FEED: It’s been a busy year, but especially for news organisations and the companies who serve them. How did you and your organisations weather the storms of 2020?
RUBA IBRAHIM: All the plans that we had last year at Al Arabiya had to be thrown away.We had to totally shift the way we were thinking, the way we were operating and our priorities.We manage two news channels and digital platforms, websites and social media. News is our bread and butter. We expected 2020 to be all about the American elections, and then we would have other coverage in our main target areas in the Middle East and North Africa.We only broadcast in Arabic with English only on our website. At the beginning of the pandemic, of course, there was panic.We always had plans to go to the cloud and to function remotely, but we had only tested a couple of things. Suddenly we were in a situation where, in a week, we had to pull most of our staff out of the office.We kept about 15 to 20% of the critical newsroom staff and had to make arrangements for people to start operating from their homes.We needed all our reporters, producers, graphics people, creative people, promo people – almost everybody except for the playout was operating remotely. There were challenges – and there are still challenges – but it went on without a glitch on air. And that was my main concern, that the change go unnoticed by the audience. But one of the main challenges we had is that we were in the process of launching our new newsroom and studios, which was a big project we were working on for the last year.The launch was supposed to take place mid to late March, and then the pandemic came.We wondered if it was an appropriate time.To brag about your top-notch, futuristic studio while people are dying is not very appropriate. At the same time, people have worked so hard and the studio has a totally different look, so people will know. When we realised things weren’t going back to normal, we thought we might as well launch the new
studio, and it was successful. We introduced a lot of new technologies; automation, robotic cameras and new augmented reality. We function in an Avid environment, use Dalet for some of our asset management on the programme side and are big customers of Vizrt. It’s been challenging, but I would call it a successful experience.
CARL SWANSTON: It was similar for us at the CBC. Fortunately, we were on the heels of all of our main projects.We had a large technical renewal project inToronto, updating our studio facilities and control rooms, and we ended that project last summer. So going into the winter, we were in good shape. My colleagues on the French side in Montreal were in the midst of moving locations, and that has been quite challenging. We were reporting this news through January and March, but it wasn’t hitting home. And it wasn’t until the beginning of March that people started getting into contingency modes.We started securing outside facilities for radio and television.We locked down our building to guests.We had cameras and remote radio booths set up in the lobby for guests. We had opted for the Google ecosystem a few years ago – we’re heavy users of Google Docs, Spreadsheets and Hangouts – and that was really helpful, because our people were already using these tools. Also we had stockpiled laptops for a Windows 10 project and for the Olympics, and on the English-language side we were able to deploy 530 laptops to the staff that needed them in a few weeks. So luck was on our side.We had to quickly add Citrix licenses andVPNs. In some instances, we deployed people, like graphics designers, with their desktop computers.We also quickly discovered Teradici, virtual desktop technology. All of our editors work remotely. It’s odd, because we have edit suites that are completely empty, but the editors are accessing those CPUs and editing remotely. It’s quite eerie, seeing all these empty rooms and yet the machines are all busy working. Also, CBC is not new to remotely producing news and special events like the Olympics.We had a very robust team of production folks helping us with technology. But part of the difficulty was it all happened during March break, when kids are off school.With daycare and camps closed, everything shut down and our employees found it very difficult to be home working with kids that need attention.
“ALLTHE PLANS THATWE HAD LAST YEAR HAD TO BE THROWN AWAY”
ON AIR Al Arabiya’s brand-new, state-of-the-art newsroom had to launch in the middle of the pandemic
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