How Never.no and Vizrt are partnering to bring social TV for broadcasters into the future

Lost Remote interviews Vizrt CTO Petter Ole Jakobsen and Never.no CEO Lars Lauritzsen to find out what broadcasters need to know about social TV.

Originally published by Lost Remote.

In a recent episode of HBO's The Newsroom Charlie Skinner (played by Sam Watson) forces Don Keefer (Thomas Sadoski) to put tweets on the air during a broadcast. As breaking news ensues, Skinner decides to tell them to yank it, essentially since something more important is happening. Is writer Aaron Sorkin skeptical of tweets on air or is he trying to send a message to ACN that they need to hire Never.no and Vizrt to light up the screen more effectively with social?

Never.no and Vizrt partnered last year on social. As the social web expands content from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and more are essential for broadcasters to tell stories. There are still many challenges for broadcasters to overcome and master including curating, visualizing and more. With constant feedback and the urge for TV broadcasters to include that feedback technology has never been more of an important piece. Never.no CEO Lars Lauritzsen and Vizrt CTO Petter Ole Jakobsen provided Lost Remote with an exclusive in-depth interview on what broadcasters need to know about social TV and how to fight challenges like keeping a viewer glued to the screen.

LR: What are the biggest challenges broadcasters had overcome when trying to integrate social media in their broadcasts?Lars Lauritzsen: User generated content and interaction has never been more important for driving ratings. There is so much content being generated which makes it an overwhelming task for broadcasters - 1. how to organize and manage all this content, and more importantly, 2. how to find relevant information and get it on air. Social media content, including messages, photos and videos related to a show, now give the audience the ability to give their opinion to the broadcast topic. Back in the days people would send letters or call the station to send feedback to the show. Today, all of this is happening in real-time without the limitations of delays. The volume of content and viewer interaction is reaching unprecedented numbers and can be unmanageable without the right tools. For broadcasters, the ability to efficiently harvest and filter out non-relevant information is extremely important.

Petter Ole Jakobsen: Viewer habits are rapidly changing, especially in the last few years as the world has become more mobile - people are carrying tablets, laptop and smartphones. Their lives have become tied to these devices in many cases have become more important outlets for media than the television. Keeping a viewer glued to a single screen uninterrupted is becoming a challenge as broadcasters look for different ways to maintain or build viewership. However, the use of these devices does actually make it easier for viewers to interact with a broadcaster and it allows them to find new revenue sources - if done correctly. When done right it encourages viewers to go back to the main screen which is the goal. This is true not only for live entertainment programming like competitions and award shows but also for news and sports. In today's connected world, social media outlets often break the news even before broadcasters. Knowing what is going on in real-time when big events happen help newscasts cover the story from many different angles and sometimes is the only way to cover a story.

One of the biggest challenges has been taking all this content on-air. On one hand you have a lot of data coming from many places and in the other you have an entire broadcast infrastructure that needs to have access to this data. A further consideration is the fact that you now have multiple distribution channels (TV, web, mobile) and you have to sync it all without disturbing or changing workflows.

LR: How are Vizrt and never.no helping broadcasters overcome these challenges?Lauritzsen: never.no has a dynamic framework which is flexible enough to overcome the challenges broadcasters face. We are constantly monitoring the broadcast industry to understand the needs and wants of broadcasters. To help broadcasters obtain content relevant to their programming, we've created the What's Trending' wordcloud toolkit to discover what information is relevant to their viewers and the broadcast. We're getting better at dissecting data, both quantity and quality. Our framework enables broadcasters to easily engage viewers and get their feedback via realtime polls which tabulate the results regardless of the source. never.no's framework also makes the integration of companion apps a simple task, which is not only a way to communicate and interact with viewers but also gives broadcasters new revenue outlets.

Jakobsen: Vizrt products have always focused on workflow, efficiency, quality and real-time content distribution. When it came to a social media solution all this was first priority. But just as important was being able to present all of this content in unique and visually compelling ways. The Vizrt Social TV Solution is extremely flexible, expandable and simple to use, enabling broadcasters of all sizes to have access to social media content and publish to air with minimal effort or training, it also lets them keep existing workflows, easily share assets among the organization and sync multiple distribution channels by centralizing the management of all this content in one single place. Additionally it allows them to be creative and execute their broadcast in different formats with visually stunning and dynamic presentations.

LR: How are broadcasters innovating and being creative when it comes to presenting all this content?Jakobsen: Social media, as a form of media, is still evolving. This makes it a challenging but exciting type of media to work with. The ability to present

LINK:	http://www.vizrt.com/news/newsgrid/38159/How_Never.no_and_Vizrt_are_pa...
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