Internet Broadcasting Upgrades Digital Publishing Platform

New ibPublish 2 solution is being deployed by Hearst and other station groups

By George Winslow -- Broadcasting & Cable, 4/2/2012 10:31:08 AM

With solutions to help streamline multiplatform distribution of content expected to be an especially hot topic at this year's NAB, digital publishing technology and service provider, Internet Broadcasting has introduced its new digital content and management platform, ibPublish 2.

The new cloud-based platform, which represented a significant investment in research and development, is designed to help streamline workflows for digital distribution of content to online, mobile and social channels and to help local stations lay the foundation for next generation digital publishing offerings.

Hearst, the Post-Newsweek Stations group and some other station groups that had been using the Internet Broadcasting digital publishing solutions have either already made the upgrade to ibPublish 2 or are planning to in the next few months.

Elmer Baldwin, president and CEO of Internet Broadcasting noted in a lengthy interview that major stations groups and other clients had challenged them to come up with a new solution that would help them "change the game" in terms of digital delivery.

The result, he adds, "is a platform that can not only meet their challenges today but will also provide the foundation to build and profit from their digital businesses in the next ten years."

The platform, which Internet Broadcasting will be demoing at NAB, includes a number of features that significantly streamline workflows, which is important because limited revenues from digital products make it hard to justify hiring more staff to beef up digital offerings. "We're reduced the editor workflow by as much as 30%" and greatly streamlined the process for delivering content to mobile and social media he adds.

Other major enhancements include improved user interface, tools for developing fully integrated apps and mobile web sites, greater control and flexibility over their digital solutions and a multiplatform cloud based solutions.

"We have a suite of easy to deploy cloud based tools that do not require investment in or deployment of proprietary hardware," Balwin explained.

As part of a push to give provide publishers with greater flexibility in adapting their digital strategies, the company also has created a number of partnerships with major technology partners to provide technologies for the platform.

These partners include CoreMedia, a provider of Web content management (WCM) software; Kaltura, which provides a video platform for video management, publishing, authoring, distribution and monetization solutions; and Akamai, a leading provider of cloud-based platforms for delivering content to multiple devices.

The platform is also designed to be integrated with other technology and service partners so clients have additional flexibility in the kind of content they provide.

"We searched through the industry for the best partners for a solution that is specifically tailored for the broadcast media," notes Baldwin.

In a statement on the launch of the new platform, Roger Keating, senior VP, digital media, for Hearst Television and an Internet Broadcasting director added: "Local publishers have arguably the most complex set of needs of any digital publisher. Given the volume of content, the number of iterations, and the very distributed nature of what we're publishing, we're really hard on publishing systems -- and the tasks for which we are looking to a digital publishing platform to support us have grown in complexity. Internet Broadcasting has taken on the challenge of fully retooling their publishing platform to meet our needs -- not just for this year, but for the next decade."