At work, some of our largest customers are television news networks. A few weeks ago, we decided that the best way to test our software was to set up our own news network. Now every Friday at 4pm we run a half hour "Inscriber News Network" broadcast throughout the Waterloo office.

We simulcast the news in HD, SD, and streaming over the intranet so that employees without video feeds to their desk can watch on their computers. My weekly duties involve making sure the HD/SD/Web simulcasting is working, and recording the HD broadcast for later analysis. I also act as a reporter, using ENPS or iNews software to write and submit stories just like a real reporter would.

Chad (pictured on the far right) has volunteered to be our news anchor, and he even built a homemade teleprompter (pictured on the far left) that we call the "Ghettoprompter". It works just like a real teleprompter - the camera sits behind a piece of glass angled at 45 degrees, which reflects just enough light from the LCD monitor below it so that Chad can read the text scrolling up the screen.

While it may seem like a fun diversion on a Friday afternoon, having a hard deadline (the news must go on at 4pm) is very stressful, and sometimes leads to angry shouting matches, just like in a real TV studio! We have learned a lot from this experiment over the past few weeks, and hopefully we will continue to find and fix bugs in our software before our customers experience them.

Technical details: This image was taken with my Rebel XT + EF-S 10-22 lens at 10mm, ISO 1600, f/8 for 1/25th of a second.

Comments

Awesome!  Looks like a lot of fun.

Do you guys broadcast just on the intranet or do you feed it out as well?

We just broadcast on the Waterloo intranet.  I do record and archive each
broadcast though for future analysis.

It's the Ghettoprompter!  :)