COSMOTE TV, PROVYS TV Office, Greece

Who is COSMOTE

COSMOTE is the unified commercial brand for all OTE Group fixed, mobile, Internet & pay TV products and services.

OTE Group is the leading telecommunications provider in Greece and along with its subsidiaries constitutes one of the top telecom Groups in Southeast Europe. Since July 2009 Deutsche Telekom is the largest shareholder of the company.

The Group is also the largest investor in Greece in new technologies and infrastructure, with investments exceeding €2 bn. over the past six years and €1.5 bn. in the current four-year period. OTE Group’s size, expertise and experience guarantee the quality of services offered under the unified COSMOTE commercial brand.

Project Description 2013-2018

The Project was completed in 3 phases. The first one started in 2013, when OTE launched an international tender for the purchase of an Advertising Sales CRM system for their COSMOTE TV Pay TV platform and the PROVYS Ad Sales solution was selected.

In 2015, OTE launched a tender for a Scheduling and Rights Management system for Linear and VoD operation for the Movies and Documentaries TV Channels of their Pay TV Platform and the PROVYS TV Office was selected.

In 2017, OTE decided to further expand the system to add the Sports Channels of their Pay TV Platform.

PROVYS at COSMOTE TV

Cosmote’s Provys Installation is the biggest installation in Greece and it covers a wide range of activities and processes. Cosmote runs nine Sports Channels (mainly consisting of live events), four Cinema Channels, one History Channel and several Pop-Up Channels (short term thematic channels e.g. Christmas Channel) that vary in time.

With its Huawai platform, it also provides Video On Demand (VOD) either free (as a catchup), or paid service. They also provide an OTT (watch on mobile phone, tablet or laptop) service. The channels are organized hierarchically. The operations involved make Cosmote’s installation a complex and demanding one. Without Provys’ multichannel capabilities and heavy usage of templates in order to speed up manual tasks, it would be difficult to manage.

Rights Management

Before every program is scheduled, its rights must be purchased. Provys has a strong hierarchical Contract management system. Contracts are organized into groups and complex purchase scenarios can be described for a Channel or groups of channels. Similarly, a contract can contain groups of licences with right rules that are inherited to licences. Provys checks for valid licences everytime a program is scheduled or changed and warns the user if no rights are found. All aspects of transmition are supported and can be described in Contracts, including free reruns after a short period of time, number of runs, depreciation models etc.

Macro Scheduling

Various departments of Cosmote are involved in the life-cycle of a transmission. First there are the Macro planners (or Macros). Macros do the high level of planning and they plan many days (even months) ahead. Macros are divided into Sports Macros and Cinema Macros. First, they define the Schema Weeks where each transmitted program will be scheduled. Then they fill in the transmission slots with the main programs (movies, episodes or live events). These are the main events that will be the core of the daily schedule. Using Chain Scheduling operation, especially for series, users can schedule many programs (episodes), their quick runs and repetitions, avoiding manual data-entries. Provys checks available contracts in every change.

EPG

Macros create the program for each day and give it the status “New”. As soon as they finish with each day, they change the day status to “EPG”. This triggers some new actions done by specific EPG users. At this phase users put many metadata to Provys. Synopsis, Actors, directors and all participants are entered for each title. Provys’ hierarchical organization of channels helps to enter precise information for each version of a program. Since there are many versions, with subtitles (subbed) or with foreign or Greek language (dubbed) and maybe different participants for each version, Provys handles all combinations to deliver proper reports and export EPG metadata. Especially for VOD, Provys exports many metadata that are used by the Huawei platform that handles all the VOD operations. There are all kinds of metadata including photos (the “Poster” image for VOD), subtitles, texts, etc.

Ingest Scheduling

Regarding live events (mainly sports), there is a special Department in Cosmote, that uses Provys to plan the recording (capturing) of the event. This is the Traffic Department. OTE has six capturing/recording devices (Glookast), each of which can record up to 4 HD channels simultaneously. This makes a total of 24 channels. All bookings are organized in Provys that warns the user if there is a conflict of resources.

As soon as the daily schedule has entered the EPG status, traffic users schedule their live acquisition of the events using Provys’ Ingest list which is customized for Cosmote. Most of the events are captured and many are dubbed in booth rooms.

A daily schedule doesn’t consist only of main programs. In every transmission slot there are also Promos, Fillers, Stings, Commercial breaks before, in between or after the main program. In Provys language these are called interstitials. The first step to create interstitials, is to apply a Break Pattern to each slot. This is done by the Macros and it practically creates the workplace for the Promo, Sales and Micro departments to work with.

Promos

Promos (or trailers) are the way for a channel to promote and advertise itself. Cosmote produces a large number of promos since they have a large number of channels and varying content (sports, movies, documentaries etc).

Each promo has various versions e.g. Next week, Tomorrow, Today version. This large number of promos is created in Provys using Promo Templates which greatly speeds up promo creation and reduces manual work. Provys has an extensive set of tools to handle promos and monitor their lifecycle. Promos are created, scheduled and expired using validity periods and detailed information. Cosmote uses a custom-made screen in Provys to assign minimum number of runs of a promo for each channel so it can fulfill its promo campaigns.

Sales

Cosmote also uses the Sales Module of Provys. As soon as Macros have finished working on a specific date, the Sales users start to Perform the following operations:

• Sales import programs with break patterns form scheduling phase.

• They apply Break Templates with prices for each break.

• Using a special Provys report/export they create a file with a specific format, that is sent to advertising agencies. This file contains all the information needed (shows/prices) to book advertising messages.

• In response, agencies place their orders which contain transmissions for specific products, channels and programs (shows). Provys checks for law restrictions (e.g max allowed advertisement per hour) and warns the user accordingly.

• The Sales Department uses Provys to keep track of all Clients, Agencies and Products.

Micro Scheduling

After completing advertisement message booking and promo creation, the next stage is implemented in Provys. This is the job of Micro scheduling users (aka Micros). Micros put everything in place so that it will be ready to be sent to the Playout Automation system, which for Cosmote is the Marina from Pebble Beach, that controls the video playout servers. In Micro scheduling all modules of Provys are combined. Interstitials are filled with the appropriate info. Advertisement is imported from the Sales Module, material information is used from Marina Content Import to calculate the exact duration, Promos are placed accordingly, Fillers, Stings and every program item is inserted into the detailed daily schedule. Also, Provys generates the proper Secondary Events based on rules (e.g. for Parental Guide – PG). All this information is exported as a specific Playlist XML file that in turn is imported to Marina. At this stage daily program status is switched to Final. Any last-minute change in the final stage should be made in Marina.

When a program is transmitted, Marina logs it in a special file (one for each channel), the ASRun file. Provys imports ASRun to compare it with what was scheduled so that users can verify the transmission of every item (main programs, commercials etc).

Invoicing

After confirming the transmission, commercial messages are invoiced from within Provys that also handles all taxes, discounts and special pricing. Invoices are then exported to Cosmote’s ERP – SAP.

Device Integration / APIs / XML Files

During all stages, Provys uses XML files and/or API interfaces to communicate with other systems. As mentioned earlier Provys exchanges info with Marina Playout system. It exports Playlist and imports ASRun. Regarding the commercial module, it exports the programs with break prices and imports the orders with their messages. VOD metadata is passed to the Huawei platform. Detailed material information (duration, segmentation) is imported using content import. Modules communicate internally with import/export (Macro - Sales - Micro). In general, Provys is a system that is integrated with Cosmote’s environment and supports all phases of their operation.

Provys is designed to be customized to cover client’s needs and it has been highly customized to Cosmote’s environment. With Provys, many departments that were acting independently are now streamlined to work together. Also, excel files and user data are greatly reduced and information is kept centrally on a database.