Case Study

ABS-CBN scales operations and expands its reach

with Amagi’s end-to-end cloud playout solutions

Alto Broadcasting System – Chronicle Broadcasting Network, loved by many as ABS-CBN, is one of the leading media and entertainment organizations in the Philippines. From its humble beginnings to its undeniable successes, the company has over 60 years of stories to tell. It specializes in regional content and offers a wide-variety of  content across genres to its dedicated fan base on both traditional TV and OTT platforms.

The Problem

Expand operations and scale regional programming distribution

To expand their reach further, ABS-CBN sought a technology partner who could offer them scale and flexibility through end-to-end cloud-managed live and on-demand video infrastructure. They were looking to solve the following challenges:
  • Simplify distribution process: Leverage a single interface to manage ABS-CBN's extensive content catalog, which is accessible on IPTV and their O&O apps. Distribute content to ABS-CBN's IPTV and O&O channels across FAST platforms. 
  • Seamless asset management: Effective asset management capabilities, such as ingesting content from multiple sources, adding rich graphical elements, creating schedule patterns, and transcoding it for TV and OTT, facilitate a seamless transition between recorded and live content and back. 
  • Effortless multi-country feed delivery: Directly deliver multiple content feeds to distribution centers in the US, Philippines, EU, and the Middle East through remote playout management, thus eliminating the need for their data centers in the US

The Solution

Expand operations and scale regional programming distribution

Amagi deployed the following solutions to spin up channels on the go, add feature-rich graphic templates to live and on-demand content, and enable content monetization: 
  • Amagi CLOUDPORT - our cloud-playout automation platform for channel creation
  • Amagi LIVE - our live events orchestration platform
  • Amagi THUNDERSTORM - our dynamic ad insertion platform for monetization
Here’s how Amagi achieved it:

Ingest and playout: The customer uploads content and schedules into a cloud storage/S3 bucket. Live events are scheduled in the playlist shared by ABS-CBN. Amagi’s customized parser parsed the XML playlists to schedule live events and created required break schedules.

Live operations: Live operations were completely handled by the ABS-CBN team. Amagi’s technical team provided extensive demos and training to their tech team to make this happen.

Immediate live: Facilitated seamless transition between recorded or VOD and live content and back.

Built tailor-made workflows to catch up with schedules after live events that did not necessarily finish as per plan.

Rich secondary graphics: ABS-CBN shared two XML playlists (graphics and content). These were parsed and the secondary graphics were automatically scheduled on video.

Content monetization through targeted ad insertion for two channels - TeleRadyo and Canada West - leveraging Amagi THUNDERSTORM.
Delivered multi-country feeds to the US and the Pacific region, including five time-delayed feeds.

Monitoring: Amagi handled infra monitoring for ABS-CBN, which included monitoring possible issues that may arise due to various reasons, such as content unavailability or other stream-related problems related to ingest, schedule/traffic, and playout. Issues such as black video and freeze were also notified.

The Result

-30%
in operational cost
30%
growth in linear monetization
Greater efficiency, scale, and reach with Amagi
  • Enabled playing real-time graphics dynamically during live  
  • Helped make frequent changes in live durations as required by the customer 
  • Helped make frequent changes in break schedules 
  • With our effective integration with third-party systems, Amagi made distribution to multiple endpoints a breeze
ABS-CBN was able to eliminate a significant chunk of its existing legacy infrastructure, which translated into lower costs, fewer overheads, and the ability to free up resources to focus on other priorities. 

Amagi currently supports 12 active feeds, 9 live feeds, and 5 time-delayed feeds.

Some of the noteworthy achievements are:
  • 30% decrease in operational cost by transitioning to cloud solutions 
  • Approximately 40% reduction in physical data center presence 
  • 30% approximate growth in linear content monetization on their digital platforms in the US 
  • Better dynamic graphics insertion for a seamless live content viewing experience 
  • Low latencies to deliver an exceptional watching experience 
  • Higher ad revenue through powerful server-side ad insertion

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