Title: Director general of media asset management, Televisa, S.A. de C.V. Mr. Payne joined Televisa in February 2000 to convert its enormous analog catalog-700,000 hours of entertainment, news, sports and music programming (plus 30,000 songs, a half-million photographs and
issues of 49 magazines)-into searchable digitized form. Before his move to Mexico City, he headed new business development for EDS’s Los Angeles-
based Digital Studios, which was dedicated to implementing media asset management systems.
Status: “This is the Mount Everest of media asset management systems-created for a 50-year-old company with a vast vault of content. We’re just about to get everything under way. It’s like building a factory.
“Over the past year I visited every large asset management system in existence-at CNN, Paramount Studios, many others-and then designed the system to be installed here. There are only two or three integrators who can do this kind of work. We’re going ahead with Gedas of North America, a big consolidator owned by Volkswagen. We’re using Virage as our logging system and Informix Corp.’s Media360 library application [which sits on an Informix database]. We’re using Sun servers, and for storage, an EMC2 storage networking solution and the Sony PetaSite.
“Right now we’re getting ready to install the equipment and recruit and train the catalogers. We plan to digitize and catalog 250 hours of video per day. We should be up and running at full speed by the beginning of September. We’ll have three shifts of 75 people working 24-7.”
Future: “The benefit for Televisa is [having] content that will be easily searchable and retrievable. Televisa will be able to sell its news and sports services more easily. Clients will not only be able to search for a program but for their favorite parts of programs.”