Singapore’s leading media company, MediaCorp, has selected Octopus7 to be at the heart of its multi-lingual newsrooms.

The new production system went live in February 2015, replacing the previous ENPS system.

MediaCorp operates numerous local, national and regional TV, radio and interactive channels. It therefore needs an efficient, flexible and cost-effective news solution to manage its news production demands. Petr Stokuč, Managing Director of Octopus Newsroom commented:

“This is a major installation as Singapore’s media plays a strategic role throughout the Asia-Pacific. MediaCorp’s news output is of paramount importance to the region so we at Octopus and Benchmark are delighted to have been selected to supply the new newsroom system.”

Octopus was awarded the project after an extended period of testing to assess its core functionality, multi-lingual proficiency. This was particularly important as MediaCorp serves an audience that is exceptionally diverse. Octopus Newsroom has native support for non-Latin scripts, making it ideal for multi-lingual environments. One key stipulation for the MediaCorp installation was support for a software suite that enables its journalists to create, edit, convert and publish Tamil content on Windows and Mac OS X operating environments.

Octopus is now integrated with the broadcaster’s other third party editing software, and MOS-compliant systems, including automation, graphics, subtitling, archive and video servers. Supplied, installed and integrated by Benchmark Broadcast Systems, the new system is now on-air. The Octopus7 system caters to its studio-based news journalists and operators.  Mobile clients are also being supplied to enable remote production, publishing, and rundown access.

“The core newsroom features of Octopus – MOS integration, management reports, story generation and rundown creation – are all class-leading in their own right. However, it’s the support for multiple operating systems, the quality of the desktop, mobile and tablet apps and social media integration that is proving so attractive to clients»  said Ashish Mukherjee, CEO from Benchmark.

As a next-generation solution, Octopus has sophisticated Twitter and YouTube connectivity, analysis and interactivity built-in. This will enable MediaCorp and its journalists to engage with audiences throughout the region both in terms of journalistic research and multi-platform delivery. The Singapore installation was also the first to benefit from Octopus’ enhanced Facebook connectivity which allows journalists to post stories and clips to Facebook pages and to receive status messages and updates from within the newsroom software. This inter-connectivity enables the news team to engage in two way conversations online and to track viewers’ interests and responses more closely than ever.

In another development, Octopus Newsroom now gives MediaCorp users the ability to create a Quick Story to add a news item to an existing rundown. With the rundown open, journalists can drag and drop a Quick Story to the rundown, without having to open, edit and manage the rundown. This way of working is exceptionally slick, giving newsrooms the ultimate flexibility in fast-moving stories.

This speed of working goes hand-in-hand with far more effective communication between Octopus users. While the newsroom solution has always excelled at maintaining fluid and effective communication between online journalists, the system also enables users to send assignments, notifications, messages and story updates to offline users. Using email and/or SMS, journalists can use Octopus to select what information to send to each user, depending on their particular role within each project. This selective approach to communication avoids ‘spamming’ fellow journalists and makes each email or text message targeted, timely and relevant.