The Digital Structure of a Media Company

The media and TV world faces new challenges such as the introduction of digital and interactive TV. In order to cope with the complexity of these new services, a well-structured back office is of prime importance. Today, efficient management of content is hampered by the proprietary formats used in the different software applications that have been developed by various vendors. Moreover, the lack of consequent metadata definition and usage worsens these problems. The Vlaamse Radio en Televisie (VRT the Flemish public radio and television station), the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and IMEC joined forces and started up the eVRT project. This project aims at digitizing and homogenizing the VRT back office. A standard format is being defined along with the relevant metadata. The Java Messenger Server is used to provide communication between the different software applications. This paper focuses on the design issues of this process.