Customer Case CBS News

RadioMan® enabled CBS to continue newscasting remotely during Covid-19 pandemic

Spring 2020 forced newsrooms around the world to find new ways of working remotely. Jutel offered CBS News Radio a solution that made remote broadcasting possible remarkably quickly.

Jutel has provided radio automation services for CBS News Radio since 2006 in traditional client-based automation software.

The Covid-19 pandemic that hit the United States in early March 2020 forced CBS News to evacuate their NYC Broadcast Center practically overnight. It made the traditional media house ask itself, how to run and manage daily newscast operations in a situation that had never been experienced in modern history?

Piloting Remote Operations

During the piloting and development project, members of both the CBS and Jutel teams worked from their own homes in different locations.

Collaborating closely with CBS News core engineering team, Jutel focused on optimizing workflows and running newscast operations through the cloud.

Talk and news anchoring sections were transmitted to RadioMan 6 Media Node located in AWS cloud (US East, N. Virginia), where they were connected with news clips and pre-recorded interviews. Studio clock and critical timing related activities were executed with RadioMan 6, so that news media were accurately matched with other broadcast content.

“Final distribution of news was then streamed to the delivery point, where it could be delivered to listeners via Skyview satellite system”, Olli-Pekka Lukkarinen, Key Account Manager of Jutel Oy, explains.

A completely new remote-operating model

Within just weeks, Jutel was able to set up and provide CBS a completely new way to run newscast operations remotely in a multi-location production environment. This included establishing of a remote home studio for the news anchor – starting from optimizing internet connection, audio devices and microphones – all the way to browser-based UI usability, seamless timing, audio quality and playout indications.

As a result, a new remote operating model was applied at CBS News. It was enabled by our RadioMan 6, and tuned, tested and proven to support fast rollout and location-independent broadcasting even in challenging situations.

“All the hard work of all parties involved paid off and we are grateful for the opportunity to support one of our oldest clients in these turbulent times,” Lukkarinen said.

RadioMan 6 – play anywhere!