by Uwe Felderhoff and Aylin Vogl
In the night of 01.12.2020, under the direction of IRT, the ARD radio contribution
exchange was switched to weConnect. This was followed on December 9, under the
direction of ARD Sternpunkt, by the shutdown of the previous, centralized line
dispatching and thus the introduction of the decentralized weConnect line
dispatching.
Subsequently, all production and line dispatching systems
in ARD radio were converted to story processing and connected to ARD’s
weConnect gateway network. This was preceded by four years of specification,
development and
testing, during which the audio-only file transfer was
converted to a service- and media-independent process.
With weConnect, broadcasters are now able to deliver context as well as audio files. This means that audio files or live broadcasts, scripts, images and any documents can be packaged into a story, exchanged between broadcasters and located within the broadcast event.
Triggered by the necessary modernization of the audio replication process and the required renewal of the central line planning at ARD-Sternpunkt, weConnect enables the planning of complete stories from the editorial offices and the exchange with other broadcasting stations. With the conversion to weConnect, story-based exchange was introduced in ARD, thus creating the basis for modern, editorially oriented work.
For further information, please have a look at weConnect – Metadata within ARD radio broadcasting or https://weconnect.irt.de/