TVN Webinar: Developing The Best Hybrid Cloud Strategies

On the long road to fully cloud-based news production, broadcast technologists continue to wrangle over what should stay on-premises versus migrating to the cloud. Tech leaders from Sinclair, Fox Television Stations, NBCUniversal Local, Bitcentral and Imagine Communications will share their own criteria and how those moves have played out in a TVNewsCheck Working Lunch Webinar, “Hybrid Cloud Strategies,” on Aug. 10 at 1 p.m. ET.

The discussion will examine station groups’ progress in moving live news to the cloud along with the differences in cloud adoption between networks and local stations. It will also consider how to leverage the cloud for both network and local station operations.

“Given the current state of technology, the key question is what makes sense to keep on prem and what broadcast functions make sense to move to public or private cloud,” said TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp. “This panel will confront those questions directly drawing from their immediate experience.”

Register here.

Speakers:

Tim Joyce, SVP of Engineering, Operations and Technology, Fox Television Stations — Prior to joining FTS, Joyce spent nearly three years as the SVP of media and broadcast engineering for Fox Corp. Previously, he was the SVP of technology business relations for Fox Networks Group in Los Angeles, and before that, as VP of broadcast operations for Fox Networks Group in Europe and Africa.

Joyce spent six years as VP of operations and production services for National Geographic Channels International. He began his career as a senior editor for Fox Latin American Channels. A graduate of the University of Southern California, Joyce holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in international relations and Spanish.

Mike Palmer, Senior Director, Media Management, Sinclair Broadcast Group — Prior to his current role at Sinclair, Palmer was CTO of Masstech, where he was responsible for defining and overseeing the company’s technical strategies for developing new technologies that allow it to grow its position in existing and new markets.

Palmer is an active contributor to SMPTE standards and is also spokesperson emeritus of the MOS Protocol Group, an organization which he led for nearly 15 years which was awarded a 2017 Technology and Engineering Emmy. Palmer is also a recipient of Broadcasting + Cable’s Technology Leadership Award. Both awards recognize the impact of technical standards and highly integrated systems on the work done every day by thousands of journalists around the world.

Prior to Masstech, Palmer worked for the Associated Press, where he was director of ENPS design and integration strategy.  Earlier, Palmer held both editorial and technical management positions at the local, group and national levels in the U.S.

Sam Peterson, Chief Operating Officer, Bitcentral — As chief operating officer, Peterson has direct control of the organization’s operations in accordance with Bitcentral’s strategic objectives and business plans. Peterson is a career broadcast professional with more than 32 years of experience including over 20 years in various leadership roles at large, industry-leading corporations.

He has held positions spanning product management, marketing, direct sales and sales engineering. His broad experience spans all aspects of media production and distribution including automation, master control and playout, news gathering and production, post-production, signal management and live production. He has successfully overseen the integration of several products from international acquisitions into the North American market.

On the OTT side, Peterson has extensive networking expertise in contribution and distribution networks for live streaming and video on demand. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Communications from Austin College.

Matt Varney, VP of Technology & Operations, NBCUniversal Local — He is focused on helping harness technology, develop leaders and equip teams in their mission to engage viewers with the people, places and events that matter most. Varney believes in challenging the status quo and getting people excited about where new technical possibilities intersect with business opportunities and challenges. And of course, building cool new things.

Over 16 years with NBCU, Varney has worked with some of the best teams in the industry designing and implementing state of the art technologies for modern news and production workflows. His projects include the design and buildout of The Studios at DFW, a 75,000 square-foot news facility that is home to KXAS (NBC), KXTX (Telemundo) and LX, the division’s TV and OTT network for millennials and Gen Z-ers. Varney also oversaw the implementation of the division’s ST-2110 based, virtualized “Production Cloud” infrastructure in DFW, which remotely hosts live local news production for multiple stations across the county.

Varney knows that while progress is made at the bleeding edge, it’s the teams you cultivate that can turn the bleeding into leading.

He is a reformed music school graduate living in a video world and holds a BA in production and engineering from Berklee College of Music.

Andy Warman, SVP Product, Imagine Communications — He oversees playout, infrastructure and networking solutions. These solutions encompass video processing, routing, video server, storage, automation and media workflows for broadcast and OTT applications and leverage cloud computing, on premises systems and the internet to enable linear services that will scale as customer needs evolve.

Before joining Imagine Communications, Warman was director of product management for live linear services — Comcast Technology Solutions’ self-service channel delivery, live linear processing, virtual hannel and linear rights metadata management solutions for content providers, MVPDs and vMVPDs.

Warman spent seven years at Harmonic as director of playout solutions for its VOS360 cloud-based channel origination and distribution solution and product manager for the Spectrum media server and shared storage solutions. He also served on the board of directors of the Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) and chaired the trade association’s marketing working group, which promotes the adoption of media over IP solutions to replace legacy SDI uncompressed video workflows.

He also spent 11 years at Harris Broadcast (now Imagine Communications) where he drove Harris’ channel-in-a-box strategy, video server platform, storage, editing and graphics product lines. He has a wealth of domain experience in the production and playout arena, as well as automation, news production, content creation and infrastructure common to broadcast workflows.

Glen Dickson, Contributing Editor, TVNewsCheck (Moderator)