Taegu Broadcasting Corporation (TBC) is a prominent regional television and radio broadcaster in South Korea, affiliated with Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS), the country’s largest private broadcaster. TBC’s big challenge, ahead of the recent general elections in the country, was to create cost-effective and efficient broadcast graphics in time for the 2024 April vote, leading them to explore innovative solutions, including Vizrt’s HTML5 graphics platform, Viz Flowics.
Challenge: Cost-effective graphics production
TBC had been relying over the years on a local graphics agency for all their broadcast graphics templates, which was neither cost-effective nor efficient for this small regional channel. Additionally, their team of designers was not familiar with advanced broadcast graphics creation tools.
As part of their cost-cutting measures, the executives at TBC began looking for a solution that would enable their designers to create broadcast-style graphics in-house without the need for advanced tools or extensive scripting and coding knowledge to connect election data to templates.
Their search led them to Viz Flowics, a code-free and now even design-free with more than 130 graphics packages available for users on the platform.
Viz Flowics as the broadcast graphics solution
The TBC team began with a three-week promotional trial of Viz Flowics ahead of the South Korean general elections. Their objective was to develop a comprehensive package of election graphics within this period. The trial proved immensely successful, and TBC officially adopted Viz Flowics as their newsroom graphics solution on April 1, 2024.
“Elections is a crucial news event for our channel. Voter turnout was high, reflecting strong public interest in the electoral process. Displaying results and information with stunning graphics is essential to helping our viewers understand and digest the issues affecting them and to keep up with the results of the elections as it happened,” said TBC’s Technical Director Hangsuk Kim.
A complete elections graphics package in days
TBC’s team began with a three-week trial period. What was crucial for them was ease of use. The trial proved to both the team and TBC executives that Viz Flowics was the right solution for their needs. They signed up and spent the next 10 days creating an extensive graphics package for the election. This package featured lower thirds, full screen graphics, and data-driven graphics, which were utilized on-air in the lead-up and during the election day coverage.
Data from the elections commission was fed into Google Sheets and synced with relevant fields in the various templates.
The process of switching to in-house graphics production with Viz Flowics was a major cost-savings for Kim, who had championed the adoption of Viz Flowics at TBC.
“Previously, we relied on a graphics company for our election graphics packages. However, with Viz Flowics, our team has full control. We were able to create graphics without any coding or advanced design experience, and everything was done in-house, within our very tight timeframe.”
Future plans
TBC’s successful implementation of Viz Flowics not only streamlined their graphics production process but also resulted in significant cost savings and increased operational efficiency. Furthermore, the channel’s experience and success exemplify how innovative solutions can empower media companies to achieve greater self-sufficiency and agility in their broadcast operations.
The team is now looking to expand their use of Viz Flowics to incorporate second-screen mechanics, such as live polls, into their news and political talk shows to enhance viewer interaction and engagement.
