Metadata Collection

Kevin's been taking a good look our metadata and reported back to us some generalizations. Some of the information we have been looking at can be seen at denveropenmedia.org/stats. Listening to Kevin and reviewing the data, our team came to one conclusion. Producer don't provide accurate metadata and have no incentive to do so.

There are some other repercussions of bad and incomplete metadata:

• Shows with bad or incomplete metadata will be meaningless to other stations once we start sharing content.
• Shows with no timeslot theme can't be scheduled using a rules based programming schedule (auto-scheduling).
• Shows with bad metadata or timeslot themes may be scheduled incorrectly.

After talking things through a little bit, we thought that creating an incentive for them to provide accurate and complete metadata would solve the problem. In Denver, we will allow users to choose the first airing of their program as part of the video submission process. That means we will soon be modifying the video submission form to include this scheduling function. So our hypothesis is...

If producers want function of self-schedule and we need accurate and complete metadata, then let's burry the self-scheduling function in the metadata process.

We propose a theme recommendation engine that is essentially the metadata collection process ending at a self-scheduling of the first airing. Stations would create timeslot events, which are tied to timeslot theme (a programmed events on the playback server), and select the metadata and other rules that are tied to the timeslot events. As producer go through the meta data collection process the theme recommendation will try to figure out the best theme for programming. A producer will select the appropriate theme and then be moved to the selef scheduling function.

I've attached a wireframe of the the proposed recommendation engine and included our station's manager thoughts on metadata to be collected through the process. We are not married to what is listed and would like any feedback you may have.