KHET PBS Hawaii

Redesigning Media Workflow for Growth andContinuity in New Broadcast Media Facility

KHET PBS Hawaii selected Diversified as the technical and design consultant for its new broadcast media facility. The facility, previously designed by two other companies, needed to be redesigned so that existing and new technology would ensure continuity between the old and new sites. PBS desired a flexible broadcast media center with extended capabilities for future endeavors. The design also had to provide familiarity of workflows for their staff engineers plus ease of maintenance.

Establishing design guidelines to better accommodate workflows within the outsourced Master Control and production areas was critical. Accomplishing this was further complicated by the impending construction schedule. Fortunately, the timeline allotted the necessary time and attention required to re-work the original design. This was necessary since the project was highly technical and a complicated solution that relied heavily on equipment unfamiliar to KHET staff.

Extensive meetings were conducted, outlining Diversified’s processes, exploring workflows and evaluating staff capabilities. Diversified value-engineered a system which would easily transfer to their knowledge base and ease the PBS staff into this transition with minimal downtime and training.

Challenges were addressed in a series of value-engineering sessions by Diversified’s collective teams. The areas affected included IT-Centric Infrastructure necessitated by the overarching originally proposed solution, studio lighting, ingest and master control. Centralized network storage and archiving infrastructure provides PBS staff with the ability to manage media assets and provide an efficient, seamless workflow for sharing media between all groups, inclusive of the out-sourced Master Control.

PBS Hawaii has a flexible, new broadcast media center as a result of Diversified’s dedication to listening to the input, insight and feedback from the KHET staff. A simpler, but higher-quality and fine-tuned design replaced the unfamiliar workflow and technologies from the previous designs, and allowed for a new facility outfitted with a dynamic and value-engineered system.