CASE STUDY: TELENUOVO (VERONA)

INTERVIEW: MARCO GASTALDO, journalist and technical director

Behind the scenes of Telenuovo with Marco Gastaldo, professional journalist and technical director for the television station in Verona. Enabling journalists to work from home to better cope with this period of health emergency is essential. Telenuovo has been working with SI Media software since 2000 and recently requested software customization to integrate the Newsroom with their existing broadcast system.

The first SI Media installation in Telenuovo is now 20 years old. How has the technology changed in these years?

We began our relationship with SI Media in 2000 and started our digital transformation of the workflow with broadcast automation and playlist creation. The scope has expanded over the years to a complete digitization project of our television production, starting with News workflow. SI Media has always been at our side in this process, which advanced to the next phase: the digitization of the video archive. This allows journalists to mount media in digital format and, ultimately, to implement a seamless workflow from camera acquisition, to news production, studio recordings, video direction and broadcasting. With the introduction of Media Store for the management of the video archive, we can now say that the complete news workflow is managed by our SI Media system. It has been a demanding challenge for both Telenuovo and SI Media, which had to comply with our essential requirement: allow the two newsrooms in Verona and Padua, 100 kilometers apart, a common shared platform ensuring both an independent worfklow as well as a fully integrated one, particularly for the real-time access of the content in the video archives. We had already discussed the Newsroom at that time, organizing the work of the editorial staff. This is the last component that was implemented at Telenuovo by SI Media in the last month, accelerated by the Covid 19 emergency.

The health emergency has therefore given an important boost to the adoption of the SI Media Newsroom. How has that changed the way journalists work now?

The Covid 19 emergency pushed us to speed up the installation of the Newsroom, since we were seeking to find the best way to continue the production while ensuring the safety of our workers. We benefited by working smarter thanks to the adoption of the Newsroom. In less than a week we agreed on configurations and then installed by SI Media. It was essential for our 20 journalists to have access to videos, archive and playlist creation from home. SI Media has helped us achieve this goal in short time and now all journalists are able to produce news content by remote collaborating with a minimum presence in the office.

How did journalists perceive this new tool of work?

The SI Media Newsroom tool is very good, simple to use, and robust. Newsroom has enabled us to provide an immediate response to the needs of journalists without the long training period. In half an hour you can explain the simple steps that the Newsroom requires. Journalists were already familiar with the web version of SI Media software in the editorial office, adding the remote work module of the newsroom. Several more enhancements will be activated shortly.

What is the future for the newsroom of Telenuovo now and what role will SI Media software play?

This is the starting point for a comprehensive journey to get the newsroom editorial staff to manage all the workflow. The future is an integrated management of the information on the various media where our viewers search and consume it. Therefore, a digital platform which allows Telenuovo to distribute the information over different distribution methods (social, web-site, smart TV) and to reach the audience, both from the sofa watching the television from home and while moving, including smartphones, tablets and other IT devices. The idea is to convey Telenuovo’s information services to all distribution media, thus adapting the product to the instrument on which it is consumed. The priority right now has been given to the news, but the final target can be extended to all our productions.

SI Media will also be present in the future of Telenuovo. What kind of relationship has been established in the years between your reality and ours?

For these 20 years, SI Media has been a fundamental partner both for the development, technological advancements and in terms of design, always being in step with the market and the various ways of creating and delivering programs for our audience. SI Media understood what we needed and they always managed to customize the software to our needs. At this very moment their close involvement was crucial because in two days we implemented the newsroom, we made it operational and distributed it among journalists, rapidly allowing us to activate “smart working”.