Preparing for the Super Bowl – Notes from Indianapolis

The very best part of my job is the time that I can spend with my customers in their element. I am here in Indianapolis helping a few of our customers with Super Bowl related transmissions deploying their latest International Datacasting (IDC) compression equipment. While most people focus on the actual football game broadcast, most people don’t consider all of the time and effort that goes into all of the other broadcasts around the big game. Many broadcasters take these kinds of big events as an opportunity to get creative in order to provide unique programming for their viewers.

Photo: Jim Young/Reuters

I get my best ideas at these events. When you actually operate your equipment in the field and live your customers’ lives, you learn to appreciate the critical importance of certain features that can make the difference between getting the job done easily or with a struggle.

A few years ago I worked the Democratic National Convention in Denver. We set up a temporary microwave link from one of the local stations to a skybox in the convention center. Since there wasn’t enough room for camera positions, we created a two-way link to the robotically controlled cameras with the operators back at the station. Once the operators got used to the delay, things went very well. Of course, half way through the convention they decided to move the final nights’ speeches down the street to the stadium. We stayed up all night to move everything and set it all up again. It all came down to the wire, but the show went great. 

So far we haven’t had any technical challenges here quite so dramatic, but there are a slew of temporary broadcasts being set up and torn down continually.

Fox 59 (WXIN-TV) is broadcasting over three hours per night live from the NFL downtown area. They have a temporary open air studio. I will be at the station this afternoon chatting with some more of the technical staff. They are using our TITAN Video encoders, and the pictures look great!

Calhoun Satellite has two of their trucks in town working for NBC. They were broadcasting from media day at the stadium yesterday (I ran into Marshall Faulk – go Aztecs!) and will be providing game day coverage. They also were doing a show from out at the race track. This morning we are pulling our encoders out of their large C/Ku truck for a fiber feed from a theatre downtown. The fiber feed consists of a 4 encoder mux (our older HE4000’s) with a TSM-2800 multiplexer. It will be used for both the Costas Tonight show on NBC sports and Feherty Live on the Golf Channel.

I ran into the Sure Shot guys outside the Marriott downtown. They are doing a Comcast cable sports talk show from the third floor of the hotel with our encoders. They have another three trucks in town. I will try to get out to all of their locations.

My favorite moment of the day was seeing Ohio News Network – a long time customer. They were parked outside the Marriott as well, looking for a good spot to do some stand-ups. I spent an hour or so chatting with the operator. At one point I noted that he had one of our receivers in his truck that was over 15 years old, and I said “why don’t you replace it.” His response was simple – “you shouldn’t have built it so well”.  

 My motto “One happy customer per day – that’s all we need” .

• Damon Semprebon, V.P. Business Development & Product Management – TITAN

Greetings

As the new year approaches, we would like to take a moment to thank all of you, our valued customers, investors and partners, for your loyalty over the past year.  

We look forward to pursuing new opportunities with you in 2012, as we introduce exciting new products. The best is yet to come.

We at IDC would like to extend our sincerest wishes for a happy and healthy holiday. Here’s to a peaceful and prosperous New Year for all!  We look forward to connecting with you in 2012.

All the best,

Frederick Godard, President and CEO, IDC

 

To Tweet or Not to Tweet

During our recent quarterly conference call, an investor asked how I determine what topics to Tweet on behalf of IDC on our single corporate branded account – @datacasting. He had read my recent post on “What Makes News Worthy”, so it was a relevant question. As mentioned, @datacasting is the only official IDC Twitter account. Some IDC employees also maintain personal accounts that do not reflect the opinions of IDC in any way. It is also important to clarify that all IDC material information is distributed through official newswires.

As part of our overall social media program, Twitter is in important tool in connecting with our customers, shareholders and other key audiences. Where some business and personal Twitter accounts seem to follow the approach that more Tweets will result in more followers, we take a more targeted approach at IDC.

It’s all about connecting with our audience. From a content perspective, quality is more important than quantity. I look for topics that are timely, and relevant and that add value to our audiences. As with all social media, the objective is to attract, inform and engage our audiences in a meaningful dialogue and to build our IDC online community. With these objectives of mind, our Tweet and blog topics focus on:

1. IDC News – We consistently distribute upcoming IDC news and announcements, which may be financial in nature, announce a customer win, or partnership. The effective use of links also helps to direct traffic to our IDC website, rather than external sources where possible.

2. IDC Events – We use Twitter as a tool to promote upcoming IDC tradeshows and events, and to invite our customers to schedule meetings at these events.

3. IDC Customer News – We love to spread the word on what our broadcast customers and partners are doing, and sharing their successes that may involve our content distribution solutions.

4. IDC Updates – We will share job opportunities or results of a job well done by key IDC employees.

5. Industry Reports – We consistently track key research and analyst reports and share this valuable information with our online community.

6. Industry Trends – It is essential to stay on top of key issues and trends, and to share this information with our audiences. Communicating these trends and reports is not intended to be a means of providing “hints” or “views” into undisclosed projects or customers we may be working with, rather these are shared as industry topics of interest.

7. Other Topics – Sometimes there is simply a great story of interest that relates to broadcasting in radio, tv, data or digital cinema that is worth sharing either as a link or a retweet of someone we are following.

8. Brand and Reputation Management – We continually track what is being tweeted/retweeted about IDC on the web. It is important to monitor our brand reputation online, and to manage our brand consistently.

This has been a successful strategy for us. Since taking over our Twitter program just one year ago, our followers have increased 20 fold, or almost 2000%. This shows that we are successfully connecting with our online community and building key relationships. It shows that our thoughtful selection of Tweets is on target, and that less is sometimes more. If you don’t already follow us on Twitter, I invite you to join our community @datacasting. If you are already a loyal follower and wish to connect, please feel free to send us a DM, and we will be happy to respond.

• Christine Rozak, Director of Marketing and Communications

IDC Partner Event – Peru

I was recently in Peru, where IDC hosted a Broadcast Technologies Seminar in Lima, along with our partners in Peru Meditel and Intelect on November 21, 2011. We presented IDC’s most advanced technologies for audio, video and data broadcast content distribution were presented to over 50 attendees. The LATAM market is evolving and growing. Broadcasters are modernizing their technology to benefit from the efficiencies and enhanced functionalities now available. We see great opportunity in the region for audio network upgrades, migration and TV/video broadcasting.

Aguilio Ruiz Rodriguez (Intelect), Francisco Cordero (Meditel), Monica Mendoza (IDC), Jerry Dirk (IDC), Abel Bedoya (Intelect)

This seminar was initiated by Canada trade commissioner in Peru, Katia Rivadeneira. Partner presentations were given by Mr. Abel Bedoya, Intelect´s General Manager and Mr. Francisco Cordero, General Manager for Meditel. I provided the participants with an overview of IDC’s key business objectives for the region. Jerry Dirk, Sales Engineer for IDC, spoke to the audience on the technical side, specifically about launching IDC´s STR Receiver, the most efficient radio solution to migrate or replace aging audio networks, as well as IDC’s flexible and robust SuperFlex Pro Audio Series, SuperFlex Pro Video Series, TITAN MPEG Video Encoder and Digital Cinema products.

IDC already has a strong base in the LATAM market and a solid history of working with partners and customers in the region. Current customers include Radio Caracol in Colombia; Casablanca in Brazil; Cinepolis; Banorte, Notimex, SAT, RTV, in Mexico, Telecom in Argentina, among many others.

• Monica Mendoza, Channel Sales Manager for the Americas

IDC Remembers

Remembrance Day is a particularly special day for IDC employees, as we are proud to operate the Canadian Forces Radio and Television (CFRT) from our Teleport in Ottawa. IDC is especially close to the Canadian military and we are grateful for their contributions to all Canadians, especially on this day of honour.

Since 1999, IDC has been uplinking the CFRT service, broadcasting English and French television channels as well as hometown radio stations, to Canadian Forces deployed around the world. From Eastern Europe to North Africa, to the Middle East to Afghanistan, and ships at sea–our service has been there to inform and entertain our troops. It was especially significant for IDC employees to watch today’s live Remembrance Day services, honouring our troops, while we were also broadcasting this service live to our military overseas. This shows the power of the media in connecting people around the globe, and reinforcing a strong sense of community. We hope through this special broadcast, the troops can experience the respect and gratitude for both past and present generations of our forces, their families, and supporting groups.

IDC is proud to have a small part in serving this memory and honouring their sacrifice and courage.

• Barry Grant, Director of Sales – Canada and  Eastern USA  

IDC employees observe Remembrance Day outside our Teleport as we broadcast the ceremony live to Canadian Forces overseas.

What Makes News “Worthy”?

Recently, I was hit by a series of announcements from a single technology company. These came fast, frequent and to be honest, contained mostly fluff and not a lot of substance. There is a lot of noise on the newswires with companies competing to be heard, and finding the right balance as to what to announce, or not, is an art.

Not only must the content be newsworthy, but it must be engaging, timely and relevant. As a publicly traded company, we must also consider issues of disclosure as related to our shareholders and investors. Here at IDC, we choose our communications carefully to ensure that the media and the message are relevant – we target the right audience, with the right message, through the right media. 

Newswires are effective for distributing information for disclosure purposes, including relevant customer wins and material contracts, product launches and even certain targeted events. Yet, when overused, it tends to turn people off the message and sometimes even the company.

A material contract is often a judgment call based on our experience and long-term assessment. We tend to err on the “disclose” side, meaning that if we’re not sure, we’ll announce. We have developed our company guidelines to ensure that our press releases are relevant. For example, we will typically announce a customer order over $1MM in revenue over a 12 month period. We might announce a smaller order with a significant new customer, but decide to not announce smaller orders for previously announced customers. Also, an effective way to demonstrate our market leadership in a given market is to combine several smaller orders for a related group of customers.

A PR strategy needs to evolve with the business. For IDC, our business has changed over the last few years where today a larger percentage of our revenues is made up of smaller orders than in the past. As a result, we have made fewer larger announcements. We feel that a press release strategy should be about quality and not quantity.

To communicate with investors, we host a quarterly analyst conference call following the release of our financial statements in which we discuss our progress as a business. Also, our industry presentations are posted on our website. We are covered by a number of research analysts and as a public company, there’s a ton of information available for those that want to dig into Google or the various financial websites out there.

Beyond PR, our broad communications strategy covers our website and social media to communicate with our target audiences. We actively engage with our audiences through Twitter, LinkedIn and even Facebook. We manage ongoing customer email campaigns, and more recently we have launched our corporate blog as other means of connecting.

We understand that communications is a two-way process. If you have any feedback, we would like to hear from you!  Thanks!

• Christine Rozak, Director of Marketing and Communications

It’s Show Time!

Hot on the heels of SATCON, our team is headed to ShowEast in Miami this week! 

This is our NA introduction of the Pro Cinema Event Player (PCEP), capable of delivering high quality 2D and 3D images for digital cinema projectors. This latest technology decodes high frame rate and high resolution video for unparalleled image quality for alterative live content delivery. The PCEP was recently unveiled at IBC2011, as part of IBC’S Big Screen Showcase, which included a live demo in partnership with Christie. The PCEP integrates SENSIO® Hi-Fi 3D technology.

IDC's Pro Cinema Event Player and Pro Cinema Cache Server at Christie Booth 615

This week at ShowEast2011, IDC is proud to partner again with Christie in demonstrating high frame rate video delivery using our PCEP and Christie’s Solaria Series digital cinema projectors. These state-of-the-art technologies are featured at Christie’s Booth 615 in their “High Frame Rate Technology Zone”. Together, we are demonstrating high frame rate alternative content, up to 60 frames per second, per eye, providing an ultra-realistic experience not previously possible.

What makes this innovation important? The resulting image quality enhances the audience experience, and increases consumer demand for watching sports, musical and theatrical events. Further, it reduces the cost for theatre owners wanting to distribute 2D and 3D live content to numerous screens within a multiplex. We all know that audiences are increasingly selective about where their entertainment dollars go. In the end, it’s all about distributing content that attracts, engages and retains the consumer audience.

Visit us in the Zone!  Christie Booth #615.

• Christine Rozak, Director of Marketing and Communications