due to the exponential rise of social media and streaming platforms. It’s in the strategy “The biggest challenge in news production has always been how to get faster, while remaining reliable,” said Hans Martin Paar, head of news at Servus TV, in a recent Ross Video customer case study. That tension between speed, accuracy and creativity has only intensified as newsrooms face shrinking resources and fragmented audiences – fuelled by the relentless pace of digital platforms. Technology is the linchpin that allows newsrooms to balance down newsroom strategies, Ross Video describes broadcast news production now as ‘not unlike riding a motorbike across a tightrope’, demanding precision and ‘more creativity than ever’. The broadcast tech powerhouse partners with some of the world’s major producers, such as NBC and Fox, and argues that one of the top strategies is empowering journalists to take on new roles without overwhelming them. Many reporters now shoot their own interviews, package video and even add graphics from the field. The challenge, the article notes, is these competing pressures. In a recent article breaking
ensuring that ‘reporters can spend their time reporting, not learning how to use new tools and wrangling with graphics software’. By streamlining workflows and making high-quality visuals accessible, technology is enabling even small local stations to compete with polished storytelling. Consistency is another key pillar of newsroom credibility. “Are the titles of over-the-shoulder graphics always in the same font? Are lower-third graphics consistent with the brand’s visual identity?” Automated templates ensure that live graphics align with brand standards, while giving journalists flexibility for last minute updates. Graham Media Group, for example, employs ‘super-templates’ to distribute on-brand graphics across multiple stations from a central hub. This allows local outlets to quickly customise visuals while maintaining cohesion: maintaining a vital balance between speed and polish. Virtual studios add another layer of creative capability. Borrowing from sports and weather broadcasting, where chroma keying and real- time data overlays are common, these studios merge live presenters with immersive graphics. Election coverage, sports stories or breaking crises can all be augmented with
interactive visuals that would be impossible on a physical set. Such innovation helps newsrooms ‘produce engaging, immersive and highly efficient news productions’ that captivate audiences accustomed to digital-first experiences. If one thing is certain, there’s no playbook for succeeding in news, because success isn’t static and the bar for quality is always rising. To rise above the competition, your station must be able to easily adapt and embrace change. Rebuilding the infrastructure The foundation of this transformation is a newsroom’s ‘plumbing’, as Qvest senior vice president Tim Day describes. He highlights that legacy broadcast facilities were built around on-premises hardware and SDI cabling, limiting flexibility and tying workflows to physical places. “Because things are IP-based, you can route to multiple locations,” Day says. “If I have 50 different broadcast locations, I can centralise all my content into a singular platform and then distribute it wherever it needs to go – whether linear, digital or social.” Day offers the example of a hypothetical story breaking in New York, where that footage would now no longer need to be edited
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