical perspective, Telefónica Audiovisual Services (TSA) was in charge of deploying servers NET APP for content, servers HPE for databases and core process, network electronics Dell and workstations HP with cards Digigram in controls for audio processing and DANTE.

Once the system configuration was defined (however, it will always be subject to improvement over weeks and months), several journalists and technicians received a extensive training to later serve as teachers of their peers. After several weeks of testing, the final leap was made in mid-November, with every guarantee that daily operations would respond to the intense work pace of Radio Euskadi.

Unreleased possibilities

Apart from the optimization of previous workflows, the update to the The valley has allowed EITB Media reformulate several of its processes and achieve new milestones. Once they are executed all phases of the project, the group's stations will produce automated recordings based on rundowns, they will be able to manage automatic shipments of assets y extract key contents for your publication.

All these innovations converge in a paradigm shift, which goes through transform classic radio production, in which a multitude of tasks come into play, to achieve structure all processes from its own origin. As the technical managers of the project clarify: “The key is that: now we have the content control from before it is generated until it is published from the tool itself. Before, each profile had its part to do and there was no technical communication between them. Now, everything is grouped in the same tool: from planning to production, broadcast and publication of content.”

As it could not be otherwise, the new radio system of EITB Media It also communicates with the television aspect of the entity and with him CMS content publishing on the Internet. As they indicate in more detail: "Our stations are embedded in our services. With this system, we have achieved that our journalists' stations share all their corporate tools and the new system is perfectly integrated with all the group's tools. In that sense, we have done important work."

An island-distributed solution

One of the discussions that occurred before launching the project was how to organize the technical structure of the system. Two options were put on the table: create a back office central office against which the rest of the headquarters would work, or implement a series of independent infrastructures in each of the stations with sufficient resources to be autonomous. EITB Media decided on this last option, all without giving up the fact that each headquarters could “access and share both content and content flows” between each island.

With this decision, EITB has managed to ensure its processes and not lose at any time the ability to produce content: "It is a strategic decision to prevent, at a given moment and due to a fall in the communication services we have, broadcasts from being discontinued. With this system, each station has its own resources."

A successful deployment

To ensure that the arrival of the new radio production system was deployed with the greatest reliability, the Radio management and engineering areas of EITB Media have scheduled a series of weekly meetings to follow the first steps of the solution. This is how Lizarralde and Orgaz exemplify the reliability of the solution: "Of the hour that the first meeting lasted, for 55 minutes we were talking about next steps and not about incidents. This is the best sign."

During the first weeks of using the system The valley, all issuance processes have been stable and from the editorial office they have worked normally. Even so, technical managers consider that there is still work ahead. “There are still small configuration flaws or small installation incidents that must be filed, adjusted and corrected, but the truth is that in this sense we would have already signed a start like this,” they confirm.

The incidents have been punctual and identified. The system is working. "And the typical incidents that we have had have been more a matter of habit than of training. For example, they have been able to request some additional process from us so that everything goes completely smoothly," they clarify.

Arrival to the rest of the stations in 2022

After the consolidation of the system in Radio Euskadi (Bilbao), the second phase will take place at the Miramón headquarters (San Sebastián), where beyond Euskadi Radio, EITB Media has its three music stations: the young man, EITB music y Basque The songs (which broadcasts only in streaming). In this phase, with the already defined production processes, the greatest effort will be put into the integration of MusicMaster, your music scheduling software. After, TSA e EITB Media They will continue to implement the development of Dalet in the rest of the corporation's stations: Radio Vitoria and the Iruña/Pamplona headquarters, which will operate with disconnections punctual for Navarra.

When asked about the possible extension of this radio production system to television, the technical managers affirm that “they do not know what will come in the future” and recognize that their current solution already has the characteristics advanced that broadcast requires in its daily life.

Even with everything, and despite not closing the door to unification of the production system When the time comes when we have to “renew editors, flows and so on”, they are in favor of “divide and conquer”. Experience speaks: "That everything depends on a single resource introduces a considerable operational risk in the service in the event of any relevant incident. It is essential to guarantee that an incident at one point has the minimum impact on the rest of the services."

A report by Sergio Julián Gómez