NAB: Chyron Goes Social

New products include offerings to help broadcasters expand second screen and social media efforts

By George Winslow -- Broadcasting & Cable, 4/15/2012 9:53:00 PM

Complete Coverage: 2012 NAB Show

Responding to the growing interest in social media and social TV applications, Chyron launched several new products at NAB that were designed to offer broadcasters low-cost ways of using their existing graphics and production workflows to expand their second screen or social media offerings.

The development of simplified solutions for social media is important to broadcasters because they want to capitalize on the growing popularity of social media but want to do it in a way that doesn't increase costs because second screen efforts are not, as yet, producing much, if any, revenue.

"It is one of the most important trends we're seeing in the marketplace," noted Michael Wellesley-Wesley, president and CEO at Chyron in a chat with B&C following their press conference.

As part of that effort, Chyron has introduced its new Engage platform. It provides users with a way of integrating second screen, social media and social TV data into live TV broadcasts as part of their existing Chyron graphics systems and workflow for news and sports.

"Social media is a natural for sports because everyone wants to give their opinion of the referee after a big call," Wellesley-Wesley added.

In addition, Chyron also announced the launch of Shout, a stand-alone software application that enables broadcasters to bring social media commentary into their live broadcasts quickly and easily.

"As a flexible and comprehensive software-based tool for bringing moderated social media content to air, Shout fits in nicely within our expanding range of social media offerings," noted Bonnie Barclay, VP and chief marketing officer at Chyron in a statement. "Simplifying handling of tweets and custom moderator messages all the way through to broadcast, Shout makes it easy for broadcasters to integrate social media content into programming conveniently and according to the workflow that best suits their operations."

While second screen and social TV applications are still a relatively nascent phenomena, Chyron also announced a number of partnership with social TV players that would integrate its new Engage platform into their applications.

As previously reported, these partners include ConnecTV, which will offer its companion app polling technology and Never.no, which will provide technology for an end-to-end social TV platform, synchronized companion apps and participation TV.

In addition, Vibes wil offer its text, Twitter and Web voting technology and Mass Relevance will supply a curation platform that is licensed to resyndicate Twitter content and data.

The ConnecTV partnership is particularly important because the company is working with the Pearl Group, which is made of a number of large station groups, and other broadcasters covering 45 of the 50 largest DMAs to deploy second screen applications tied to their broadcasts on June 1. The effort is probably the largest effort to date by stations to expand their social TV efforts.

Because about 40% of the stations in the U.S. use Chyron's graphics platforms, Wellesley-Wesley argues that they are the logical partner for stations looking to expand their social TV efforts.