Verticals: Media - IT's Media

It's been a rather interesting journey of news media in India. What started
as the newspaper that comes at your doorstep every morning, news has become
rather dynamic thanks to the electronic medium. Besides, there have been a slew
of regional language channels and that have been launched during the last few
years. Not to forget the fact that mainstream news magazines have also been
venturing into the regional game with the vernacular versions of their
magazines. The most recent to do so was India Today, which launched the Bengali
version of the popular magazine.

Historically, high-end technology was not associated with media which was
primarily print till 1995 when Zee Television launched Zee News followed by
Star-NDTV combine launching Star News in 1998.
Print has been rather slow in adopting technology. Television on the
contrary was quick to allow technology play a crucial role to create
state-of-the-art production quality. Technology is also playing a key role in
allowing news channels to take on increased competition today. The last one-year
has seen more launches than ever, be it newspapers, magazines or television
channels. And this is likely to remain the trend going forward.

Print Media: The Old Horse

Print in India is powered by the likes of Hindustan Times (HT), Times of
India (TOI), India Today Group, Anand Bazar Patrika (ABP) and Cyber Media India.
However, print has always been a little laid back in terms of IT adoption. This
scenario has changed in the last couple of years with media houses adopting
technology to drive growth.

IT in media has a two-fold purpose-production and business. The role of IT
to drive business goals in media is quite similar to any other vertical. The
importance of internal IT departments has grown significantly in the last couple
of years with technology becoming core to daily editorial operations.
Unfortunately, the absence of solutions to address specific editorial
requirements is the single-largest challenge for IT heads in media organizations
today. Most editorial solutions are available in patches, which are integrated
to cater to the needs of the publishing houses. Another important requirement is
an automated performance matrix system to evaluate journalists better and there
are no specific solutions for this in the market.

Typically, the workflow in newspapers and news magazines starts from listing
of ideas to conversion of the idea into stories. Interestingly, there is no
consolidated workflow management solution available in the market today. In
other words, no ERP system is tailor-made to suit editorial requirements. Says
Anup Mandal, head of IT, India Today Group, “We have customized solutions
developed in-house for editorial workflow management.”

Images are one of the biggest assets of media houses, whether newspapers or
magazines. These assets have been gathered over decades. Management of these
assets has emerged as a big challenge for them. India Today, for example, has
over 1.5-2 mn such assets, out of which there are at least five lakh that are
required to be preserved. Relevant images that publications would like to
digitize and preserve, need to be culled out first before the process of
digitization starts. Digital asset management has seen the industry's storage
requirements climb steadily over the years to the tune of 100-200% depending on
the quality and volume of assets to be preserved. Large publishing houses have
consolidated storage on a SAN environment.

With the growing importance of e-mails as the basic mode of communication,
publishing houses just like any corporate have archival policies in place today.
Post archival, retention happens application wise.

On the application front, HT was the first player to deploy SAP and TOI and
ABP followed soon after. The India Today Group on the other hand has deployed
Peoplesoft. Media houses are now looking to integrate data warehousing and BI
with their ERP applications.

Today nearly 6-7% of annual turnover is being allocated to IT by leading
media houses. This is not only a significant trend but also highlights the
importance of IT as an enabler of business and a medium to sustain and grow in a
competitive environment. IT budgets have been doubling in the last few years.
Industry leaders are leaving no stone unturned to ensure that they have the best
IT infrastructure in place. This trend is, however, not true for the smaller
players who continue to be laggards when it comes to IT deployment.

Electronic Media: The New Brigade

News in television till a decade back was what Doordarshan offered. The
picture is absolutely different with a large number of news channels and
electronic media getting commoditized to a large extent today. Currently, every
television production house has its own news channel (sometimes, more than one)
and the competition has been taken to new heights with TV 18 and Times Group
launching their regular news channels as well.

The electronic media is characterized by agility, reliability (24x7
functionality) and innovation. Technology has enabled electronic media to move
in the path of the generic IT industry today. News production houses have strong
backup systems to make every process in the workflow robust. Today, 95% of the
infrastructure in leading media organizations is being driven by IT.

Interestingly, the electronic media has chosen a hybrid model to meet their
IT requirements. While solutions for video editing and online editing systems
are obtained from the market (software solutions like Pinnacle, Leich Autocue)
due to easy availability, frontline news channels have concentrated on in-house
development when it comes to graphics. Loose integration happens at various
stages. iNEWS is a common newsroom computer system used, which brings peak
performance to a newsroom staff's ability to create content, and to manage
news rundowns with ease and flexibility. Interestingly, TV Today Network uses
Incite, a relatively new solution, which is not only cost-effective but has also
been customized to cater to the specific needs of TV Today. 

iNEWS is a common newsroom computer system which brings peak performance to a newsroom staff's ability to create content, and to manage news rundowns with ease and flexibility

Today, several innovative software solutions like digital video systems,
digital content management, automated data graphics and custom software are
available in the market. For example, Eenadu TV and TV Today's Aaj Tak uses
Vid'link which electronically transmits footage from a news bureau to the
central production centre over ISDN and V-Sat. Vid'link uses MPEG1 and MPEG2
compression standards and Vid'link mobile is a portable lap-top-based news
gathering solution that transmits high quality video over low bandwidths.

Deploying an ERP system is a bit of a challenge for IT managers as no vendor
solution has been developed to serve the needs of the media industry. Says
Prince Sharma, head of IT, TV Today Network, “People try to map the existing
solutions to our needs.” TV Today Network is currently evaluating SAP for ERP
for finance and accounting as the vendor has had strong association with BBC.
NDTV, on the other hand, has developed its ERP in-house as it is difficult to
get ERP systems in the market for the core part of the media business.  

Storage requirements for broadcasters are huge especially on account of video
storage. TV Today's storage requirements in just three years have grown from 1
terrabyte to 4 terrabytes per month. Average requirement for video storage is 13
gb per hour and total storage capacity is required for 70-80 hours. Most
frontline news broadcasting houses have consolidated their storage requirements
on SAN while others who have fallen behind are also looking to do the same. Just
like most of the other areas, there is no storage solution appropriate for
electronic media. Says Sharma, “Our per station throughput requirement is
different from most of the other verticals and this requirement increases with
the increase in the number of workstations.”  

While the role of technology has evolved significantly in the last couple of
years for both print as well as the electronic media, the growth has been far
most rapid in case of the latter. Top broadcasting houses have seen their IT
budgets double every year in the last five years and IT will continue to play a
dominant role to drive growth in the coming years.

Bhaswati Chakravorty

bhaswatic@cybermedia.co.in