How to Build an Unbreakable News Production Workflow

Don’t let unforeseen interruptions to your news production workflow plummet your viewership and brand following.  

We have helped some of the industry’s top news broadcasters — like the BBC, Sky News, and CBS — optimize their broadcast productions — and we’ll go deep into how we do that in this article — but here’s a summary for those of you in a hurry:  

1. Invest in Tightly Integrated, Open Infrastructure: You can harness open infrastructure and build a custom system that suits your needs.  
2. Add Redundancy Support: Redundancy support ensures you’re never caught flatfooted by system failures or other disruptions.  
3. Automate Out Mishaps and Human Error: Automating low-value recurring tasks improves productivity by letting your team focus on high-value creative tasks. 
4. Build in Adaptability: Adaptability lets you thrive in a highly dynamic market and changing consumer preferences.  

Want all the details on building a resilient newsroom? Keep reading. 

Why is a Resilient Newsroom Important?

Reliability and consistency form the foundation of audience trust in news broadcasting. Viewers hold newsrooms to high standards and expect you to deliver accurate, timely, factual information. Meeting these expectations establishes credibility and builds trust with your audience — an essential requirement for attracting new audiences and building loyal viewership.  

Newsroom disruptions such as technical failures, reporting delays, and inaccuracies can erode viewer’s confidence. The audience may start to doubt your newsroom’s credibility and seek alternative sources. Disruptions may lead to missed opportunities to cover breaking news or important stories, further dampening your credibility.  

3 Strategies for Uninterrupted Broadcasting

Strategy #1: Invest in Tightly Integrated, Open Architecture

Scalable infrastructure helps you build a more resilient newsroom production by helping you account for spiking workloads and feeds. It allows newsrooms to dynamically scale resources to handle surging demands and ensure a seamless user experience.  

Software-enabled, open infrastructure is a technological framework built on open standards and interoperability. It allows you to create custom solutions that suit your newsroom’s needs without being limited by proprietary solutions or vendor-lock-in.   

Highly integrated systems with workflow automation streamline processes, ensure seamless collaboration, and reduce delays and errors. That may lead to faster turnaround time, heightened productivity, and effective resource allocation. 

A consistent newsroom system simplifies your onboarding process. You can efficiently train and onboard new team members while drastically lowering their learning curve. It allows your journalists and editors to prioritize content production instead of learning to navigate complex software.  

Investing in tightly integrated, open infrastructure gives you the flexibility, scalability, and efficiency to thrive in a dynamic media landscape. You can leverage advanced technology while lowering costs and optimizing your production process to gain a competitive edge.   

Strategy #2: Build in Redundancy Support for All Systems

Redundancy support lets you eliminate potential disruptions and deliver smooth, uninterrupted broadcasts. Innovative solutions like active backup and cloud delivery networks can help ramp up newsroom resilience. An active backup comprises a network infrastructure that takes over if one newsroom operations component fails. Cloud delivery networks use distributed infrastructure to help you overcome the effect of localized disruptions.  

Partnering with reliable technology providers can help you maximize the benefits of a redundancy support system. These experts will help you design and implement custom redundancy systems tailored to your newsroom’s needs. They’ll provide ongoing maintenance and ensure you follow the best industry practices. A bespoke redundancy system can help you report from remote areas or during inclement weather conditions. 

During major global events such as the Olympic Games, you’ll likely experience a surge in traffic and demand. You can leverage a cloud delivery network to handle the spiking viewership seamlessly without downtime or performance degradation.  

Strategy #3: Automate Out Routine and Human Error

There is a wide range of innovative technology that can help us standardize and automate a lot of the common and routine tasks in the newsroom.

Workflow automation is invaluable to any newsroom. It frees up time to let your engineers, producers, and editors prioritize content production. Automating repetitive tasks allows your team to focus on high-value tasks that require critical thinking, creativity, and editorial judgment. It powers your team’s ability to conduct in-depth research, produce compelling stories, and engage in investigative journalism.  

You can leverage powerful resources such as Media Object Server (MOS) workflows — through tools like Overdrive and XPression — to automate content creation and editing in your newsroom. A MOS protocol unifies various software systems to facilitate seamless communication and information exchange.

Overdrive integrates with MOS-enabled newsroom computer systems to help you automate video playback, graphic playouts, and control room operations. XPression is a graphics system that integrates with Overdrive to help you automate creating and inserting graphics in live broadcasts. Automating these processes saves you time, minimizes production workloads, and enables you to produce quality content consistently.  

You can harness the automated transcoding and playout capabilities of Media I/O and Overdrive and standardize and streamline your content production workflows. Media I/O is a transcoding solution that automates your ability to convert media files into different formats and resolutions. Automating these processes improves your team’s productivity while increasing your reach.  

Leveraging automated production control tools reduces manual intervention to help you streamline your workflows and optimize resource allocation. It’s an excellent way to ramp up productivity while ensuring the factual accuracy and quality of your news content.  

The Show Must Go On (For a Reason)

A resilient production pipeline helps you build trust with your audience and stakeholders. It underpins your ability to meet their expectations and deliver timely and accurate information. An efficient production pipeline demonstrates a commitment to your audience, earning you their trust and brand following.