CBC News Express | Capital Networks Limited


Originally posted on 28 Jan 2013

Objective of the Project:

CBC/Radio-Canada is Canada’s national public broadcaster and one of its largest cultural institutions. The Corporation is a leader in reaching Canadians on new platforms and delivers a comprehensive range of radio, television, internet, and satellite-based services.

CBC is dedicated to delivering its news journalism to a wide audience, exploiting new and innovative new media – such as digital signage – to connect with people no matter where they are.CBC rolled-out its CBC News Express broadcast service to six major airports across Canada – including Toronto Pearson International Airport, the busiest in Canada – to ensure that critical news and weather reports are available to the thousands of people who pass through the country’s airports each day.CBC was replacing a previous system and needed a solution with advanced content management capabilities that would be able to support the expansion across multiple airports.

Outcome of the Project:

The Audience software platform enables CBC News Express to present the latest video content and live data feeds for up-to-the minute local and national news, weather, business and sports updates.

Because the Audience solution is an open system that integrates easily with existing hardware and software, the CBC didn’t have to ‘rip and replace’ its entire infrastructure, which helped minimize costs.

Robert Bishop, Executive Producer at CBC commented: “As Canada’s national broadcaster, CBC takes the management of public dollars extremely seriously. And, CBC News Express is an important source of commercial revenue for the Corporation. Similarly, we can’t compromise quality for cost because we have a reputation for delivering technologically advanced broadcasts across every medium. After a rigorous selection process, we chose Capital Networks as our digital signage partner because it delivers on both these points: the solution is cost-effective because it’s so scalable and open; and the quality of broadcast is second to none, as is content management.”

“Capital Networks bridges the gap between digital signage and broadcasting,” Bishop continued. “Most companies fall into one category – digital signage vendor or broadcasting production – but Capital Networks has a solid history in both. Its Audience solution ensures that our programming is really sophisticated in terms of layout and design and meets our need for flexibility and rapid delivery in a rapidly changing news environment.”

Because the Audience software platform is highly scalable and open it permitted CBC to replace the previous installation at an affordable price while also providing the opportunity for planned future installations at additional locations.

The digital signage network has become an important source of revenue and has created new sponsorship opportunities through the readily customizable scheduling found in the Audience platform.

Switching to the Audience platform provided the CBC with improved flexibility to transition to live breaking news programming across the entire network.