Posted on

Bannister Lake Introduces Major Enhancements to Its Chameleon Election Module for the 2020 Election Cycle

Bannister Lake announced today that its industry-leading data aggregation and management product, Chameleon, will now include additional election-specific capabilities. The new enhancements will allow broadcasters, station groups, streaming news services, and online media companies to launch election coverage with full editorial, data, and graphics support. Sophisticated election systems have historically been custom built by network news departments and are out of reach for many media companies. Bannister Lake’s Chameleon election solution provides any media outlet with the ability to professionally cover elections and ingest automated AP Elections or Decision Desk HQ data or enter results manually.

The new election module features customizable race tracking and filtering functionality, allowing producers to focus on specific races of interest. Editorial teams can use Chameleon to follow races based on star candidates, close results, geography, or other criteria. Producers can also create pre-built collections of races to have them readily available for air. As a web-based system, Chameleon can support an unlimited number of users, allowing producers and reporting teams to have access to results and functionality from anywhere.

Within the election module, producers can quickly create graphic playlists populated with real-time results based on the races they are following and display them immediately. Chameleon also allows production teams to add candidate headshots, customize the UI to zero-in on specific races or groups of races, and switch to manual results should the data feeds be interrupted.

“Elections are all about getting results on air quickly and accurately,” said Georg Hentsch, president, Bannister Lake. “The new Chameleon election module will ensure that any broadcaster or media company can win over audiences, on any platform, with great data-driven graphics and analysis.”

In addition to managing graphics for broadcast, election producers can leverage Chameleon’s API to distribute results data to a wide variety of graphic engines including NDI, SDI, and HTML 5. Subsets of data can be strategically distributed to on-set touchscreens, augmented reality systems, web widgets, or mobile applications. This important feature allows clients to extend election coverage to social media, websites, and interactive applications. 

Be sure to visit Bannister Lake at the 2020 NAB Show, Booth SL4711.

Posted on

Bannister Lake to Showcase Data Management Innovations at NAB Show Driving Election Coverage, Tickers, On-Air Branding, and Infochannels

At the 2020 NAB Show, Canadian real-time data solutions provider Bannister Lake will be focusing on its industry-leading data aggregation and management solution Chameleon and how the product adds value to a wide variety of broadcast, OTT, and digital signage applications.

Bannister Lake will be highlighting Chameleon’s enhanced election module ready for the 2020 U.S. election cycle. Media companies can take advantage of Chameleon’s new election features to produce real-time election coverage on any screen. Chameleon reads election results from both the Associated Press and Decision Desk HQ, allowing media to report on up ballot and down ballot races as well as the primaries and caucuses.

Bannister Lake will also be highlighting Chameleon’s ability to fully manage and visualize both live data feeds and on-air branding content for enhancing news productions, sponsorships, and promotions. Broadcasters in any market, using any output device, can 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 fully customized data. In addition, the product’s branding module can fully control sponsor’s snipes, bugs, and other promotional graphic content triggered by the broadcaster’s traffic system.

Automated infochannels will also be in the spotlight at the 2020 NAB Show. Chameleon serves as the foundation to ingest, manage, and visualize an unlimited number of data feeds that can be rendered to any graphics engine, HTML 5, or NDI. Broadcasters can quickly launch infochannels made up of real-time news, weather, sports, financial, event calendars, and other relevant content. To enhance the offering, Bannister Lake has recently added transit and car sharing data to make the channels especially important to local audiences.

As legal sports wagering continues to grow across the U.S., Bannister Lake will be featuring wagering channels covering horse racing, fantasy sports, and other events. Chameleon has become an essential tool to aggregate, manage, and display both sports statistics and betting data. Bannister Lake works with media companies that require a robust solution that can read data from a wide variety of sources and can integrate that data into the on-air presentation.   

The 2020 NAB Show will also spotlight in-venue, real-time data solutions for arenas and stadiums. More and more venues are realizing that real-time data plays an integral role in delivering content that adds a deeper and more entertaining fan experience. Venues appreciate that advertising- and sponsor-related content has more impact if real-time, game-relevant, insightful data could be tied to the presentation. Chameleon is used to ingest real-time statistical data from the leagues, allowing fans to view carefully parsed live game and league statistics combined with game action. Venues are also turning to Chameleon to develop innovative use cases for real-time data and sponsorships, including graphically visualizing wait times at exit gates and concessions, charity lotteries, and corporate communications solutions.

Be sure to visit Bannister Lake at the 2020 NAB Show, Booth SL4711.