KLH: KAN use case

The Organization

KAN, The Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC) officially began its radio and television operations on 15 May 2017, succeeding the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) as state broadcaster. Its formal goals include promoting the expansion of knowledge, Israeli culture, and innovation in broadcasting.

TV

Since 15 May 2017, the IPBC broadcasts two television channels on national DVB-T2 transmitters, satellite feed, the HOT cable company, the YES satellite company, smaller pay-TV providers (such as Cellcom TV and Partner TV) and a free 24/7 live stream on the Internet. In 2018, KAN introduced a 4K resolution broadcast on Channel 511 (which was only used for broadcasts of the FIFA World Cup).

Kan's TV channels are:

• Kan 11: The corporation's main channel, replacing the IBA's Channel 1 and primarily broadcasting news, current affairs and cultural programs
• Makan 33: The Arabic-language channel, broadcasting news and cultural programs and replacing the IBA's Channel 33
• Kan Educational: On 15 August 2018, Channel 23 (known as Hinuchit or Israeli Educational Television) was replaced by a youth channel.

Radio

Kan operates nine radio stations, transferred from the IBA and sell tens of thousands Ads spots in a single month. Streams and on-demand programming are available via Kan's website. Some programs have Podcasts.

• Kan Reshet Bet (Kan Network B) – The most listen Radio station in Israel, News, current affairs and sports, with news on the hour in Hebrew
• Kan 88 – Jazz, blues, electronic music and traffic reports
• Kan Tarbut (Here is Culture), the former Reshet Aleph – Talk and cultural programming. News in Hebrew is broadcast at the same times as Reshet Bet.
• Kan Gimel (Kan C) – Israeli music, Hebrew news at the top of most hours.
• MaKan, the former Reshet Dalet – Arabic-language station
• Kan Farsi, the former Reshet Hei – Persian-language station. Also contains a 5-minute English news flash at 2 PM Israel Time, Sunday through Thursday.
• Kan REKA (Immigrant Network) – Radio for Israeli olim (immigrants). Non-Hebrew languages. An hour of English news at 8 PM Israel Time.
• Kan Kol Ha Musica (The Voice of Music) – Classical music and drama, with hourly Hebrew news
• Kan Moreshet (Heritage) – Religious broadcasting on the Kan Tarbut network

Two web-radio channels are dedicated to specific musical genres:

• Kan Nostalgia
• Kan Yam Tichon (Kan Mediterranean Sea)

Digital Assets - OTT

The official App of the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation with the highest quality content in Israel in one convenient and available place, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year was launched in its current UX on April 2018.

The app includes:

• Multi-Channel Live Page: 3 TV channels, 8 live radio stations and digital radio throughout the day
• Advanced Player: Content Recommendations, Chromecast, Floating Player that allows you to continue browsing the app without stopping the tune, continue from the last viewing / listening point
• Video on Demand (VOD) - a video library with hundreds of hours of full TV episodes from here 11, and also: Here's digital videos
• News - All the most important updates from the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation news desk: headlines today, flashes, full releases and all the programs from here - Israel's leading news station
• The largest library of podcasts in the Hebrew language - dozens of titles on fascinating and high-quality topics: history, culture, economics, science and more
• Educational Here - All the content your little ones love: Educational TV shows including classics and archives, children's songs, children's podcasts and more
• Full recordings and shows from all of here's radio stations: here at, here Gimel, here 88, here the sound of music, here culture and here's a legacy
• Radio programs in 9 languages from the station here reka: Amharic, Russian, English, French, Georgian, Bukharan, Spanish, Yiddish and Ladino

The Challenge

​KAN The Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC) operates 3 different linear TV channels and 9 different radio station, each has its own team of programmers, producers and managers, however, all of them needs to access the same archive, use the same graphic services, coordinate with the same promo department and Ads agencies, and top management needs data to see the overall picture and steer the boat in the right direction.

Data is becoming the most important asset for media factories and driving the deployment of technologies that are enabled by or enable it. As companies move to direct platforms, the importance of consumer data in powering decision-making is growing. It’s not just about the consumer though, data is also important for the operations. This data is a goldmine and media companies want to leverage it in different parts of their content chains to drive automation, business analytics and business rules that deploy virtual machines depending on demand.

That data is very difficult to get right as media companies’ legacy architectures had allocated it in different silos within the organization.

The Considerations

Security

Microsoft uses a wide variety of physical, infrastructure, and operational controls to help secure Azure, Security is a key focus of cloud providers, who invest huge sums of money into securing their infrastructure. Cloud providers typically also offer a broad set of policies, compliance, technologies, and controls that strengthen the security posture by protecting the data, apps, and infrastructure from threats.

Multi-Layered security provided by Microsoft across physical data centers, infrastructure, and operations in Azure. The state-of-art security delivered in Azure data centers globally, Rely on a cloud that is built with customized hardware, has security controls integrated into the hardware and firmware components, and added protections against threats such as DDoS. Benefit from a team of more than 3,500 global cybersecurity experts that work together to help safeguard the business assets and data in Azure.

KLH Solution works with the SSL protocol and double authentication permission protocol.

These measures ensure the data is fully secured and safeguard.

Flexibility

KLH cloud base BMS takes full advantage of the Microsoft Azure Cloud services, scaling up and downsizing is a matter of hours, adding new analytics for a management survey is a matter of days and all of it without increasing costs at all. The KLH BMS cloud resources are part of the monthly fee and not affected by upscaling or downscaling. Creating a new Pop-up channel is a matter of one-day configuration and changing graphics is a matter of minutes.

The human factor

Deploying, integrating and implementing any software tool into an organization is a challenge, mostly due to the human factor. While technological integration challenges can be overcome by experience and prior processes and methodology, orchestrating the work of more than 100 stakeholders within KAN was a challenge that KLH took very seriously and prepare accordingly.

With 2 customer success managers working around the clock to train and provide first aid solutions and hands-on know-how to KAN team members, and a team of software engineers backing up the optimization process, the KLH BMS was launched after 3 months of migration and optimization, result in high satisfaction to the client, as KAN CTO put it in his words:

“The ability to get more efficiencies and synergies within our TV, Radio and digital platforms by using KLH system solution gives us the privilege to focus on the media creation rather than the operational hurdle, the holistic approach of KLH and the flexibility of its development team created real partnership that results in high satisfaction within all our different functions in the KAN corporate” says Cory Korkos –CTO, KAN, IPBC.

The Solution

To become an advanced media company that uses the data in a smart way, KAN The Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC) decided to use the Cloud advantages in organizing and gathering all data to one silo from the different operations.

An international tender for a Cloud base BMS (Broadcast Management System) was issued in 2016.

Before entering the tender, KAN the Israeli Public Broadcaster used several distributed systems that managed its TV and Radio workflows, all of them on-prem systems that were built and developed in the 20th century, with the growth of the non-linear assets and digital transformation that the media sector has been going through, the public broadcaster decided to look for a new and advanced system that will incorporate all processes within the corporate, KLH was born an built in the 21st century, in this decade, and the infrastructure that is built from is new and advanced, KLH is a Cloud-based BMS built on the Microsoft Azure. The Microsoft Azure Cloud is state of the art Cloud service that offers lots of advantages to those who know how to exploit it, Microsoft Azure is used by international media powerhouses like NBC Universal, NHK, TFI, Sony and Fox Sports, KLH took these new and advanced tools of the digital era and harness it to the media industry, today every client of KLH enjoy automatic software upgrades that always includes new and advanced features, a practice that goes without saying on the cloud but was and still big issue when it comes to on-prem software systems, the commercial advances are also huge, instead of spending a big amount of CAPEX, KLH clients spend OPEX only and using the Saas model – Software as a service, a big revolution that helps TV channel maintain low costs and be competitive in today’s media environment, and the most important maintain its flexibility to launch new services – non-linear VOD, digital assets and different types of business models.

In the past the broadcaster had to buy programs or produce it, put it on a linear TV channel and sell it to cable or satellite operators, very straight forward process, however today the distribution platforms the acquisition and the monetizing is so complex that the broadcaster needs some help managing all of it.

KLH help the broadcasters make some sense in all this complexity, KLH manage linear, non-linear and digital assets on the same management tool and connect all the different entities at the broadcaster site, from the rights management to the metadata and material management, to the reporting and accounting and the scheduling for all types of media.

Summary

KAN, the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC) has definitely fulfilled one of its formal goals - the innovation in broadcasting by introducing a Cloud base BMS, a cutting edge technology that allows it to travel to the 21st century.

About KLH

KLH BMS is a comprehensive cloud-based, multi-lingual management system for all types of TV channels, OTT providers, broadcasting platforms and radio stations.

Founded by a group of experienced professionals from the broadcasting industry, who saw the need for flexible and scalable tools to manage TV broadcasting.

KLH BMS solution offers a continuously evolving management system to meet the needs of the ever-changing media landscape.

With a deep understanding of the user needs and development capabilities, KLH offers a full solution to the supply chain includes:

• Rights management
• Assets management
• Scheduling
• Ads sales management
• EPG distribution
• BI Analytics

KLH BMS is a trusted supplier of broadcast management systems to yes, HOT, i24News, MTV, Nick, History Channel, Comedy Central, Trace Sport, Baby TV, E and more.

www.klh-tv.com