Fullscreen HTML5Med Res (??MB)HTML4

Community TV station If you watch digital TV in mainland capitals, you may have come across a “community” channel. In Sydney it’s a station called TVS, which has a range of interesting programs, quite different to those on main-stream stations. So what is TVS and who are the people behind it? I n a number of ways, the operation of “free to air” televi- off site. The TVS HQ is purely a digital centre which pulls sion station TVS, or Television Sydney as it is properly all the elements together, plots the program output and then called, is far ahead of the major free-to-air broadcasters sends the output via microwave to a dish at nearby Horsley in its takeup of digital technology. All programming, ad- Park, then onto the Broadcast Australia transmitter at Gore verts, station IDs etc are digitised and merged to provide a Hill, near North Sydney. programming stream that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In the early morning hours the operation runs without Startup TVS commenced initial tests in November 2005 and human help. TVS emanates from within the Werrington campus of the launched an analog service in February 2006, on UHF chanUniversity of Western Sydney (UWS) – but it is not part of nel 31 The digital service began on March 1 2010. Previously there had been a community broadcaster on channel 31 but the university. Stroll into the featureless building on campus and you that had been off air for two years, prior to the arrival of TVS. The initial TVS board comprised a group called Educationenter the TVS suite of rooms. But there are no studios, no cameras, no lights, no announcer’s booth and no rows of al Training Corporation, a joint venture between UWS and Metro Screen, a video training centre, on-air monitors, cosseted by technicians. plus a production group called Slice-TV. In fact, all TVS programming is made by Barrie Smith 24  Silicon Chip siliconchip.com.au David Hill, ex-chairman of the ABC, was the original convener of the board and then former GM of Seven Network Queensland, came in as the initial CEO. Henri de Gorter, the Program Manager, was hired from the beginning. Right from the start, the channel was a fully digital and server-based station. This was enabled due to the co-operation with a company called Playbox, who supply automated, software-based broadcasting solutions. Playbox has its R&D centre in Sofia, Bulgaria. Staffing The station runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The permanent staff consists of de Gorter, Operations Manager Ian Sneddon plus a programming assistant, an operations assistant and a promotions producer. Added to this is the UWS-appointed CEO, Rachel Bentley. The five full-time staff (plus the CEO) is augmented by four part-timers, who work in the evenings from 4pm as presentation coordinators. This is ‘prime time’, when most of the ad revenue is generated; at 10.30 or 11 at night these operators go home and the station continues running automatically. Programs are produced off-site and supplied in a variety of formats and then fed into the servers by volunteers who come in on occasional days. This group also takes care of TVS’ YouTube presence on the Web. It may not look much like a TV station . . . because TVS is nothing like a “normal” TV station! Audience feedback Since going digital TVS has become available to a greater spectrum of the available audience. Previously, with analog transmission, it was found that the audience peaked at about around 1.1 million viewers a month in 2009. Since then it declined but with the advent of the digital signal, has come back to about that level. Many potential viewers are still unaware that the broadcaster has added a digital signal, on digital Channel 44. Most current TV sets, set top boxes and PVRs do not sense the arrival of a new station unless a new scan is conducted. Also some older SD set top boxes can pick up all of the new channels, including TVS and some of the ABC channels. Programming Approximately 45% of TVS programming is produced in Sydney or NSW. Some programs are made by people and groups in Nowra, Bowral, Bathurst and similar places, so most producers can see their programs going to air from their home town — or they can go to the Web site and view the video stream. Another 35 per cent of programming comes from the other states. Most of it can be summed up as “niche” programming. The automotive programs are highly popular: Four Wheel Drive, Classic Restos, Gasoline, Drive It and Cruisin’. One of the lifestyle programs — Living on the Coast — comes from Nowra and is, in Henri de Gorter’s opinion, “one off the best programs you’ll ever see and every bit as good Channel Nine’s GetAway but without the advertorial TVS outputs a digital signal with a bit rate of 6.5Mbits /second using QPSK modulation. Power output: Digital – 800W (ERP 3.5kW) Analog – 20kW (ERP 548 kW) Digital signal: 536.625MHz (Ch29) [Logical Channel Number 44] Analog signal: 548.25MHz (Ch31) siliconchip.com.au Operations Manager Ian Sneddon checks the two Playbox digital servers, each with seven Terabytes capacity, used as playout machines. March 2011  25 There’s a wide variety of special interest and “niche” programming on TVs that the major networks wouldn’t touch – ranging from foreign language/foreign interest news programs from Deutsche Welle and Al Jazeera as seen above to an extensive library of old movies, including many of the classics. content! We can’t have anything like that on a community station. The government does not allow it.” Then there’s the staple fare of every community station: old movies … Vincent Price, Bela Lugosi et al. Some years ago, one supplier delivered to TVS about 800 movies for its library. Plus there are old 50s and 60s TV series like I Love Lucy, Beverly Hillbillies and a current Sunday night favourite: One Step Beyond. Some English language programming is derived from Al-Jazeera out of Qatar plus Deutsche Welle, the worldwide news program from Germany. Advertising TVS is allowed to sell up to seven minutes per hour of commercial content. Labelled ‘sponsorship’, every time a commercial is aired, an ID appears on the top left corner of the screen saying ‘Sponsor’. The regulations state that anyone who advertises must carry this ID. TVS does not make programs and has a licence to air its programs in NSW only. So if a producer can deal with any of the other states or overseas entities, it can do so. It’s up to the producer to make a program within the guidelines and make a dollar out of it later. No charge is made by TVS to air the program, nor is the producer able to charge for the use of its material. Any ad revenue gained from a sponsor is shared with the producer. There are also some popular “golden oldies” shown such as The Beverly Hillbillies and I Love Lucy from the 1950s and 60s. 26  Silicon Chip An interesting facet of the regulations requires TVS to show a billboard at the program’s beginning, giving credit to the advertiser. So you know the show has advertising — not advertorials. Funding Funding mainly comes from adverts, while an ongoing effort is made to seek grants or donations from -minded people who may be able to support the channel. Initially, TVS received a grant of $600,000 to help in the digital startup. This was granted to all community broadcasters, as part of the granting of the licences from the Federal government. Added to this, the station is “very happily supported by the University of Western Sydney, who supply a lot of ‘in kind’ support.” As de Gorter says: “Currently we’re sitting in this marvellous building here. Without them we wouldn’t have a channel.” There is a community broadcast channel in every capital city except Hobart. Added to this is a number of smaller stations, in some of the country regions. TVS is not allowed to form a network but there is an alliance, the Australian Community Television Alliance, a loose membership of the five channels. Output Currently the station is outputting its digital signal in Shelf Life, hosted by Drs Milissa Deitz and Rachel Morley (UWS School of Communication Arts) deals with writers and books. siliconchip.com.au TVS carries programming that could be considered “home made” but is quite professional in style and content. Strike Zone (at left) is hosted by full-time fishing journalist Al McGlashan. Adrian’s Reptile World, hosted by Adrian Hemes, is recorded in the field and shows reptile natural habitats. 16:9 format and SD resolution (920x576i). Any increase in quality will depend on government action in its run up to a full digital service in Australia and the cut off of analog in 2012. At that time there will be a re-allocation of all the frequencies when this changeover is made. The licence that TVS has at moment is current only until 2013 and allows only one service. The signal from Gore Hill extends as far north as Gosford, west to Katoomba, and as far south as Bowral. The station would like to fill in the ‘holes’, as do the mainstream broadcasters, with translators at Kings Cross, North Head and the Central Coast. “People may find that their antennas are pointing to a repeater and we have to explain that our transmission is from Gore Hill, the Broadcast Australia tower near North Sydney”, de Gorter adds. For example, in Sydney’s Northern Beaches area the reception pattern is highly variable: this writer can receive only a snowy picture while, nearby, others (including editor Leo Simpson) pick it up very clearly. All antennas in these examples are pointed south towards the North Head repeater and all receive the station as an analog signal from Gore Hill. Another staff member, only 1km away but with an antenna aimed towards the Central Coast, cannot receive TVS at all. However, the reality is that not much will happen until analog is closed down (planned for 2013) and frequencies reallocated. TVS needs it to increase its audience: “We’re a Sydney station and we should have the same reach as everyone else”, de Gorter stresses. Two edit suites run G5 Macs and use Final Cut Pro software to edit station promotional clips. TVS ingests the media — tape or DVD —and encodes it to MPEG. siliconchip.com.au Future plans The biggest push for TVS is to be competitive in the broadcast television world and to generally improve the quality of the programs. The station does not want to change the content. As de Gorter says “The eclectic mix of programs we have is what makes us popular. If we went down the path of sanitising our programs, then people would stop watching us. Unlike the other channels where they have a budget and buy programs from distributors, we’re pretty much March 2011  27 reliant on what comes in the door — and we work with our producers. “So we get all sorts of programs. What we would like to see is that, while we don’t want to change the content, we’d like to see it presented 16:9 wide screen with good audio and reasonable lighting. Later on we would like to do outside broadcasts. For his part, Ian Sneddon is working very hard to get more paths in and out of the station: “We only have one path out of here so we need another path. Plus we need an incoming path. Program assembly The whole area occupied by TVS would be roughly that of a suburban house, in a series of connecting rooms. One room, barely larger than the average living room, houses a series of desktop stations. TVS uses a program called CaptureBox to accept the media — tape or DVD —and encode it to MPEG. These files are then loaded onto the server. Most of the Beta formats, such as Betacam, Digi Beta etc can be handled, but not Betamax Most of the material TVS receives is on Mini DV cassettes, a consumer format. As Ian Sneddon explains: “This is where we insert all the in and out points as data, stored along with the programming. When the programrs make up their list they know the running times of the programming, ads etc. At 4.30 each afternoon the list runs out and the next day’s list is loaded up.” The equipment room houses two Playbox digital servers, each with seven Terabytes capacity and used as playout machines. The output leaves as a Serial Digital Interface (SDI), passes through an MPEG encoder, sent to the microwave link at Horsley Park and then on to Gore Hill. The Web presence relies on Apple Xserve servers to host the TVS Web and the program Web streaming. TVS was the first FTA station in the country to stream its signal live and can only do so because it owns Internet rights to its programs. Most commercial stations cannot do that because they don’t have streaming rights. Further along a hallway are two edit suites, running G5 Macs and using Final Cut Pro software. These are used for editing station promotional clips. Rounding out the tech side for the operation is a 50kVA Data display of all the in and out points of programming.This list is made up each day and triggers the playout. 28  Silicon Chip siliconchip.com.au Left: the theoretical TVS signal strength across the Sydney area. Due to Sydney’s hilly topography, some areas are marginal at best and others have no reception at all. generator, ensuring an Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS). As Sneddon says: “If we lose power you won’t notice anything, other than the lights will go down momentarily because they’re not on UPS. Then you hear the noise of the generator starting up. We can run for probably up to an hour.” There is no booth announcer. All voice overs are prerecorded. At the Gore Hill transmitter an audio loop runs music when a server goes down. Hiccups Sneddon explains that, “if there are problems, generally I will get a call from the people who run the transmitter. “The system is very reliable. The guy who put it together, Les Fisher, from Digital Space Media, did a fantastic job and we work with the software people to develop it further. There is inbuilt redundancy but problems can still happen … “I remember about a month ago I got a phone call while I was having coffee in Balmain. It was the transmitter at Gore Hill and they said we had gone off air — one of our servers had failed. So with my iPhone I used an app to get into the desktop at UWS to switch to the other server and get us back on air. “Most stations are manned when they’re on air and there is always someone watching. But we don’t have that. So we use other ways.” SC Custom Battery Packs, Power Electronics & Chargers For more information, contact SIOMAR BATTERY ENGINEERING Phone (08) 9302 5444 or email mark<at>siomar.com www.batterybook.com siliconchip.com.au March 2011  29