*Deputy Director of Provincial Radio and Television Station NGUYEN ANH TUAN
(Quang Ngai Newspaper) - Digital transformation (DX) is an inevitable trend in all sectors and areas of social life. Therefore, the press must simultaneously fulfill both of its missions: to go ahead and accompany to communicate the national DX and to implement DX for itself.
Currently, not to mention the news reflecting the direction and management of provincial leaders in digital transformation, on average each month, Quang Ngai Provincial Radio and Television Station (PTQ) has 16 reports and interviews on digital transformation. Compared to stations in the Central Highlands region, PTQ has communicated digital transformation very strongly. As for digital transformation for itself, what has PTQ prepared?
Building a digital transformation strategy
If digital transformation in journalism is a road, there is no common means for all press agencies to move on that road. Depending on the physical and human conditions, each press agency determines and chooses its own means to move. Choosing the wrong means may sometimes make it slower, but if you are afraid of choosing the wrong one and waiting for others to do it first, it will be difficult to keep up.
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| PTQ's HD mobile TV vehicle with 5 cameras. Photo: Ngoc Diep |
On April 6, 2023, the Prime Minister issued a Decision approving the Press Digital Transformation Strategy to 2025, with a vision to 2030. The Ministry of Information and Communications has issued an Action Plan to implement the Press Digital Transformation Strategy and a set of criteria for assessing and measuring the maturity level of Press Digital Transformation. In Quang Ngai, in June 2023, the Department of Information and Communications also completed the Action Plan to implement the Press Digital Transformation Strategy in Quang Ngai province to 2025, with a vision to 2030, to submit to the Provincial People's Committee for promulgation. This is a legal basis and a support tool for press agencies to determine where they are in the digital transformation roadmap, thereby clearly defining tasks, completion time, and implementation responsibilities at each specific stage.
By June 2023, PTQ, like most other local radio and television stations, had begun to develop a digital transformation strategy and a risk management plan for the strategy. The provincial Radio and Television Station focused on developing a specific strategy and plan to submit to competent authorities to receive funding for investment in technology infrastructure to serve digital transformation.
Developing digital infrastructure and digital platforms
Regarding digital infrastructure, PTQ has a 200Mbps fiber optic Internet connection for production operations, internal storage at the Station and two 300Mbps packages for transmitting live TV and live radio signals. In the near future, to meet the needs of digital transformation, PTQ must invest in a broadband Internet connection using fiber optic cables up to Gbps. The shared data storage is also gradually upgraded to increase the speed of information exploitation, editing, news and article production and help reporters and editors easily work remotely, simultaneously producing multimedia journalism.
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| PTQ reporters and technicians prepare for the live broadcast of the art program "Ly Son - Wonder of the sea and islands" in Ly Son district on April 29, 2023. Photo: Ngoc Diep |
Currently, PTQ has shifted its content towards digitalization, bringing the station's programs to a wider audience. Up to this point, PTQ is one of the local stations that has strongly developed content distribution via the web and social networking sites.
The station has built and operated a website at quangngaitv.vn to broadcast and re-upload radio and television programs. In 2024, PTQ will upgrade its website with a friendly interface, optimized technology for both web and mobile, and add some important features such as synchronizing video broadcast schedules, performance times and online communication features, search features, statistics, and data backup.
Investing in OTT services, a form of electronic newspaper dedicated to video, is also a consideration in the future. However, OTT applications are the game of large stations with strong brands and financial and human resources. Most local stations will hardly succeed if they want to invest and operate their own app on Android and iOS. The issue at present is whether to distribute programs thanks to some developing domestic OTT applications. PTQ TV channel is currently available on FPT Play app of FPT, TV360 of Viettel Telecom, Mytv of VNPT. In the near future, PTQ will negotiate to be available on VTV Go app.
One of the next tasks to comprehensively innovate the content production and distribution system according to the digital journalism trend is to build a CMS content management system. The CMS system is an urgent requirement to support the converged newsroom, the digital newsroom. It is expected that in 2024, PTQ will receive medium-term capital investment to implement the CMS system. The requirement is to choose modern, open software to update advanced features according to development requirements at each stage. When put into use, this system will help PTQ synchronize the stages from reporter production (writing, editing images, sound) to editing, posting, archiving, managing, evaluating quality, and calculating royalties.
Quang Ngai Television Fanpage currently has 522 thousand followers, ranking first in the Central Highlands region. Quang Ngai Television Youtube page achieved Silver button in April 2023 and currently has 115 thousand subscribers. The number of people reaching, viewing and interacting with audiences and listeners on PTQ's social networking sites is very large. In particular, Quang Ngai Television Fanpage has an average of 18 million views per month. |
Upgrading administrative and professional management systems
In internal management, in recent years, PTQ has shared the document management system and operated the province's ioffice. However, this system is more focused on administrative management, so it does not provide much support for a press agency. Daily work still generates a lot of paper documents, or requires the use of other utilities such as Zalo and Gmail to meet the work requirements. In the near future, when the CMS system is put into use, it will further support digital transformation in management tasks such as archiving, device management, account management, authorization and timekeeping machine integration.
Regarding human resources for digital transformation, PTQ is orienting the training program for human resources for digital transformation and professional training will also be carried out in parallel to meet the requirements for content production in line with the development roadmap of multimedia journalism, mobile journalism, social journalism and data journalism.
Currently, the Government, the Ministry of Information and Communications and Quang Ngai province are promoting and supporting press agencies to accelerate the digital transformation roadmap. However, there is also a challenge that the source of investment funding for digital transformation, especially investment in technology infrastructure, is very expensive. On the one hand, it must implement the roadmap for autonomy (85% autonomy by 2023), on the other hand, it must face a sharp decline in advertising revenue. In such a context, while implementing digital transformation, PTQ must also complete the Project on technical and economic norms and unit prices of public services using the state budget. This project, when approved by competent authorities, will help PTQ confidently enter the group of public service units with 100% autonomy in regular expenditures. Along with that, the financial resources for investment in digital transformation depend on the state budget. PTQ as well as the press agencies realize that the story of digital transformation cannot be achieved by investing in technology alone, but also clearly identifies that the collective leadership, officials, and employees of the entire unit must change their mindset, be dedicated, and have the same direction to succeed in digital transformation./.
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