Rogers TV required a comprehensive and intuitive client/server application to drive on air graphics for their coverage of the 2009 OHL Hockey season. The Ross Xpression Studio SCE platform and Bannister Lake OHL Hockey application ensures on air graphic and branding consistency for every Rogers TV OHL telecast.
- The Hockey Client interface controls the Hockey Server residing on Xpression Studio.
- Group One provides the operator with forms and presets to display Pregame, Lineups, Name and Player Keys information.
- Scorebug group has individual applications to control the ScoreBug, Special Teams and Shootout information.
- Forms are provided for Out of Town Scores, Game Story, Scoring Summary, Statistics, Post Game. Playoff Tree and Credits.
- Utilities are provided with internet connection to update the local database of Players, Goalie and League statistics anytime during the game.
- Built in League Editor allows support for other Hockey Leagues.
- Hockey Client can run locally on Xpression Studio or remote PC as a backup client.
- Native HD 1080i Xpression project file is down converted internally in real time by Xpression providing NTSC 4:3 output.
- Solution is currently deployed on 21 RossVideo Xpression Studio SCE systems.
Next up, the May 30th 
Elector started out with an emphasis on generating all the graphics for a standard election broadcast. But over time, it has become an editorial tool helping talent make sense of the election, mathematicians make calls, producers show the ridings graphics that matter at any particular time, augmented reality show information and graphics, news department show breaking news and websites provide the most up-to-date data.
Our web interface to Elector, Flow, is what pulls it all together. At any particular time, we may have large numbers of users using the data in different ways. And with Flow’s user classes, each type of user sees things tuned to their needs and editing privileges. Flow lets us compile the details about ridings, candidates and parties. It also has support for historical elections giving the users a way to see past election data to provide a historical perspective.
Elector has a collection of tools that work together to generate valuable insights into the real-time election results. It starts with as much of the results from the previous election as is available. From there we add information about current candidates indicating which ones are candidates of interest for reasons such as being a star candidate, a subject of a media scandal or an independent with a chance, etc. Predictions for the results in each riding are also added on a party basis. As the results start to come in, Elector goes to work to help mine the entire collection of past, present and predictions for interesting results. While users are reviewing the individual riding results in the Results Summary page the Interesting Agent is busy identifying interesting events such as an incumbent losing, close races and a party taking the lead in a riding they were not expected to win. As these events are identified they are presented to users of Elector via quick popups that identify the interesting events for the riding. As the results accumulate, Elector highlights each riding which may be ready to declare a candidate elected. An analyst can quickly popup the detailed riding results allowing them to make the final call and elect the candidate right there on the summary results page.
I’m always thrilled when I see our users utilizing our software. For example, David Akin, Global TV’s Chief Political Correspondent posted screenshots of Flow on twitter throughout the evening. He was using the screenshots to describe some of the riding results.
Elections are a hectic and scary event for all news departments. It often requires a small army to pull it off. Elector, which got its start from a New Brunswick election in 2006, has come a long way. Not only does it include all the editorial, watchlists and number crunching tools in Flow but it has a rehearsal tool providing a way for teams to test different scenarios pre-election, a RESTful api making the data available to other sources like websites and virtual devices and data parsers which are tuned for the quickest and most accurate results.
In 2008, we started our investigation into an alternative CG. We had a close look at many of the leading CGs and even a few obscure ones, some of which have faded into the sunset. They were all fine but Francis and I were never satisfied with the programming api to those CGs.