A COMMON INFORMATION-STRUCTURE FOR BROADCAST APPLICATIONS

This paper-defines an integrated data structure supporting the managem ent of events, material, media, and playback resources. The structure supports any number of levels of abstraction for dealing with the comp lexities of modern broadcast, editing, and newsroom applications. The structure separates the compositional aspects of broadcast operations (the pieces that make up a program or story) from the representational aspects (the material that manifests the specified compositional piec es). As such, it differs significantly from other industry attempts to provide a unified data structure that does not separate the programma tic intent from the actual material that implements that intent. The d ata structure is a simple, two-level information structure where the l evels are similar to each other; creating a recursive structure for op erating within the commonly accepted abstractions of the industry such as rundown, event, story, program, pod, schedule. and channel as well as new abstractions that meet the needs of an increasingly complex in dustry. Sequencing constraints may be applied to elements in a time-in dependent manner. In addition, this two-level recursive structure is i ndependently applied to both the compositional and representational as pects, supporting a rich expressiveness for-planning,operating, and re porting the actions of a complete broadcast operation.