Bannister Lake Announces Partnership With Election Data Provider Decision Desk HQ

Bannister Lake is pleased to announce that it is partnering with Washington, D.C.-based election data provider Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) to provide U.S. election data and analysis. DDHQ is a leader in election data collection and reporting, providing results solutions that are up to the second, competitively priced, and accurate.

Bannister Lake has developed and implemented a parser for DDHQ election returns that ingests results data directly into its industry-leading Chameleon data aggregation and management solution. Within Chameleon, producers and analysts can track results, identify voting trends, make race calls, or use DDHQ supplied calls. Producers can then generate graphic playlists and use Chameleon’s RESTful API to distribute data and render graphics through popular broadcast graphic engines or through Chameleon’s HTML 5 renderer.

Broadcasters and online media organizations will be able to use the combination of DDHQ data and Bannister Lake’s Chameleon software to produce exceptional election coverage. DDHQ data includes results for senate, congress, governor, and down ballot races, as well as presidential primaries and the presidency.

Of special interest to local broadcast outlets, DDHQ is the only service to collect and report election results for county and local offices. This includes judges, supervisors, town and school boards in addition to ballot propositions and referendum questions. Bannister Lake is an established leader in managing election data. The company’s Elector software is used by leading Canadian broadcasters to cover elections while Chameleon is equipped with a robust election module geared toward U.S. and other styles of elections.

“Bannister Lake, with its Chameleon software and proven track record with broadcasters across the United States and Canada is a natural fit for DDHQ data,” said Drew McCoy, president, DDHQ. “The product will allow broadcasters in any market, and online services, the ability to produce highly visual election coverage featuring graphics populated with up to the second results. We look forward to working with them, their clients and our partners to provide cutting-edge national, state, and local election coverage in 2020 and in the future.”

“Clients are looking for an alternative to current election data providers and require a robust election data management solution that can generate spectacular graphics,” said Georg Hentsch, president, Bannister Lake. “The combination of Chameleon and DDHQ data provides a cost-effective and editorially powerful solution for any organization covering the upcoming elections.”

Bannister Lake will be making DDHQ election data available within a variety of solutions, including broadcast graphic engines, web widgets, on-set interactive touch screen displays and as customized social media content. Together, the companies will provide election producers with a wide variety of data solutions to reach audiences on any platform.  

Real-Time Data: Digital Signage’s Secret Weapon

Published in Digital Signage Connection

Digital signage networks are only effective if audiences pay attention to content. That means eye-catching, on-brand design, relevant information and content that gets refreshed regularly. In an ideal world, a team of content creators, marketers and communications professionals will be working around the clock ensuring that the network has the most up-to-date content and that the business and communications objectives of the network are consistently being met. In reality, signage networks depend on sophisticated content management systems that use automation to both update content and set rules and parameters to ensure that content is being programmed consistently.

This is where real-time data feeds play a vital role to ensure audiences are presented with the most important content. Data tickers are a common ingredient in digital signage presentations. News, stock data, sports scores and weather have become an expected and appreciated part of digital signage in many cases. But real-time data can do so much more and transcend virtually every sector of the signage industry. Real-time data from multiple internal and external sources can be used to raise the editorial bar and be put to work to keep audiences engaged and connected.

Real-time data is everywhere; from manufacturing processes to retail analytics to sales statistics. Fast, slow and static data is present across the many sectors where signage is installed. However, much of that data is confined to spreadsheets and proprietary databases and isn’t shared via signage systems. If that data could be ingested, managed, visualized and distributed strategically, communicators would discover an incredibly powerful and automated content type that could have immediate benefits. The fear many communicators have is getting a handle on all that data content and being able to “cherry pick” what is relevant and what is not before distributing it to the proper endpoints. Communicators are also used as tools that visualize data in simple ways; line drawings, basic pie charts and bar graphs not appreciating that there are other ways to display data that take advantage of innovative design and have more engaging outcomes.

On a technical level, signage companies that want to incorporate real-time data sources are required to create a huge library of readers and create custom code to handle integration. This has traditionally been a huge headache. The problem lies with different data feeds having their own unique structure and a general lack of consistency. An alternate approach would be to use readers to ingest real-time data into a centralized database and then apply a standardized set of software tools to manage the data. These tools would be used to moderate, edit, schedule and trigger data according to parameters predetermined by the communications team. The feeds can then be fully customized editorially, reformatted technically and strategically distributed through an API.

In this scenario, dozens of real-time data feeds could be handled simultaneously, and various combinations of the data content would find their way on to select displays that made the most sense from a communications and business perspective. This approach to real-time data is well established in the broadcast industry. Television stations and networks that work with news, elections, sports and financial data select content that they deem important to their audiences, leveraging automation and graphics to keep the information relevant and current. For example, a sports producer who needs to illustrate the top rookies in the MLB with high batting averages will use a data query to “pull out” those statistics from an enormous pool of baseball data. The query can then populate a graphic template that is quickly put to air. The same process can be applied to digital signage, where big data needs to be dissected to reveal a trend or a new business opportunity.

An example from the digital signage industry is the recent U.S. Open Tennis Championship in Flushing Meadows, New York. Multiple video displays of every size and shape throughout the tennis facility were populated with specific data content. The screens were used to keep fans up to date, promote sponsorships and add a heightened level of fan engagement. Producers strategically directed content to specific screens to accomplish specific editorial requirements.

Real-time driven signage at the US Open Tennis Championships

For example, outside the practice courts, producers would display upcoming matches, player biographies, tennis news, schedules and brackets, while the screens located outside the main stadium would display subsets of the live-action data; scoring, serve speeds, number of aces and unforced errors and other game specific data. Producers have come to understand that the signage displays are most engaging and effective when the live data content is relevant and highly targeted. To accomplish this, they employ the same tools that broadcasters use to aggregate, manage, visualize and distribute real-time data.

Across the multiple sectors that digital signage serves, professional communicators and digital signage system providers can leverage the power of real-time data. It is the most effective way to keep screens refreshed, leverage automated processes and keep audiences engaged. Digital signage operators need to get over their fear of big data and seek out solutions that both give them control over data content and foster new business and communications opportunities for their clients and end users.

Bannister Lake Delivers Cross-Platform and Innovative Graphic Solutions for Canadian Federal Election Coverage

Bannister Lake played an essential role providing Canadian broadcast and online audiences with live election results during the Oct. 21 national election. In addition to providing the editorial tools to producers, Bannister Lake enabled decision desks and graphic operators to identify key races, declare winners, and organize graphic playlists. The company also devised and implemented on-set touchscreen mapping widgets and social-media solutions.

This marks the 18th time Corus Entertainment’s Global Television Network has used Bannister Lake solutions to drive election coverage. Elector software was used to aggregate and manage election results and populate graphics that were rendered by four different engines: HTML5, Avid/Orad, Ross XPression, and Vizrt. This provided Global Television with multiple options to visualize election results and present them in exciting new ways. Graphics appeared as full frame, as part of the broadcast’s unique video wall, as regional L-bars, as augmented reality elements, and as online winner cards that were tweeted out.

The broadcast’s touch-enabled HTML5-based widgets proved to be a distinctive storytelling device. The solution allowed hosts to blend real-time data with demographics information on electoral district maps and walk viewers through trends and analysis. Since the solution was built entirely in HTML5, editorial and cosmetic changes could be executed quickly without reliance on other hardware or software systems.

“Having Bannister Lake data available on various endpoints meant we had maximum flexibility to tell the election night story,” said Gerry Belec, director news technology and operations, Global News. “Once again Bannister Lake ensured that both our editorial and production teams had the data and the tools to execute a great election night broadcast.”

At the Cable Public Affairs Channel (CPAC) studios in Ottawa, Bannister Lake integrated election result feeds from the Canadian Press and producers fully utilized Elector to filter and display results. CPAC took full advantage of Elector’s advanced capabilities to filter regions and quickly identify important developments such as incumbents or high-profile candidates losing or being re-elected. In turn, CPAC could quickly create graphic playlists for use on-air.

“Elector race software gave us the ability to parse the incoming results quickly and zero in on important voting trends,” said Steve Rifkin, manager digital content, CPAC. “This allowed us to instantly deliver results to our audience.” 

“Over the years we have developed a deep understanding of election data and know that producers require a straightforward approach to pull insights out of results data,” said Georg Hentsch, president, Bannister Lake. “It is always satisfying to see broadcasters using our tools in innovative ways to reach Canadians on such an important event.”

Bannister Lake’s Elector software is Canada’s trusted election-data solution, providing broadcasters with the widest and most complete variety of tools to analyze, filter, and display election results. For U.S. and other style of elections, the company’s Chameleon product comes equipped with an election module suitable for aggregating and managing results and displaying graphics.

Bannister Lake’s Elector Software to Play Key Role Keeping Canadians Informed for Upcoming Election Day Coverage

Canadians go to the polls on October 21 and once again Bannister Lake is providing two national broadcasters with complete election management solutions. Bannister Lake clients Global Television and CPAC, the Cable Public Affairs Channel, (Canada’s version of C-Span) will be using the company’s Elector software to produce election night coverage. Elector allows producers to instantly see and track real-time results, take advantage of advanced filtering to zero in on specific races, make race calls and quickly and accurately create graphic playlists for broadcast. 

Elector features a multi-user, web-based user interface making the product accessible to production teams anywhere. Producers and analysts can quickly and accurately spot voting trends and translate those trends into powerful graphic presentations. Graphics can then be dragged and dropped and organized into playlists in preparation for broadcast. Elector’s Restful API can be used to strategically distribute real-time data content to online destinations, widgets, mobile devices and augmented reality and virtual reality systems.

“Election night is an important opportunity to not only bring audiences up-to-the second results but to use that data to identify regional, demographic and historic shifts, and present it all with spectacular graphics,” said Georg Hentsch, president, Bannister Lake. “Elector provides production teams with the tools to easily reveal those trends and clearly communicate to viewers how results are unfolding.”

Elector is an election results solution engineered and designed exclusively for Canadian elections; however, Bannister Lake’s popular Chameleon data management product includes an election module that supports U.S. and any other election process. Like Elector, Chameleon election data can feed multiple broadcast graphic engines, online, mobile and other broadcast visualization systems. Bannister Lake is expanding its election offerings with data driven web widgets that allow online users to customize data to specific electoral districts to access local information and analysis.

In addition to Elector, Bannister Lake will provide Global and CPAC with a variety of professional services, including coordination with the Canadian Media Election Consortium to ensure results data is fully optimized for the Elector product.

 

 

 

 

 

Bannister Lake’s Chameleon Data Management Solution Powers Hamilton, Ontario-Based Cable 14’s New On-Air Look

Bannister Lake announced today that Cable 14, serving Hamilton, Ontario and surrounding communities, has successfully implemented the company’s Chameleon data management and aggregation solution to control and visualize data content on its broadcasts. Cable 14’s mission is to showcase and promote the local area and to keep viewers informed of local news, sports, and events.

Bannister Lake contributed to Cable 14’s important mission by developing and adding new data readers covering the Canadian University Football League and Ontario Hockey League. Bannister Lake also improved the channel’s ability to manage and visualize Twitter-based content as well as local traffic cameras.

Chameleon’s automation features played a key role in simplifying and streamlining the management of data feeds to help ensure content was continuously refreshed and that stale content automatically expired. Chameleon’s integration with Cable 14’s traffic system now allows the station to provide automated “Coming Up Next” snipes and billboards to promote upcoming programming.

“The Cable 14 implementation underlines our unique abilities to not only develop and read a wide variety of data feeds, but to also allow our clients to take full advantage of automation to optimize those feeds to meet their editorial objectives,” said Danny Ljubisic, director of business development and project management, Bannister Lake. “We were able to deliver this solution to Cable 14 in record time and ensure that their launch was successful.”

Cable 14’s new on-air presentation integrates social media and other local news sources to deliver compelling, hyper-local information that can only be found on its broadcasts. It also includes up-to-date sports scores and schedules from both local and professional sports teams and leagues. 

“As we kick off our 50th broadcast season, Cable 14 continues to evolve and deliver to cable television subscribers the best local content available on television and online,” said Bill Custers, senior manager, broadcast for Cable 14. “Cable 14 has been, is, and always will be, about Hamilton. This innovative, fresh look, facilitated by the Bannister Lake team, enables us to continue to exceed the expectations of our viewers every single hour.”

Bannister Lake’s Chameleon data management and aggregation solution is used by broadcasters, signage operators, and event producers to control and display a wide variety of diverse data feeds including news, sports, elections, financial, and wagering content.

 

 

 

Corus Entertainment: Driving New Business And Operational Efficiencies With Bannister Lake Software

Corus Entertainment is one of Canada’s largest media and content companies with assets in radio, television and online. The broadcast television side of the company is a mix of over-the-air broadcast stations and specialty cable channels. Like all media organizations, it is observing dramatic shifts in audience viewing habits and in the way advertising dollars are being designated. Corus is responding proactively to address the changing media marketplace, developing innovative technology and content solutions. It is a pioneer in Canada, creating consolidated news production facilities, building a national infrastructure with sophisticated content sharing capabilities and extending their various brands across multiple platforms. Corus also broke new ground in leveraging live data; both as a content source and as a driver of video and content to new platforms. Early on, Corus saw the value that data had as an editorial source that could be extended over its many media properties and as a powerful tool to strategically distribute content.

Data empowers Corus to accomplish two essential things: add significant editorial value to its multiple media properties and secondly, open new market opportunities driving untapped ad revenue. To meet these objectives and take full advantage of their data and content, Corus’ Global News division turned to Bannister Lake, a leading provider of professional video graphic display solutions for broadcast.

In working with Corus, Bannister Lake focused on three essential data-rich areas: elections, information tickers and creating new media products and services. Across Global News’ broadcast operations, Bannister Lake’s Elector election race software is being used to produce municipal, provincial and federal coverage. Elector allows editorial staff to quickly and effectively filter race results, identify important trends, make race calls and in turn populate and display dynamic election graphics on-air or online.

“Elector has become our go-to software solution for all our election coverage. It works great on municipal, provincial and federal races. Both our editorial and technical staff love its ease of use and quick implementation,” says Gerry Belec, director of news technology and operations at Corus Entertainment.

Across Global News, Bannister Lake powers L-Bars, tickers, and sponsor logos on all the local morning news programs. The key tool Global News uses to make all this possible is Bannister Lake’s Chameleon software. Chameleon provides Global News with a single data/graphics management solution that drives a wide variety of graphic playout devices across the entire Global News organization. By centralizing data through Chameleon, Corus not only realizes operational efficiencies, but also permits broadcast sales to create new media products and sell both national and local sponsorships on all its broadcast tickers. Editorially, Chameleon enables Global News to integrate the widest possible variety of data sources on-air, including social media feeds, financial data, sports scores, closings and atypical feeds such as community events calendars.

Corus foresees Chameleon playing an expanded and valuable role as the media company develops and launches multi-platform solutions, expands online, distributes more content via partnerships and explores innovative media opportunities.

Global News takes advantage of BLADE, Chameleon’s RESTful API feature, allowing them to manage and distribute specific portions of a data feed. With BLADE, Global News can effortlessly direct their content to various output channels including thousands of screens across digital signage networks in multiple cities across Canada. This has fostered new revenue and promotional opportunities for Corus and has dramatically improved brand recognition. BLADE allows Global News to target specific end points strategically with content designated for that output.

Corus and Global News further benefit from Bannister Lake’s development strategy that emphasizes multi-user, web-based solutions while still maintaining high levels of security. Teams from across the country can simultaneously access the solution, load content, query data and create and edit playlists, but only according to their user status. Should unusual operational issues emerge, Bannister Lake’s development team can write custom code resolving the issue.

“We look forward to a long and creative partnership with Corus. We are thrilled that our software and custom services can be plugged into so many aspects of their business”, says Georg Hentsch, Bannister Lake’s founder.

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TV Technology

Bannister Lake’s Alain Savoie to Present at the 2019 NAB Show Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference (BEITC)

Bannister Lake announced today that Alain Savoie, the company’s creative and technical director, will be presenting his co-authored white paper, “New Methodologies in Real-Time Data Aggregation and Management for Broadcast Presentation and Distribution” at the 2019 NAB Show. Along with Savoie, the paper was written by Bannister Lake’s Vernon Freedlander who heads strategic partnerships and the company’s president, Georg Hentsch. The presentation takes place on Wednesday, April 10 at 4 p.m. at the Las Vegas Convention Center room N260.

Live data, its management and visualization, have become an integral part of the broadcast and visual communications workflow. Whether used in fast-moving, dynamic on-air presentations such as elections, news, sports, eSports, or finance, or to populate and control on-air branding, effective live-data aggregation and management drives efficiencies and creates new monetization possibilities. As broadcasters seek out new revenue streams, live data plays a key role both online and in developing new markets such as streaming and digital signage.

Savoie will be speaking on several important data-related topics that directly impact the broadcast industry. The presentation will focus on unique data-driven engineering and development methodologies, and how broadcasters can take advantage of the data aggregation and management tools and techniques these methodologies foster to create more efficient and automated production workflows. Savoie will also explore how broadcasters can utilize real-time data to create and distribute new revenue-generating products and services. Savoie will use examples from broadcast, eSports, and event signage to illustrate.

Savoie is an industry authority on live-data-driven graphics. He has worked on numerous high-profile broadcast projects integrating data into innovative graphic solutions. At Bannister Lake he is responsible for integrating data feed content into Bannister Lake’s data aggregation and management technology suite and in turn outputting data to on-air graphic systems throughout the broadcast and event ecosystem. Savoie works directly with engineers, designers, editorial teams, and event producers offering training, commissioning, graphic operations, and consultation to meet any data and technical requirement within the production and graphic display workflow.

At the 2019 NAB Show Bannister Lake will be highlighting its flagship data aggregation and graphics management solution, Chameleon. Chameleon provides networks and station groups with unparalleled data aggregation, graphics management, and visualization possibilities. Beyond broadcast, the Chameleon solution is used in multiple data applications: OTT, streaming, digital signage, HTML5, online, and mobile. Chameleon reads, ingests, and manages multiple, diverse data feeds through an advanced web interface, providing users with full control over incoming data. Users can edit, moderate, blend, and manage datasets to generate completely customizable and automated tickers, L-bars, full frame graphics, and branding elements.

Be sure to visit Bannister Lake at the 2019 NAB Show, Booth SL5616.

Bannister Lake to Highlight New Feature Set and NDI Version of Chameleon Data Aggregation and Graphic Management Solution at 2019 NAB Show

Bannister Lake’s industry-leading data and graphics management solution, Chameleon, will be in the spotlight at the 2019 NAB Show with a focus on the product’s new election, sponsorship, and security functionality.

As broadcasters start planning for the 2020 presidential election, Chameleon boasts improvements to its election race modules, providing producers with more options to ingest and manage result data feeds, referendums, propositions, and acclaimed candidates.

The latest release highlights Chameleon’s ability to drive online, mobile, and social media election experiences by feeding data to web widgets and automatically sending out tweets based on Chameleon data conditions. These exciting features allow producers to utilize Chameleon data to visualize election results interactively, presenting innovative new storytelling possibilities.

A new and improved sponsor module tracks and connects campaigns to specific sponsors, making as-run logging clearer and better defined. Chameleon also includes enhanced security features aligned with NIST guidelines with improved password protection.

Bannister Lake has also focused a great deal of attention on social media, enhancing Chameleon’s Twitter search capabilities and improving the product’s media module, introducing bins for organizing content and the enablement of multi-file uploads.

Product demonstrations will feature projects focused on Bannister Lake’s recent work in elections, eSports, and event signage.

At NAB, Bannister Lake will also be introducing a new version of its Chameleon NDI player, providing NDI users with the ability to fully manage and visualize live data feeds. NDI users will be able to integrate, moderate, and customize multiple live data feeds into graphic templates and provide their audiences with real-time news, weather, sports, social media, financial, and customized data.

As part of NAB’s Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference (BEITC), Al Savoie, Bannister Lake’s creative and technical director, will be presenting his co-authored whitepaper “New Methodologies in Real-Time Data Aggregation and Management for Broadcast Presentation and Distribution.” The interactive session will explore Bannister Lake’s unique approach to data aggregation and feature production examples from both broadcast and eSports. Savoie’s presentation takes place on April 10 at 4 p.m. at the Las Vegas Convention Center room N260.

In addition, NAB attendees will have the opportunity to learn more about Bannister Lake’s Zeus media storage and playout solution. Perfect for image- and clip-intensive production environments, Zeus provides producers with easy and immediate access to content. It is an ideal solution for home shopping channels, entertainment programs, news, sports productions, and any situation where high volume, quick turnaround, and unpredictability of clip and image requirements must be carefully managed. With minimum custom development, Zeus can be fully integrated with popular MAM systems, providing broadcasters with access to vast libraries of clip and image content.

Be sure to visit Bannister Lake at the 2019 NAB Show, Booth SL5616.

Bannister Lake’s Chameleon Delivers 4K Graphic Content Over IP

Bannister Lake announced today that its data aggregation and management solution, Chameleon, is now capable of outputting 4K UHD video over IP video networks. The solution was recently showcased at the InterBEE exhibition in Japan using Visionary Solutions’ PacketAV 4K DUET encoder and decoders.

Visionary Solutions’ PacketAV 4K video over IP encoders and decoders solve the transportation issues common with non-IP cabling solutions, allowing Chameleon graphics to play back smoothly on 4K monitors in any location.

“We are thrilled to see Chameleon successfully operational in a 4K over IP environment,” said Georg Hentsch, President, Bannister Lake. “This marks an important milestone as we continue to build on years of consistent innovation and presents a data and graphics management solution that performs exceptionally well in any resolution and in any broadcast environment.”

“I love how clients marvel at the simplicity and efficiency of this system,” said Doug Strable, sales representative for Bannister Lake and Visionary Solutions products in Japan. “Chameleon’s web-based interface allows a non-technical user to update the information on all platforms, and the PacketAV DUET 4K encoders and decoders allow content to be displayed through a standard LAN network. The combined system is easy to set up, easy to maintain and easy to update.”

Chameleon graphics rendered to HTML5 were transported over a standard 1 Gigabyte network to multiple 4K video monitors with native 4K image quality, while maintaining its industry-leading data management functionality.

As the international broadcast industry continues to experiment and migrate to 4K over IP workflows, it is vitally important that graphics technologies keep pace with developments and support the trend. Similarly, the production community requires solutions that allows data content to be quickly repurposed to find value in a 4K environment.

Bannister Lake is an industry leader in data and graphics management, providing software and services for a broad range of broadcast and digital signage projects, including real-time election results, social media integration, financial, sports, news, and eSports.

Bannister Lake Releases Chameleon Version 10 Real-Time Data Aggregation and Graphics Management Solution

Chameleon, Bannister Lake’s data aggregation and graphics management solution is introducing dramatic new enhancements with a strong focus on election data. Within its election module, Chameleon Version 10 improves how election data is ingested and managed. The new release expands the ability to enter manual election results where data feeds may not be available. This is particularly useful in less populated districts or in jurisdictions where it is not practical to organize a real-time results feed. The new functionality also provides an important failsafe in situations where a data feed may have stopped working.

In addition, Chameleon Version 10 dramatically improves the management of referendum and proposition results, providing editorial staff with more options for displaying down-ballot data. The election module also features improved management and filtering for acclaimed candidates.

“We realize that elections are more than just national events. These new features help ensure that broadcasters covering races in remote locations or in smaller communities can use data on-air more effectively,” said Bannister Lake’s President, Georg Hentsch.

The new release highlights Chameleon’s ability to feed data to web widgets, allowing producers to visualize data interactively online or on mobile devices. This feature drives new storytelling opportunities not only for elections, but also for news, sports and financial data. Bannister Lake is also introducing support for automatically sending out tweets based on Chameleon data conditions, enriching live data experiences on social media.

Chameleon Version 10 also provides improved sponsorship management, allowing users to manage campaign and client data more efficiently. The new and improved sponsor module tracks and connects campaigns to specific sponsors, making as-run logging clearer and better defined.

The new version of the product also includes enhanced security features aligned with NIST guidelines with improved password protection. Chameleon now offers clients an upgraded password strength checker and warns users when they are changing their password to a common password based on a list of the 1,000,000 most used passwords.

Version 10 also boosts Chameleon’s query functionality, its ability to filter custom data, introduces media bins for organizing media into containers and additional support for the onboard HTML5 designer tool.

Chameleon Version 10 is now available. Bannister Lake is dedicated to releasing new features and functionality several times a year to improve the capabilities of its software products.