9TV CNN Philippines Case Study

06 August 2015

Etere installs a full air sales system for 9TV's CNN Philippines. This paper details the solution and the advantages it provides.

About 9TV
9TV is one of the biggest television broadcasters in the Philippines.It is owned by Nine Media Corporation, Nine Media has an airtime agreement as the main content provider of Radio Philippines Network. Broadcasting 18 hours daily from 6:00 AM to 12:00 MN on free TV, while 24 hours a day on cable and satellite TV providers and through live streaming. It is being switched to CNN Philippines over the course of this update.

Its flagship television station is DZKB-TV channel 9 in Mega Manila and other regional originating and relay stations in the Philippines.

Most of its live programming of the network are from the main studios located at the Upper Ground Floor of the Worldwide Corporate Center, Shaw Boulevard corner Epifanio de los Santos Avenue in Mandaluyong City with transmitter at No. 97, Panay Avenue, Brgy. South Triangle, Quezon City.

The channel will cease on air as 9TV on March 15, 2015 and it will be replaced by CNN Philippines on March 16, 2015.

At present, Etere has a strong relationship with 9TV based on years of management and playout of its channels, a choice that has always granted 9TV to achieve best efficiency while meeting audience’s quality expectations.

9TV has requested a consistent solution able to comprehensively manage the entire commercial management process of the station, making special focus on the features below:
■ Sales proposals (creation of scheduling proposals subjected to customers approval)
■ Playlists scheduling (automatic placement of spots based on contracts)
■ Contracts invoicing (manual and automatic billing of contracts)
■ Transmission reporting (generation of reliable and consistent reports)

This paper is intended to provide technical information on the Air Sales system to be implemented in 9TV for the management of its commercial operations, from initial proposals and scheduling to final invoices and reporting.

Solution
The core of the proposed solution is Etere Air Sales, a complete, modular and scalable traffic system for the management of the planning and commercial processes of a broadcaster. From planning to playout, it provides specialist application modules to manage sales, planning, presentation, scheduling and invoicing of commercial contents.

In this chapter will be detailed the features and functioning of the modules that compose the Air Sales robust suite, including
■ Sales
■ Scheduling
■ Invoicing
■ Reporting

Sales
The Sales module allows elaborating proposals that includes multiple product details which can be made up by multiple assets (e.g. for different channels or periods), allowing supervisors to manage the scheduled proposals though the following approval process:

A customer-tailored elaboration of Sales proposals is possible thanks to the use of flexible schedule grids improved with key booking features such as an automatic pricing based on day parts (e.g.: breakfast, lunch, dinner and late-night) and a powerful spot placement based on key scheduling criteria (i.e.: top, bottom, priority, rotation or optimization).

As shown below, proposals have the following characteristics:
■ All invoicing data is included in the proposal as the price
■ They include commissions of Account Executive related to specific customers/agencies
■ They support late and early payments as well as installments
■ A signature field can be implemented in future versions

Other features related to the materials associated to a proposal include:
■ Proposals can include single-material and multi-material advertisements
■ Missing and unrecorded spots are highlighted in the proposal

Moreover, proposals can arrive directly to traffic/scheduling playlists if imported from an external source:

Scheduling
Weekly Schedule is the module that permits to build long-term and frame-accurate schedule grids that will define the traffic playlist, this schedule grid is formed by program blocks which at their time are formed by program segments defined by specific properties (i.e. time range, duration, program type, price list, etc.):

Scheduling is automatically performed by the Air Sales Scheduler, the dedicated air-time programming tool for contractual events that offers the maximum of accuracy and flexibility on placing events within commercial schedules, empowered with an intuitive interface that enables an easy scheduling management:

Manual scheduling modifications can be performed from the Strategic Editor, which provides high flexibility based on a schedule grid structure; it integrates schedules with the assets' database, ensuring a rock-solid scheduling where only valid events can be placed:

Last but not least, the Multichannel Grid is the comprehensive tool for an easier and faster management of schedules in real-time. It provides a common editor for all of your scheduling including automatic and flexible schedules changes, frame-accurate assets planning, intuitive event selections and automatic rights verification; thus allowing you to be sure that only valid events are scheduled before they are aired:

Invoicing
The invoicing process is the final -and most delicate- stage in the commercial broadcast chain, where all commercial events are reconciled with the accounting department:

At this stage, the Invoicing module, is the section dedicated to generate, settle and track invoices, it is tightly integrated with all Etere modules to permit a centralized management of invoices including a set of tools that permits operators to easily bill invoices and pay Accounts Executive commissions in just few steps:

Money has a wide set of tools including the Deadlines Management module, which allows settling outstanding invoice deadlines (+) and credit note deadlines (-):

Etere allows invoicing commercial orders using two different methods:
Post-Paid: Events will be paid at the use, that is, only scheduled/transmitted events will be invoiced
Pre-paid: Events will be paid in advance, that is, all events will be invoiced without caring of their scheduling

Invoicing information can be consulted through more than 60 commercial reports.

Independently of whether the invoicing method is post-paid or pre-paid, events featuring the following status will be excluded from the invoicing process, although they are scheduled:

Moreover, Etere allows using foreign currencies across transactions, deadlines and reports:

Reporting
The Airing Certification Report (aka Certificate of Performance) provided by Etere enables users to generate a document for a certain customer, detailing all the transmissions derived from one of its related orders.

For each event it will be indicated the program slot (e.g. Minute to Win) on which the commercial (e.g. Picnic 30s) has been placed as well as the actual date and time at which it has been aired:

In order to be included in the report, primary events and secondary events (e.g. graphics and scripts) should match the following criteria:
■ Event must have a transmission status as "successfully transmitted" (D) or "transmitted and certified" (Q)
■ Order related to the event must belong to the selected customer
■ Order related to the event must not be expired

Moreover, the report can be created payment status, customer, order, event type, etc.

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