ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE AWS
US public broadcaster PBS is rejuvenating its workflows with help from the cloud and AWS Media Services
and AWS tools in 2017 with the launch of its PBS Kids 24/7 children’s streaming channel. Jenkins saw a need for replacing the organisation’s ageing legacy systems. He explains: “AWS floated to the top as a media-friendly environment. While there were other clouds, AWS was the most media-friendly that we were engaged with. And it was working towards having certain products and things in place that would help us get where we needed to go.”
enard Jenkins is no stranger to building a TV station. His lifelong career in broadcast technology includes 16 years working at a
moved on to do the same for Discovery, and then most recently has helped PBS overhaul its systems as the American public broadcaster’s vice-president of operations, engineering and distribution. Responsible for the broadcaster’s entire media supply chain, Jenkins is looking at how to streamline everything PBS does. “We’re at a point right now where our systems are ageing and there’s no way
scrappy news start-up called CNN. He started at the fledgling company as a staff editor in the years before the first Iraq War made the cable news broadcaster a household name, and worked in post- production there for almost a decade. He returned for another six years to help CNN overhaul its post facilities. “It was at that time I got the opportunity to start diving into R&D and technology. Starting in the late 1980s, CNN was really an innovator,” Jenkins recalls. “When you are in a remote location and you have to get something on air, you have to figure it out. When you’re put in a situation where you’re using brand-new technology for the 1992 and 1996 elections, you have to be nimble and understand what your options are to get things to work.” As Jenkins came to manage teams, he saw that post-production was uniquely positioned to adopt new technologies as broadcasters moved away from tape-based workflows, as well as adopting HD. “I could really see how computers were going to start to revolutionise what we were doing.” After helping CNN become an early adopter of file-based workflows, Jenkins
we’re going to be able to keep these things running for the next four or five years. We’re going to have to do something. Moving to the cloud or service-based, automated systems gives you flexibility that you don’t have in a hardware-built system.” PBS began to use the cloud
feedzinesocial feedmagazine.tv
Powered by FlippingBook