South Africa`s Broadcast Data Systems (BDS) has gripped the imagination of the broadcasting community by becoming the world`s first company to institute a fully commercial computerised television and radio advertising and music monitoring system.
BDS not only scans, times, captures the date and time of broadcast of each and every television advertisement screened on all the terrestrial based TV stations in South Africa, but is also able to play them back upon demand in digital quality.
As if this is not enough, the radio monitoring system checks each and every national radio broadcaster every 57 seconds to see what the stations are playing and broadcasting - all on a 24 hour basis.
"We are proud that we are able to be at the forefront of this revolutionary technology," says Cromby Basson, a director of BDS.
"Something that would have been extremely manually time consuming and subject to potential human lapses has now been fully automated with the help of space-age technology and software. The BDS technology is currently used to provide Billboard with the latest national and international charts in the US. We shall shortly be releasing the South African national airplay charts"
From the outside, the BDS headquarters in Westdene, Johannesburg, (situated within the shadow of the famous SABC broadcast tower in Auckland Park), looks low tech and homely - but inside the contrast is vivid. BDS has installed a sophisticated software package onto the back of a hardware system consisting of three IBM Netfinity servers; no less than 24 IBM R/S 6000`s; 30 PC workstations; and networking equipment to handle the monitoring of music; all supplied by JSE-listed Faritec.
"Our advertising monitoring software comes from Israel, although it was released in Seattle last year," says Basson. "It works by using a sophisticated algorithm to detect when an advertisement is broadcast. All recordings are then manually checked to see that they do contain advertisements - and not glitches - and then stored in full mpeg format, along with the date, time, length of airing and product details," Basson explains.
The next question springs to mind: why go through all this trouble? "The end users are the prime drivers for this data," replies Basson. "It is now possible for advertisers and advertising agencies to ensure that their advertisements are in fact being broadcast at the correct time, in the correct places and for the correct length of time. Unless the product manufacturer or the advertising agency makes a point of physically checking their advertisement broadcast schedule against the actual broadcasts themselves, they have no way of knowing if it ever sees the light of day."
In addition to this, the system can also monitor broken advertisements or incomplete transmissions - something which any television viewer will confirm happens with sometimes alarming frequency.
"We can then show the advertiser exactly what was broadcast, when, where and how, and an incomplete broadcast does not qualify as an airing in terms of their contracts, and so they can demand a rerun at the television or radio station`s expense. This has a potential cost saving for television advertisers," he adds.
The hardware required for such a system is equally impressive - not only must it be robust enough to withstand constant use 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days per year, but is must also be able to handle a huge amount of data simultaneously. The system was installed in mid-February this year, and went live on the 8th March.
"Each advertisement is first physically edited by an operator and then put on the database on the servers," says Basson. "The operator puts in details such as the product name, company involved and so on. Thereafter, if the same advertisement is broadcast, the system can check the transmission against the stored version to see if there are any changes - such as break in transmission, or shortened broadcast time." In this way only the "perfect" version of advertisements and glitches is stored, rather than each advertisement being re-recorded each time it is broadcast. Even so, BDS foresees that the system`s capacity will be used within a year.
"We monitor seven terrestrial television stations, namely SABC 1, 2, and 3; BOP; E-tv; Mnet Supersport; and Mnet. This means some 1500 advertisements per day, which translates to 18 gigabytes of data per day, says Basson. "A 30 second advertisement takes up 8 megabytes all by itself."
"For this reason we had to pick our hardware carefully," says Basson. "The system we decided upon had to not only be robust, but also have the potential for scoping and scalability that we predict. IBM suited the fit perfectly, and Faritec went out of its way to ensure our requirements were always fully met. In exactly the same way as with the television advertisements, we can test non-flighting of radio advertisements as well," says Basson.
The music monitoring system is equally as impressive, although here the storage demands are not quite as huge as with the advertisements. This system features a bank of tuners set up to send live feeds through a set of monitors.
The software allows each tuner to sample at the rate of once every 57 seconds what is being played on all of the national broadcasters, and those broadcasting in Gauteng. This amounts to 36 broadcasters, although BDS will soon extend this to all regional broadcasters across the country. Whatever music is being played at the time of sampling, is then digitally recorded and a digital fingerprint taken. This digital fingerprint is then compared to a database of preloaded digital fingerprints taken from common popular music, all stored on the server.
In this way a genuine playlist of what is actually being physically broadcast, is compiled and printed in report format at the end of each day.
The system automatically compares what is being played with the radio station`s pre-arranged playlist, and any deviances are quickly spotted and can be brought to the attention of the radio stations themselves, record distributors or advertisers.
"Actual playlists have been known to deviate from what is broadcast, and this is of relevance for record companies who spend large amounts in promotional campaigns," explains Basson. "The installation of this system has gone without a hitch, and as all the systems are mission critical, there was not the slightest room for error or breakdown," says Basson. "The fact that everything has worked so well, so consistently, is a tribute to Faritec and they share in our success at being the world`s leader in the industry. When we went to Faritec we only had a general idea of what we wanted to do. Faritec made all the correct suggestions as regards the system requirements, and we have not looked back since."
Cromby Basson is a director of BDS and can be contacted at (011) 482 6105 or bdsafr@iafrica.com
BDS in South Africa is operated under license from BDS in the USA, where it is owned by Billboard Magazine.
Andrew Baranyay is Faritec`s BDS account manager and can be contacted at (011) 800 7400 or abaranyay@faritec.co.za
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