Role

Web Producer for Prime

• Take all the content in the digital realm and add it to the appropriate websites
• Sometimes requires back-end coding, sometimes it just requires structuring
• Uploading layouts and then putting them in their proper place

Experience

5 months with CNBC

Day-to-Day Work

• Check emails from the production
  • See what can be put into Toolbelt and on the website
  • Making sure that the copy is correct, no grammatical errors
• Check things from the night before in Toolbelt, make sure all the scheduled contents got up
• Schedules header carousels
  • Promote new shows
  • Promote content for the day
  • Makes sure immediate exclusives get pushed
  • Takes down old promotions and info
• During downtime, go back to old WordPress site and migrates over old content
• Goes back and update incorrect or irrelevant information
  • Tags
  • Keywords
• Create Videos for Prime
  • Gets information from Production team
• Usually works for American Greed on Fridays and Mondays

Communication

• Sometimes meet in person, but mostly over email and phone. Slack is new, so sometimes people don’t have it on
• Public Relations team
• Production team
  • Gets full episodes from them via email/Avid
• Creative department
• Sometimes with .com team, depending on the show
  • .com Video team: always had interaction, since they are the only ones who can put videos in
  • .com Editors to review the article pieces about a show: recently more and more
• Programmer-producer in the Prime team
  • Gets help with the workarounds for interactive experience
  • Helps her to create custom shelves in the show pages
• Works with her boss to troubleshoot

Prioritization

• By due date
  • Premiers & deadlines so that the audience would get enough information to want to watch the shows
• Asks her manager if unsure
  • e.g. two things premiering on the same day or week
  • He finds out the objective and priority
• Sometimes there’s immediate come down from PR
  • e.g. They are urging production to write about the show to get more buzz, and comes to Prime team to give directions which clips to use and not to use (to be exclusive content)
  • Be ready to pull the content and make sure they don’t go out without approval

Often-used Content Type and Features in Toolbelt

Content Type

• Video
  • Promo, sneak peek, highlights, etc.
• News Story
  • e.g. Scott Cohen’s American Greed article every Thursday
• Wild Card
  • Interactive map, one-off pages
• Slideshow
  • Of the videos, so that the readers would match part of the story with the video in order
• WebResource
  • As a single item in the carousel
• Editorial File
  • For documents

Features

• Favorites
• History
  • To get the assets that she uploaded

Pain Points

• Sometimes the scheduled content doesn’t go up live
  • Makes sure that the scheduled content went up every morning
• Sometimes the auto-syndicated information from Toolbelt to YouTube doesn’t carry over correctly
  • Have to manually check the YouTube information and edit from YouTube
  • First goes into Toolbelt and makes sure that Toolbelt has the correct information. If so, goes into YouTube and correct it
• Takes long and multiple steps to do simple things
  • Compared to other CMSs, e.g. SDL Tree and Adobe CQ5, WordPress, Blogger
  • e.g building a slideshow for Episodic Gallery
    • Used to take about 5 minutes in WordPress. Could create and schedule ahead as well
    • Now you have to upload the photos one by one, caption each, and add them to the slide one by one – from 10 to 30~50 images
  • Feels like a Russian Doll – you just keep opening it and there are pieces in it. You forget which layer you are in
• The structure of the parents are confusing
  • You don’t know where you are anymore
  • Doesn’t know where to go to change specific things
    • e.g. Changing the tune-in time
• Don’t have Prime-specific templates
  • They have different needs from the daytime
  • e.g. There is no Recap content type
    • Trying to create a contemplate for the Story
    • Losing tracking and promotion without it
• Can’t insert HTML or CSS code directly into Wild Card
  • Have to upload separate code documents
• Preview is too rigid and limited
• Search is difficult to use
  • The only way to properly search for anything is with ID number because different departments have different naming conventions
  • Have to enter exact name
  • e.g. Newsroom has their own convention, and it’s like a code
  • Because of the long-running shows like American Greed, they often have to dig in the archives, and people who worked on the content is no longer with CNBC
• Have to be careful about image focal point settings
  • Seeing all the crop is cool
  • Need to remember to set the focal point, or else have to dig into the franchise to find the image again
• Can’t find the option to turn off the pre-roll on the videos
  • Was told that it’s there, but can’t find the option
  • Doesn’t make sense on certain videos, e.g. advertisement on advertisement
• Can’t mix images and videos in a Slideshow
• Copy and pasting from other sources don’t work well
  • Doesn’t always honor the formatting from other sources, e.g. MS Word
  • The word gets jumbled, so need to proofread after pasting the content in
  • Workaround: copy and paste in rich text editor, which preserves the hyperlinks
• Doesn’t understand what all the options mean under Configuration tab
• Scheduling the hero carousel works only half of the time – single item doesn’t receive more than 2 scheduling actions at the same time
  • Had to come in on a weekend to sort the hero
• Confusing as there are multiple ways to schedule items
  • Schedule it in the Output List of the Carousel Franchise
  • Schedule the WebResource
• Unscheduled item still shows up in the carousel if it is still bullhorned in the Collection Franchise
• Still figuring out how to upload PDF documents
  • Can’t embed PDF viewer
  • Workaround: image hyperlinks to download the document

Wants

• Message functionality in Toolbelt
  • Everyone is already on Toolbelt except for those who don’t need to be on there for their job
  • Having to check many emails during working on Toolbelt is distracting
  • If someone from .com needs to get in touch with her about a story that she’s working on, that person could just pop up in her window and ask the question
• Free-form style Wild Card
  • Ability to directly edit the code
• Fake staging environment to preview things
• Ability to mix and add both image and video
• Ability to embed the PDF document

Tools & Software

• WordPress for the old content
• Basecamp
  • Organize with checklists

Communication

• Slack
• Email

Media

• Photoshop
• Illustrator
  • Makes small tweaks to key art, color or profile change
  • Small tweaks that doesn’t have to go through creative team

Video

•  VLC
  • To view videos that QuickTime Player wouldn’t play
• Stratus
  • Uses another producer’s credentials
• YouTube
  • Verify all the auto-syndicated information
  • e.g. Chopped up the description that was entered in Toolbelt, so went into YouTube and manually entered it
• Avid
  • Get production videos

Work Behaviors & Rules

• Weekly updates on shows
• Check on Prime Only under Configuration tab to not syndicate to other affiliates
• Doesn’t upload or change the thumbnail of the Video asset, as she was told that it should be strictly done by .com Video team
• Unbullhorn the carousel item that are unpublished/to not show
• Featured item in the Collection’s Output List goes to the top, whereas the Secondary goes right below the hero
• Use two tabs to quickly get to the content that she just created via History tab
• Try to leave image asset as bare as possible, so that other people can use it in their story and slideshows
• Often times, use screenshots from the shows on headers – specific to the episode and the show

Miscellaneous

• The migration from WordPress to Toolbelt started in May, launched August 1st
  • The old content is being migrated manually bit by bit
  • e.g. American Greed is in their 10th season, only brought in the 10th season upon migration, like show pages, galleries, evidence lockers, etc.
  • Will keep doing the manual migration until they’re complete
• Nice to have the ability to insert quotes and don’t need to format it as in WordPress
• Secondary trays on the show pages are dynamic, but there can be 2 items promoted below the hero
• The ‘default’ assets in the Output List in the Collection Franchise used to populate the Latest tray, but the new design hid the tray with the “Hide Latest Tray Skin”
• Likes Favorites feature