Background

The competition for viewership between the major broadcast networks is fierce.  As television audiences start to decline due to the internet, Networks continually shift and move their television shows to fight for the coveted Nielsen rating.  The base lineup of the Prime Time schedule is the foundation for the ABC Network Ad Sales organization to sell advertising space against.  This lineup is announced collectively for all major broadcast networks (e.g. ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX) at the annual upfront events at Ad Week in New York.

In the television industry, an upfront is a gathering at the start of important advertising sales periods, held by television network executives and attended by major advertisers and the media.  Each major television network previews their upcoming fall and mid-season television shows for advertisers, the press, and the other networks.  The annual upfronts for broadcast television generally occurs in early to mid May.

Product Road Map

Phase I – Strategy.  This first phase was the creation of a strategic planning tool for ABC Network to aid C-Level executives (e.g. Bob Iger et al) in crafting the Prime Time schedule (aka lineup) at the series level.  Prime Time is the block of broadcast programming which takes place during the middle of the evening for television between 7PM to to 11PM.  The application called Wall-E (Walt’s ABC Lineup Loader – for Executives), was the first of its kind enabling users to easily manipulate and create planning schedules with almost zero learning curve.  During the development of this system Bob Iger was busy launching Shanghai Disney resort so he wasn’t present for all of the planning sessions.  One of the key requirements for this system was the ability to collaborate securely without the use of video conference technology since the technology at that time did not provide security encryption.  The ABC Prime Time schedule is the basis and foundation for all ABC Network Advertising Sales and key marketing partnerships; a breach in data security would be financially detrimental to Ad Sales.  Wall-E is browser agnostic and is built around a secured messaging system that allows any user viewing the website the ability to control and collaborate with other users securely in “real-time”.  Click here to see Wall-E in use.

Phase II – Operational.  The second phase was the development and implementation of a operational planning tool to manage the day to day Prime Time schedule at the episodic level.  This application was called EVE (Evaluate, Verify & Ensconce) which streamlined and automated the daily operations of programming and production work flows between the Programming department, Studio Production and Talent Acquisition.

Phase III – Tactical/Contingency.  The last and most important phase was tactical and contingency planning.  The identification, collection, ingestion, normalization and consolidation of programming/scheduling meta data such as Nielsen ratings, online viewership, financial budgets, marketing budgets, associated talent (e.g. writers, directors, producers, actors) and content synopses to provide near real-time reporting and data visualizations for all departments and personnel to consume (with approval) for their business needs.

Sample use cases are:

• Heat map overlaying a programming schedule illustrating viewership activity by date/time for programming strategists.
• Budget map for financial analysts to understand upcoming quarterly financial demands.
• Key content release schedules for marketing and creative development to understand overall releases to avoid competing conflicts or leverage gaps

These reports can be subscribed to, automatically emailed, run on a schedule or run as-needed on-demand.  All reports have controlled access and are tightly secured.

Background

The Next Generation Reporting & Data (NGRD) project is a major initiative to build and establish an enterprise-wide reporting and data platform for Disney General Entertainment.

Old reporting portals and tools were disparate; on antiquated technology stacks; not built in a scalable manner; required a large overhead to support and maintain.

Product Road Map

The phased approach will ultimately migrate current reporting systems onto the Amazon Web Services platform as well as create one unified reporting portal for the company.

We will create a hybrid, cloud-based (AWS) and on-premise reporting/data platform that consolidates current reporting portals into a single flexible, extensible portal that enables back-end data sources to easily connect with front end reporting tools such as Microsoft SSRS, Power BI and Tableau.

Background

Credits Consolidation, Composition, Planning & Organization (C3PO) would streamline work flows between post production business units as well as centralize episodic television credits into a single source system.

Why do we show credits at the end of movies and television shows?

Credits refer to a list of acknowledgments of those who contributed to the creation of a movie or television program. Production companies are legally obligated by the guilds (e.g. WGA, DGA, PGA, SAG, etc) to display credits. In certain circumstances there are legal contracts to the order of how their name appears (e.g. special credit at end of primary cast display) or their title (e.g. Executive Producer).

Credits were manually tracked on disparate Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, eMails, post-it notes or worse in people’s memories. Credits displayed incorrectly result in financial penalties. C3PO would address these pain points.

Product Road Map

Phase I create a web portal to capture, consolidate, review and approve Credits eliminating the managing of Credits through disparate and manual methods. Web portal also allows specific access to individuals outside of the Credits Administration business unit for legal reference and audits.

Phase II automate the creation of Credits, calculating guild timings against remaining Credits time. Drastically reduce the time, expense and potential typographical errors incurred with manual creation.

Phase III develop distribution functions to generate 30 second .MOV files or single frame images of Credits for delivery to post-production video facilities.