Faxes, Emails, Pagers, and the Macarena – Adios to Relics of the '90s

You may laugh, but the first two items in this paper's title are still in daily use as data exchange methods in today's media organizations. How can that be? The '90s were 20 years ago. Yet, the fact remains that standard exchange of traffic instructions between ad agencies and media outlets, telling broadcasters when, where and how to air commercial advertising, remains fax and email. SMPTE's Broadcast eXchange Format (BXF) Working Group set out to change this. Automating the flow of traffic instructions from ad agencies to broadcast media is perhaps the most anticipated BXF 3.0 enhancement. Key industry players put in countless hours to create an XML schema for the exchange of this data that can be used in modern service-oriented architectures. We'll explore what has been completed, and look at the potential impact on media organizations over the coming years. We're hoping this also means we'll never hear “The Macarena” again.

Published

2013-10

Content type

Original Research

Keywords

Commercial Scheduling, Workflow, BXF, Advertising, Agencies, SOA, Traffic Instructions, Content

DOI

10.5594/M001514

ISBN

978-1-61482-953-9