equipment guide | editing & graphics/media asset management
Florical’s Asset Management, Ingest Builds Reliability at Hearst Television Jim Lange Content Distribution Center Manager Hearst Television
ORLANDO, Fla.—I started my first TV job in 1985 in the Orlando market at WESH-TV, loading 2-inch carts into an ACR25 for commercial playout and news playback on ¾-inch tape. At the same time, Florical Systems released its first prod uct, TimeShifter. Since then, I moved on to Betacart, live shot acquisition and master control while Florical stepped up the technology with ShowTimer and AirBoss. Forty years later, we’re both still here—my employer, Hearst Television, which acquired WESH in 1998, operates 35 stations na tionwide. Every day, we manage the flow of syndicated shows, network feeds, commercials and promos that need to reach the air without fail. My current role is to make sure that content is prepared, validat ed and delivered to our stations in a way that is both reliable and efficient. Ingest and media asset management sit at the center of this process, and over the past two years, we’ve transformed how we handle them with Florical.
group-wide consistency in how files are received, cataloged and validated. Earlier this year, we completed the next phase of that transi tion, moving our stations onto Florical’s AirBoss automation for playout. Having the ingest and asset-management tools already in place made that transition much smoother, because the content feeding automation was already standardized and pre dictable. Stephanie Sobiech, our con tent coordinator, is on the front line every day, handling program and promo distribution and working directly with incoming feeds from Pathfire, PitchBlue, Extreme Reach, OTSM and our networks. With Florical, she no longer has to manually track whether a file is complete or in the right format; the system validates incoming content auto matically and flags any problems before they reach the air chain. That has freed her to focus on
THE DEPLOYMENT We began rolling out Florical’s ingest and asset management module in 2024 with the goal of creating a stronger foundation for how content enters our eco system—whether that content is coming in from distributors, agencies or internal production teams. By putting ingest and asset management in place first, we were able to establish
higher-level coordination in stead of chasing technical errors. Commercials and syndicated programming represent another critical part of our workflow, and Florical has helped us bring real efficiency to that process. At Hearst, we operate on a “touchonce, distribute-to-many” model. A single program or commer cial may need to be delivered to 25 stations, and Florical’s workflows allow us to handle that with economies of scale. The content is ingested and val idated once, then mapped and distributed to all the stations that need it. Our dedicated com mercial preparation and approv al team depends on these work flows every day to ensure spots and shows are delivered consis tently group-wide. Instead of re peating the same steps, they can focus on confirming the content is correct and ready, knowing the distribution piece is handled efficiently. The benefits extend to house
keeping, as well. Because the system manages distribution centrally, we can avoid dupli cation and unnecessary storage at the station level. At the same time, archived content remains accessible through AWS, so if a station needs to pull material back, it can be retrieved quickly without adding complexity to the local workflow.
ERROR REDUCTION Since completing the rollout, the biggest change I’ve seen is consistency across the group. Whether it’s Stephanie manag ing syndicated feeds, the com mercial team approving spots or operators checking final play lists, everyone is working under the same ingest and distribution standards. We’ve reduced manual errors, shortened turnaround times and freed people to spend more energy on coordination and quality control rather than on chasing missing files. Looking forward, the meta data foundation we’ve built with Florical puts us in a strong position for the next phase of automation. AI-assisted work flows that can reconcile traffic logs, detect anomalies, and even self-correct ingest issues will depend on having robust and consistent metadata. For us, that future starts with the reliability we’ve already gained from Florical’s ingest and assetmanagement tools. ● Jim Lange is content distribution center manager for Hearst Television, overseeing daily programming delivery, distribution and asset management workflows. He can be reached at JLange@ Hearst.com.
Jim Lange
More information is available at www.florical.com. @tvtech.bsky.social | www.tvtech.com | December 2025
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Credit: Hearst Television
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