Inside the Hometown Media Awards Live Stream Workflow and Audience Insights

Mission accomplished! When the Cablecast Team decided to become the title sponsor of the Alliance for Community Media Foundation’s 2023 Hometown Media Awards this year, we knew it wasn’t enough to just support the event. We wanted to use our tools to share the event with a nationwide audience. 

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That’s why we were so excited when the organizers of ACM’s national conference, including their host site, BRIC Media Arts, supported our idea to live stream the awards program and build an app and internet channels to promote the winners. Here’s how we did it. 

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Live streaming an event for an association made up of TV stations is a unique endeavor, to say the least. Not only are you delivering the stream directly to viewers, but you also need to provide a way for member stations to syndicate the live stream on their channels, too. 

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As part of the ACM’s national conference, we shared live coverage of the Hometown Media Awards on Hometown TV, available through the Cablecast Streaming App and as an Internet Channel. 

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IP Network Stream Workflow

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The annual awards program, which celebrates local programming, took place on June 28 in Brooklyn, N.Y. We were able to streamline the national syndication process for ACM using an IP video transport workflow. We started by sending a video feed via SRT network stream from Brooklyn directly to a Cablecast VIO Stream server located in Portland, Maine that played out the stream source natively. That same Cablecast video server also generated an HLS stream that ACM member PEG stations across the country could take.  

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Consolidated Viewer Insights From All Streaming Platforms

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Our Audience Measurement Dashboard (introduced in Cablecast 7.6) used data directly from the Cablecast REFLECT+ content delivery service to collect viewer metrics for the event. We learned that about 43% of live viewers watched the coverage on mobile devices. Geographic data showed that while most viewers were in the New York area, the livestream attracted audiences from across the United States, including Los Angeles, the Pacific Northwest, several Southern states and the Northeast. 

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Looking at web viewer insights in this unique situation, where the streaming event was promoted primarily to other PEG operations as opposed to individual viewers, we can look at our ‘web’ numbers to get a glimpse of how many cable stations across the country were simulcasting the event.

“The Hometown Media Awards provided an opportunity for us to show off the true potential of our streamlined, IP video streaming workflows, while also helping us broadcast our support for  the Alliance for Community Media and PEG producers nationwide,” said Steve Israelsky, president, Cablecast Community Media. “That’s what we call a win-win-win. We had hundreds of unique viewers from markets across the United States taking advantage of our REFLECT+ CDN for smooth streaming to unlimited viewers as well as our new support for the SRT video transfer protocol.” 

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All 2023 Hometown Media award winners have been invited to add their videos to the new Hometown TV channel. Download the free Cablecast Streaming App today to watch winning videos and the 2023 Hometown Media Awards ceremony, now available on demand.