Quincy Newspapers Inc. Standardizes on Volicon Observer® for Entire Station Group
BURLINGTON, Mass. — July 29, 2008 — Quincy Newspapers Inc. (QNI), a Quincy, Ill.-based media company that owns and operates 13 television stations throughout the Midwest, has standardized on the Volicon Observer® media logging and monitoring solution for its entire station group. By providing around-the-clock recording and monitoring of all off-air content, the Observer is instrumental in QNI’s efforts to maintain quality of service and compliance across all of its stations.
To date, four-channel Observer systems, each with 13 months of storage have been implemented at eight QNI stations, with the remaining five stations expected to come online at a later date. The Observer systems provide a digital, file-based replacement for the stations’ former VHF tape-based systems, which were inefficient and lacked flexibility. Now station personnel can access the Observer at any time and from any computer in the network via the system’s easy-to-use Web browser interface. With 24-hour video monitoring, engineers are able to locate and troubleshoot transmission errors rapidly. In addition, the archived content provides important validation that the stations are in compliance with FCC regulations such as closed captioning, as well as contracts with performance rights organizations such as BMI and ASCAP.
“I’m a true believer in the Volicon Observer. It has drastically improved our corporate processes for evaluating the quality of our broadcasts and providing compliance reporting, and the stations are completely committed to the system; they’ve been using it effectively from the beginning,” said Brady Dreasler, director of capital, engineering, and facilities at QNI. “Of the products we evaluated, the Observer was head and shoulders above the others for its long-term storage capacity, ability to monitor multiple channels simultaneously and remotely, as well as alarms and notifications for alerting people at any time and anywhere if a problem needs to be corrected.”
At the corporate level, the Observer enables QNI to monitor its stations’ newscasts remotely and compare them, side by side, with those of its competitors. “At any given time, and from any desktop on our network, we can log into one of our stations’ Observer systems to monitor what’s going on in the field,” said Dreasler. “It’s also an important tool for us to provide verification to our advertisers, complete with a clip showing exactly when their spots were aired.”
“QNI is among a growing list of media companies that have recognized the Observer’s value for the monitoring of multiple stations in the group to ensure that consistent business practices are being applied and quality levels are being maintained across the board,” said Julius Perl, vice president of marketing at Volicon. “We’re proud of the Observer’s role in helping QNI run more profitably and efficiently.”
More information about the Observer and other Volicon products is available at http://www.volicon.com.
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About Quincy Newspapers Inc. (QNI)
Founded in 1926 to publish the newly merged Herald-Whig newspaper in Quincy, Ill., Quincy Newspapers Inc. (QNI) has since grown into a multimedia company now employing more than 900 people and serving markets in 14 states. In addition to the Herald-Whig, QNI publishes the New Jersey Herald in Newton, N.J., and operates the following television stations: KTIV, Sioux City, Iowa; KTTC, Rochester, Minn.; KWWL, Waterloo, Iowa; KXLT, Rochester, Minn.; WAOW, Wausau, Wis.; WGEM, Quincy, Ill.; WKOW, Madison, Wis.; WQOW, Eau Claire, Wis.; WREX, Rockford, Ill.; WSJV, South Bend, Ind.; WVVA, Bluefield, W. Va.; WXOW, La Crosse, Wis.; and WYOW, Eagle River, Wis. More information is available at http://www.qni.biz.
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