Andrew Fernie
General Manager of Operations, News and Current Affairs, TVNZ
7Mountains, the creators of cloud newsroom solution DiNA, recently announced a new milestone deal with Television New Zealand. TVNZ has chosen DiNA as their core journalist tool, in order to transition to a native cloud based newsroom. DiNA will sit at the heart of the newsroom for creating, planning and publishing news to all of TVNZ’s linear and digital platforms.
The project will be delivered in conjunction with 7Mountains technology partner Stem Media, with the development, installation and implementation of DiNA done remotely from Norway, close to 18,000km away.
Mads Grønbæk said in the announcement of the TVNZ project: "DiNA is built from the ground-up on modern web technologies and runs in the cloud. This means that we can deliver projects remotely and highly efficiently, benefitting both the customer and our team.”
Transitioning to cloud at TVNZ
We spoke with Andrew Fernie, General Manager of Operations, News and Current Affairs at TVNZ about their ongoing project with moving their newsroom to the cloud, the workflow requirements and expectations.
What is the background for this project for TVNZ?
Some of TVNZ’s news production processes haven’t changed in 25 years. Given their age, they can be difficult to change, adapt or integrate and are primarily designed to deliver to broadcast outputs.
We want to simplify the workflows for our editorial teams. With the solution from 7Mountains, we will deploy a single system that covers planning and deployment, editing and production to multiple publication points – both linear and digital.
How will this change the way your journalists work?
With DiNA we equip our editorial teams with one unified user interface. This means that there’s no need to jump around multiple tools to create and publish content which allows our journalists to work more efficiently. This will be a huge relief for our editorial teams and enable them to work far more efficiently. With DiNA at the core of our newsroom workflow, we allow our journalists to plan, investigate, collaborate and tell stories that matter and then deliver to all platforms with ease.
What convinced you to choose DiNA as your next newsroom solution?
When starting this project, we were, as many other broadcasters, in need of simplifying our workflows and equipping our teams with tools that require less maintenance. We needed tools that are more efficient, that allow for creative freedom for our editorial teams, and that scale. To accomplish this we looked for a vendor that is at the forefront of cloud technology, and that also had the experience and understanding of traditional journalism and production workflows.
7Mountains and their product DiNA caught our eyes in 2019 where we got a chance to sit down with the team at the IBC show, to see a live demonstration of the tool. We have followed their projects closely since then, with the soon-to-air new British TV channel GB News, the launch of OTT business channel ausbiz, as well as Danish TV 2/ FYN and their transition to a cloud based newsroom.
What were your main workflow requirements for your newsroom?
We required a tool to allow our journalists to plan, investigate, collaborate and tell stories that matter and then deliver to all platforms with ease. We wanted to move away from working in silos with news for web, linear TV, social TV and more, in teams that could not collaborate efficiently and share resources. By choosing DiNA, we knew that we’d end up with one tool that encompasses the planning, creation, and publishing of stories to linear TV, our digital platforms and to social media.
What does your new workflow look like for your editorial teams?
DiNA can be accessed from a web browser from anywhere with a connection to our network. This gives our journalists the ability to work from anywhere, although they will have their base at our newsrooms in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
Journalists working in DiNA can plan, prepare and create content for all programmes and platforms and publish to linear TV via an integrated rundown module that plays nicely with our Mosart automation system. From within the same story container, they’re also able to push to our digital platforms through our CMS, and to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.
Resource bookings can be made from within a DiNA story, with a tight integration to ScheduALL, our booking and resource management system. DiNA integrates with media asset management system Viz One by Vizrt and with Avid Interplay. The integrated workflow allows our journalists to search for videos from both of these platforms simultaneously, when creating their stories.
How will the system be rolled out in your organisation?
The amazing thing about cloud solutions is that setup and deployment can easily be done without the need of onsite technical support, as we normally require for projects of this size. The 7Mountains team will set up the solution for us remotely from Bergen, Norway. We then have the local support from the Stem Media team.
What are your editorial team most excited about with this major change?
I would say that having one unified user interface across our editorial teams is what we are most excited about; at least now for the roll-out and early phase of the project. This is a major benefit for us and something everyone really is looking forward to. This means that there’s no need to jump around multiple tools to create and publish content, which will allow our journalists to work more efficiently. We want to allow our journalists to plan, investigate, collaborate and tell stories that matter and then deliver to all platforms with ease.
And when do you go live with DiNA?
We are on track for going live with DiNA and with the integrated production workflows in August.
About TVNZ
TVNZ is New Zealand’s state-owned, commercially funded broadcaster. Each day, TVNZ reaches more than 2 million New Zealanders through channels TVNZ 1, 2, DUKE and online platform, TVNZ OnDemand. Leading news site, 1news.co.nz and socially driven online news brand Re:, connect Kiwis to the important issues however they choose to engage. 1 NEWS forms the backbone of TVNZ’s content offering, providing New Zealanders with live and breaking news throughout the day, both on air and online. 1 NEWS at Six is Aotearoa’s highest-rating bulletin, reaching over a million viewers each night. https://www.tvnz.co.nz/
About DiNA
7Mountains is a software company that is part of Fonn Group. They are the inventors of DiNA, a cloud news and storytelling tool for content creators. DiNA is built with modern, web-based technology and with the end-user in mind, bridging the gap between news production for TV, social media and online.
