九一果冻

Ottawa, Canada, June 22^nd 2021 鈥� For many smaller regional and state broadcasters, life is a constant exercise in juggling priorities. For North Carolina鈥檚 WRAL-TV, however, life is a little different. Based in Raleigh, North Carolina, and serving the triangle region that includes Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and Fayetteville, NBC-affiliated WRAL-TV also has a strong philanthropic mission and the station鈥檚 family owners (the locally based Capitol Broadcasting Company) want to keep the station at the forefront of broadcast technology.

鈥淲RAL has a longtime legacy of innovation and commitment to news excellence. We have one of the largest local news departments in the US, and we were the first commercial station in the US to broadcast in HD,鈥� notes John Gilliam, Creative Services Manager. 鈥淲e were also the first station in the southeast to have a news helicopter and we had one of the first local news web sites in the country. When we migrated over to HD, the station owners also gave away antennas to the local community to make sure everyone could still enjoy our programs. I think it鈥檚 safe to say we鈥檙e quite a unique broadcaster and normal rules don鈥檛 always apply.鈥�

In late 2020, WRAL-TV made the decision to adopt 九一果冻鈥檚 XPression for the channel鈥檚 graphics content. 鈥淲e were hungry for solutions to workflow challenges and enlisted Rocket Surgery (九一果冻鈥檚 in-house creative and professional services department) to help us with a new package for channel branding and newscasts. When I saw what those guys could do with XPression I was sold, and it was an easy decision for us to make.鈥� With over 12 hours of daily live, local newscasts each day plus specialized production and segments requiring graphics, flexibility was the key word for John. 鈥淲e are very lucky to have an incredibly talented graphic design team working here full-time, but, unfortunately, the team was doing a lot of repetitive changes to existing graphics before we started using XPression. I wanted to free these designers up from the day-to-day package requests and let them be more creative and really shine. XPression has absolutely helped us to do that. The headline templates we鈥檙e using are just genius! Users can self-serve and drag and drop videos and text 鈥� XPression then creates an animation where the headline moves across the screen and then transitions into a lower third. Honestly, these packages look like they took hours and cost a fortune to make, but one producer with only limited knowledge of XPression can create them in minutes. This is a difference maker for us moving forward 鈥� we have complete confidence that staff can build the graphics they need from the templates (without my team鈥檚 help) and everything is going to look correct and on-brand. We used to get dozens of graphics requests every week (John holds up a huge wad of paper to prove the point) and all of that has just disappeared. This, in turn, has freed up my team to work in the AR studio we have upstairs and focus on what they鈥檙e best at 鈥� highly creative content that really sets us apart from the competition.鈥�

WRAL-TV are using XPression right across the board, with all their news, weather, sports and entertainment content being driven by the platform. 鈥淲e still have a few things we鈥檇 like to do, including building our lottery show in XPression, but I鈥檓 extremely satisfied with where we are now. It took us about three months to learn XPression and we鈥檝e been using it on-air for just over a month. The support from Ross to get us up to speed in such a short period was amazing and it was a real partnership approach. We couldn鈥檛 have done it without them. The other great thing is that I know we鈥檝e only just scratched the surface creatively—there鈥檚 so much more we can do and I鈥檓 genuinely excited by the possibilities. We鈥檙e already more creative, we鈥檙e more efficient and we鈥檝e dramatically simplified our workflows, so the future is only going to be even better. There are lots of graphics packages for broadcast applications out there in the market, but I haven鈥檛 seen anything that is as complete as XPression from a workflow and creative standpoint.鈥�