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| Jamestown: Small market focus on local news, sports and current affairs |
WJTN NewsTalk 1240, covers Jamestown and Chautauqua county in upstate New York with a small news team and modest budgets. They do it with Burli.
Jamestown is one of those leafy, lake-side American towns tourist bureaus love to print photos of. But it's not a huge market in the broadcasting world.
WJTN’s needs from a newsroom system are pretty straightforward: a small news team has to pull together news from around the county and around the world simply, reliably and on a tight budget. After several years with Burli, WJTN’s news Director, Terry Frank, says they quite simply could not do what they do without it.
More with Less
The station’s News/Talk format requires its news team of just two full-time and two part-time reporters to generate up to 20 original stories a day. Burli is key to them pulling that trick off day after day.
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| Terry Frank: "We could not do what we do without Burli." |
With Burli, WJTN reporters spend less time on the routine tasks of news production and more time out gathering news and talking to folks in the community. Back in the office, turning raw tape and scribbled notes into stories on air is fast and efficient. Burli includes both single and multi-track audio editors designed for radio reporters. And thanks to Burli’s networking, stories can be used in-studio the instant they’re completed in the newsroom. “Burli has saved us a lot of time by allowing us to find audio quickly and simply,” Frank says. “In fact, that is the greatest part of Burli -- its simplicity.”
Cost Savings
That simplicity can also mean a lot for a tight bottom line. WJTN’s news team shrank recently, but according to Frank, “Burli’s user-friendly system allowed us to carry on a fairly significant operation without having to cut a lot of what we do -- keeping our news operation viable.”
And in a small station like WJTN, where the turn-over can be high, training costs can be a major concern. Not with Burli. Frank says one of Burli’s strengths “is that it’s relatively easy to teach. In a small market, that’s a key.”
No servers, few computers
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| No servers required: simple peer-to-peer LAN saves thousands on IT costs. |
Unlike many news systems, Burli doesn't demand dedicated servers and ingest computers for small operations. All those duties are handled in the background by journalist workstations - and those workstations can be pretty modest computers. In small operations that can mean thousands of dollars in IT savings. At WJTN there are just 5 computers running Burli. One in studio and 4 reporter workstations. All data capture happens invisibly on those 4 reporter computers. So does all data mangement, archiving and media storage.
Paperless Newsroom
Because news production with Burli is all digital, the news operation is largely paperless, saving both money and trees. Newscasts are read in-studio right from the screen and Burli’s sophisticated scripts system and dedicated archive feature make cataloguing the news easy. Gone are the mountains of old newscasts on yellowing paper in the corner.
Burli can also replace the newsroom fax machine, collecting faxes digitally that all reporters can see on the screen. That alone can save thousands of dollars in paper costs.
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| WJTN Sports: Burli simplifies sports coverage and remote filing. |
Beyond News
At WJTN Burli is also key to the station’s sports department, who use it to produce coverage of local teams and national sports news. WJTN’s morning man, Dennis Webster also uses Burli for producing features. The multi-track audio editor allows Webster to create sophisticated pieces, full of music, location sound and voices.
Solid Support
Burli is renowned for its stability and reliability -- important factors when you don’t have a dedicated IT staff of dozens. Frank says the newsroom rarely has issues with the system. And when there are issues, Burli’s friendly 24/7 support is available to all customers, regardless of market size.
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