Sunday, May 28, 2023

Franklin TV: Good v Bad Days … and we hate it when that happens

by Pete Fasciano, Executive Director 05/28/2023

We strive. Good days are when it all works – perfectly – just like in the brochure. Bad days? When it doesn’t. We strive to make the bad days a rare occurrence.
These days (good or bad) there is much digital complexity in what we do. So, we maintain backup systems wherever we can.

Video recordings of government meetings are part of the public record. 

Fortunately, we have backup recordings, and backups of the backups.
Our main recorders are good for 8 hours. (Expanding to 20 hours this Summer.)
YouTube is one backup. Our 2 DVD recorders (4 hours) are another.
Our backup system records all cameras and Zoom separately - 30 days.

We also distribute our meetings through backups. Our YouTube and Zoom connections travel through different internet access points. Our connection between Town Chambers and our main studio is another. The digital systems design concept is that if something must fail, it won’t fail completely.

In the broadcast world every live event is mission critical. When something goes awry, big or small, everyone sees it as it happens. There’s nowhere to hide.

If something goes wrong the only question is, “How rapidly can we correct?”

All that said, we are always looking for critical single points of failure within our systems, and how we work. Automatic operations can fail. Manual operations can be inconsistent. But when combined, they can become much more reliable.

Although our YouTube and Zoom connections were fine, the start of Wednesday’s Town Council meeting was not seen on our cable channel. Our ‘fix time’ to set things right was 40 minutes. We’re developing plans to reduce that time to not more than one minute.

Although true perfection does not exist in this world, we will continue to strive. Our goal is for every day to be a good day – just like in the brochure.

Thanks for listening to 102.9 wfpr●fm. 
And – as always – thanks for watching.

Get this week's program guide for Franklin.TV and Franklin Public Radio (wfpr.fm) online  http://franklin.tv/programguide.pdf   

Franklin TV: Good v Bad Days
Franklin TV: Good v Bad Days

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