Report finds technical busywork is slowing North American newsrooms

North American broadcast journalists and production staff spent up to 75% of their time on technical workflows rather than reporting and content creation, according to new research from Caretta Research.

The report, “The Broadcaster Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” was produced with support from Quickplay.

It examined how fragmented content systems and workflows affected broadcasters’ ability to distribute programming across linear, streaming, social media and third-party video platforms.

Broadcasters often stored historical and local footage across multiple media asset management systems and file formats, the report found. Newsroom employees sometimes had to rely on experienced colleagues’ knowledge to locate material because they lacked a complete view of available assets.

The report said workflows built primarily for linear television also made it difficult to produce the volume of platform-specific content required for digital distribution. Broadcasters increasingly needed to create vertical video and other formats without first producing a conventional television version.

“When local broadcast journalists lose 75% of their days to technical workflows, they’re not just facing a productivity problem, they’re staring at an existential one,” Paul Pastor, Quickplay co-founder and chief business officer, said.

“Gone are the days where broadcast is always the first format and then recut for other platforms. Our digital-first world demands the flexibility to start with vertical before broadcast when appropriate,” Pastor said. “An orchestrated, content-to-value platform then turns one story into formats built for each of these platforms simultaneously, so broadcasters can compete at the same velocity and reach as anyone else without giving up their real superpower: local relevance.”

Caretta Research said broadcasters were adopting software orchestration layers that provided a unified view of content, production and distribution workflows. The approach could allow organizations to retain existing systems while giving journalists and editors a common interface for finding, clipping, packaging and distributing material.

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“Our research confirms a critical bottleneck in North American broadcasting: production teams and journalists spend up to 75% of their time on technical busywork that could be automated, accelerated and improved,” Ed Barton, research director at Caretta Research, said.

“The shift to unified, software-orchestrated operations is no longer optional, it is the urgent step required to empower and accelerate key staff, enabling broadcasters to compete more effectively in the streaming age.”