CAM SYS ASSISTS IN CATV AD MANAGEMENT

BY ANDREA FIGLER Of the many hats a local cable operator has to wear in the course of a broadcast day, none gets more use than that of the traffic cop. But as the demands on traffic systems increase, an administrator without the proper software package in place can do little more than blow his whistle as the cars speed by. CAM Systems president Martino Mingione believes that his company can help local ops manage their traffic needs. A provider of fully integrated technology solutions to local cable ops and cable networks, CAM Systems offers a suite of products to manage traffic and billing, sales planning, content delivery, programming rights and clearances, data warehousing and electronic invoicing. One arrow in Mingione’s quiver is Eclipse, a scalable traffic and billing package that was introduced in 1998. Since that time, Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications, Comcast and Rainbow Media Holdings have contracted for Eclipse’s services; today the product manages cable spots for nearly 30 million households nationwide. CAM Systems’ mission-critical approach to the cable ad space is ambitious to say the least. “We can scale to huge volume,” Mingione says. “Comcast’s Philadelphia server schedules more than 3 million ads every month. That kind of demand has helped our feature set to become very complex and wide reaching.” The company is also knocking on doors in the broadcast market. Its TVIA system offers local stations a means to handle the consolidation, hubbing and central casting. “Our marquee customer so far is Fox News, and we hope to see some very good synergies in the future,” Mingione says. In just six years, CAM Systems has raised its market share in the local cable space from zero to 40%, Mingione says. Charter Media, which handles the advertising sales end of the business for the St. Louis-based MSO, has worked with CAM Systems since 1999. Looking to connect some remote regions into a central database, Charter deployed Eclipse in its three-state Northwest region. “It gave us the freedom to function independently relative to our day-to-day operations,” said traffic manager Kerry Terrel. “It was a perfect solution.”