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FOR LOCAL CHANNELS

A local TV channel without the rack. Feed the cable headend and the internet from one schedule.

Community access, a city or county channel, a local cable operator, a campus or hospital network: the channel is scheduled in a browser, a constant-bitrate feed goes to the headend, the same channel streams to the web and casts to TVs, and live meetings and games interrupt the grid on time. Nothing to rack, nobody on the night shift, from $254 per month.

Step by step

How a local channel runs from the cloud

The playout box in the closet did three jobs: ran the schedule, drew the bulletin board, and fed the headend. Each moves to a browser, and the third becomes an SRT stream.

  1. Build the week in a browser

    Council meetings, the school board, local sports, the church service, the bulletin loop overnight. Recurring blocks handle the weekly strips; loops carry the hours nothing is scheduled; auto-fill closes gaps from the library so the channel never goes to black.

  2. Feed the headend

    A constant-bitrate SRT or RIST output from the channel goes to the cable headend or IPTV middleware, on the FAST plan and up. A small decoder at the far end, or the middleware itself, turns it into the channel on the box.

  3. Stream to the town at the same time

    The same channel plays in its own web player, casts to the living-room TV, and publishes a guide viewers can read. Residents who cut the cord, moved away, or watch on a phone get the channel the cable system cannot reach.

  4. Sell the local breaks

    Mark the ad breaks, upload the sponsor spots, set the flight and the daypart, and the report at the end of the month shows the hardware store what ran and when. One sponsor a month covers the channel.

What changes

The parts a local channel actually needs.

A local channel is a council meeting, a bulletin loop, a match on Saturday and a sponsor, run by two people with other jobs. The tooling should assume that.

The headend

One channel, two ways out

CBR SRT or RIST to the cable system, HLS to the internet, from the same schedule and the same graphics. The channel on the box and the channel on the phone are the same channel, at the same second.

The meeting

Live on time, back on time

A scheduled live block switches to the chamber feed when the meeting starts and hands back when it ends, or holds under manual control while the public comment runs long. A dropped feed falls back to the schedule, so the channel is never a blank screen.

The night shift

Nobody in the building

Alerts for encoder restarts, dropped outputs, frozen picture and missed items reach the console and your inbox, and Slack or PagerDuty on the FAST plan. The channel watches itself, which is what a part-time coordinator needs it to do.

The record

What aired, for the clerk

The as-run log records every item and every cue with drift in seconds, exportable as JSON or CSV and kept for a year. When someone asks whether the meeting went out, the answer is a download.

The details

The headend, the meeting, and the reason to stream as well

The cable side is a transport question. The channel emits a constant-bitrate SRT or RIST stream, on the FAST plan and up, and the headend takes it either directly, if the IPTV middleware or encoder farm accepts an SRT input, or through a small decoder that turns it into SDI or an MPEG transport stream for the modulator. Your headend engineer will know which in one conversation. It is the same output the satellite migration uses to keep an uplink fed, and it runs beside the streaming outputs, not instead of them, so the old playout box can stay connected while you compare.

The meeting

A live slot in the grid takes a feed over RTMP, SRT or RIST from the chamber, the gym or a phone, switches to it at the scheduled time, and returns to the schedule when it ends. Meetings run long, so the slot can be held open under manual control. If the encoder in the chamber drops, playout falls back to the schedule, or to a backup input and then a standby screen on the FAST plan, and returns on its own. The guests and call-ins page covers bringing a remote speaker into the broadcast from a browser link.

Why stream as well as feed the cable

The cable system reaches the households that still subscribe. The web player, casting and the published programme guide reach everyone else: the family that cut the cord, the student away at college, the resident watching the planning meeting on a phone at work. Analytics count them at the edge, city by city, which is the number a council asks for at budget time and a sponsor asks for at renewal. Delivery is unlimited on every plan, so the night the whole town watches the vote costs what a quiet Tuesday does.

The money

The plan is flat, from $254 per channel per month, and the headend output needs the FAST plan. Server-side ad insertion is on every plan: local sponsors go into the marked breaks, the report shows them what ran, and serving on the streamed channel is $1 per 1,000 delivery-confirmed impressions. The TV channel cost page puts the whole bill beside a playout server, a rack and a maintenance contract.

EVERY CHANNEL INCLUDES
Questions

Local channels, answered.

Can cloud playout feed a cable headend?

Yes. A constant-bitrate SRT or RIST output from the channel goes to the headend or IPTV middleware, where a small decoder or the middleware itself takes it in, and the same channel streams as HLS to the web and smart TVs at the same time. CBR SRT and RIST outputs are on the FAST plan and up.

Do I need a playout server in the building?

No. The schedule, graphics and encoding run in the cloud and are driven from a browser. What stays in the building is the decoder at the headend, if the headend cannot take a stream directly, and whatever cameras you use for live meetings.

How do live council meetings or games get on air?

A live slot in the schedule takes a feed over RTMP, SRT or RIST from the chamber or the field, switches to it on time, and hands back when it ends or under manual control if the meeting runs long. If the feed drops, playout falls back to the schedule and recovers on its own. On the FAST plan a backup input takes over first.

Can the cable operator get a programme guide?

Yes. The guide publishes as XMLTV, which is what most cable and IPTV guide systems read, as JSON, and as a web page for viewers, up to 14 days ahead. It regenerates whenever the grid changes, so the listing on the box matches what is airing.

Can we sell local ads?

Yes. Ad breaks are marked in the schedule, and server-side ad insertion is on every plan. Direct-sold campaigns take an uploaded spot, a flight, a daypart, and a target down to city level, and the report shows the advertiser what ran. Serving is $1 per 1,000 delivery-confirmed impressions on the streamed channel; what goes down the cable feed is whatever the schedule aired, ads included, so the local sponsor is on both.

What does it cost?

From $254 per channel per month billed yearly, or $299 month to month, with playout, graphics, the guide and unlimited streaming delivery included. Feeding a headend over CBR SRT or RIST needs the FAST plan. No contract, so a council or a co-op can start on a month.

We already have a playout box. Do we have to switch overnight?

No. Run both for a while: the cloud channel feeds the headend from its SRT output alongside the old box, you compare, and you switch the headend input when it holds. The same order the satellite migration page describes, and the reason nobody goes dark.

What about a bulletin board channel?

A loop of slides and a ticker is a schedule too: the slides are files in the library on a loop, the ticker and clock are graphics rendered into the picture, and a live meeting or a local match interrupts the loop on time and hands back. It is the cheapest channel to run and the one most towns start with.

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