Interview walkthrough with the Rob Barton, Senior Technical Director for MSNBC, at 30 Rock NYC on November 16th, 2018.
In our first discovery session with Senior Technical Director of MSNBC Rob Barton, we got insight into each of the different user groups that will be using the Live Shot Manager.
Interview walkthrough with the Rob Barton, Senior Technical Director for MSNBC, at 30 Rock NYC on November 16th, 2018.
This user determines the person or place to be in a live shot in an open segment. He or she will contact the person, and will book the studio or truck. They may need to know routing information or fill it in, but it is not essential to their work.
Producers essentially have the same role as bookers, but they are more heavily involved with the production notes. During dayside and weekend shows they do most of the booking.
Producers and bookers decide on a person they want to appear in a shot.
Then, they go about tracking them down via Guest Tracker and contact them.
Depending on the time and day, producers and bookers may book the studios themselves.
They document a new live shot instance by adding a new row in the excel sheet and may fill in metadata such as notes, production information, technical information, and contact information. Producers tend to instantiate live shots for dayside and weekend shows.
When instantiating an object, producers and bookers may not have all of the information required for filling in the metadata. Other users, such as TPMs and TPCs, may need to go in and edit the information they put there.
They have a pre-production role of organizing objects. In the control room, they also have the production role of facilitating and making sure the object is being routed correctly. Sometimes they will also fulfill the role of booking studios. TPMs are more involved during primetime shows.
They generally have the same role as TPMs, but they are more involved during daytime and weekend shows.
Producers and bookers pass the technical aspects, such as booking a studio, to the TPMs and TPCs.
They see if the studios have an opening and if they do, they get the interconnects of that studio from them and enter it in the technical notes and may book the studio if the producer or booker hasn’t already done so. They may also instantiate live shots for prime time shows in the excel sheet.
After they are done filling in the studio information, they alert Media Traffic that the object is ready for their review.
When Media Traffic is done making their changes and creating a technical plan for the shot, the live shot instance goes back to the control room where the TPM will interact with it and facilitate the technical plan.
If Media Traffic makes changes (i.e., a studio was recalled), TPMs and TPCs will not be aware.
Media Traffic determines all the engineering between our studio and our router core and confirm it with the studios.
They assign all the global attributes and routing information of an object. Only this user group can edit global routing information.
TPMs and TPCs create Excel sheets with relevant fields to each type of shot. They fill in these fields to the best of their ability.
TPMs and TPCs then send this sheet to Media Traffic.
Media Traffic goes through each line for every live shot and make the technical plan for that shot. They pick the REM, the fiber transmit lines, and all the inputs and outputs of the building. If information was filled in previously by TPCs and TPMs, Media Traffic may go in again and edit this information if there has been changes made (i.e., a studio was recalled).
Media Traffic sends the sheet back to the control room.
The control room takes the sheet and make updates based on what Media Traffic has changed and sends it back out to a wider mass of people who take it and internalize it.
There is a lot of back and forth email and phone conversation between Media Traffic and TPCs and TPMs when reviewing shots and creating technical plans for them.
TDs are very similar to TPMs. They actually cut the show and works on creative-oriented tasks like effects. They also help organize control room resources to execute what the director wants.
They set up the IFB and PL audio lines and test that everything is running smoothly.
After Media Traffic has reviewed and created a technical plan for a shot, the control room folks work to execute the plan. They also ensure that the feed is coming in and out of the control room properly.
Troubleshooting is very limited to within their control room, since the only group that can check on lines that come in and out of the building is Media Traffic and transmissions. Thus, the control room can only confirm the feed is exiting their room; they cannot check on the fiber line.
There are multiple external databases that users currently use in their workflow that could be integrated into the Live Shot Manager to accelerate their work.
This is an existing database of every person we have ever had in our shows.
However, some information is definitely privileged (such as guest addresses), so how to show and hide certain information must be considered.
There is an opportunity for Guest Tracker to auto-instantiate an object once someone has been booked in here for a live shot.
There is a log within iNews that houses studio information, contact person for the studio, and the connectivity of the studio (i.e., this studio is capable of producing 2 inbound lines and 4 outbound lines).
There is a database that will allow us to pull in show and budget code.