AccuWeather selected Comcast Technology Solutions’ Managed Channel Origination (MCO) services to create, manage and deliver linear TV, on-demand and OTT video channels to viewers across North America.
CTS Managed Channel Origination provides a fully managed, 24/7 service designed to improve operational efficiencies, reduce capital expenditures, and future-proof customers' ability to monetize world-class viewing experiences at scale. Managed Channel Origination provides media companies and broadcasters with a platform for integrated video workflows from content acquisition to distribution.
By Bernie Reino, Chief Meteorologist at AccuWeather
With AccuWeather's trademark Superior Accuracy™ forecasts, AccuWeather Network and AccuWeather NOW provide viewers with up-to-the-minute weather forecasts and videos, stories that highlight the potential impacts of forecasted weather on sports, health, travel and other daily activities, engaging social weather content from popular platforms, and long-form storytelling on major weather phenomena and environmental wonders around the world. For more than 60 years, AccuWeather has been refining the art and science of weather forecasting to help people save lives, protect property and make the best weather-related decisions.
“AccuWeather is synonymous with delivering timely, accurate and enlightening weather information that impacts the lives of millions of viewers,” said Bert Spreester, senior vice president and general manager of streaming, broadcast and advertising, Comcast Technology Solutions“We are extremely proud that our clients have turned to our Managed Channel Origination services to economically streamline their ability to reach and monetize audiences at scale. Our partnership with MCO is about helping companies reduce capital costs and improve operational efficiencies through a unique combination of capabilities that only Comcast Technology Solutions can deliver.”
“At AccuWeather, we depend on having the right back-end infrastructure in place to deliver instant, continuous information to our viewers, which is why we turned to Comcast Technology Solutions,” he said. Helen Swenson, Chief Content Officer, AccuWeather“We chose CTS because they are a trusted leader in managed channel origination, with a long history of delivering superior quality and reliability. Focusing our efforts on CTS will give us unified access to a variety of linear TV and OTT distributors. Their state-of-the-art facilities and advanced capabilities will help us streamline operations, automate tasks and free up valuable resources so we can focus more energy on creating and monetizing content at scale.”
Comcast Technology Solutions is an established market leader that has been providing managed channel origination of hundreds of channels from U.S. facilities to serve North American audiences for decades. Last year, the company expanded its MCO capabilities into EMEA, leveraging the combination of Sky's Master Control video and metadata platform and Comcast Technology Solutions' product solutions portfolio.
Managed Channel Origination provides media companies with an integrated content acquisition-to-distribution workflow and 24/7 service level agreements (SLAs). It provides the capabilities required to acquire, prepare, produce, package and deliver linear TV and OTT channels. Content is acquired over satellite, fiber or secure IP as live video or file-based acquisition. Channels are then prepared using Comcast Technology Solutions' rendering operations, cloud-based content supply chain implementation, media asset management, traffic and metadata services. Channels are then created using capabilities such as channel automation playout (SCTE triggers, advanced graphics, closed captioning, etc.), Master Control and VideoAI™. From there, channels are prepared with the required encoding, encryption and authorization policies and delivered to any screen across MVPDs, vMVPDs and OTTs over satellite uplinks, fiber, secure internet or CDNs. Managed Channel Origination's redundant and diverse IP routing infrastructure provides a secure global playout solution that accelerates delivery.
Managed Channel Origination is part of Comcast Technology Solutions' comprehensive Live Linear Suite and can also be integrated with additional services from Comcast Technology Solutions' broad portfolio, including Cloud TV Suite, AdFusion and more.
