Possibilities - TV Data - Information for Your Viewing Pleasure

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TV DATA - INFORMATION FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE
-----------------------------------------------

*** From December 1990 Possibilities Newsletter ***
*** Copyright 1990 by eSoft, Inc.  All Rights Reserved ***

TV Data -- Information for Your Viewing Pleasure
by Alan Bechtold

Have you ever wondered how your local newspaper can give you up to date 
listings for the networks and all of those cable channels?  After all, they 
surely don't have a staff of people just keeping up with all that data.  For 
many of you those listings stay current through the TBBS of TV Data.

For more than 25 years, TV Data has been the largest and most respected 
provider of television listings in the newspaper and magazine industry.  If 
you check a daily newspaper's daily TV log, listings page or weekly TV 
booklet to see what's on, the chances are good you've made use of 
information provided by TV Data.

TV Data provides this listings information to its clients in both electronic 
and hard copy form.  The hard copy form is a rolled film which  goes 
directly into a newspaper's composition shop for physical cutting and 
pasting.

They also offer their clients an alternate delivery option called "wire 
delivery."  In the past, this wire data service was a proprietary modem-like 
device, called an Atlas unit, which sent write-ups off of the company's DEC 
system directly to clients' mainframe computers.

However, Kevin Joyce, TV Data's Systems Support Technician, says that the 
publishing industry is changing rapidly.  And these changes led to TV Data's 
decision to provide direct online access to its wire delivery customers.

"We noticed that the newspaper industry is moving from a mainframe computer 
environment to more of a desktop environment," Joyce said.  "Now these 
people -- our clients -- want our information in a PC format, available on 
their desk.  That means we either had to transmit the information directly 
to our clients or they had to pick it up from us somehow."

Because virtually all of TV Data's clients work within very tight deadlines, 
delivering television listings information to them wasn't a workable 
solution.  It would be extremely difficult to deliver the information they 
needed when they needed it.

"This kind of [online] delivery is actually dictated by the client's 
environment," Joyce said.  "For example, a client with a Macintosh is 
usually doing other things with the computer too, so it's kind of hard to 
say, 'OK, we're going to deliver this material to you at 11:00,' because 
they might be doing something else with that computer at that time.  
Besides, they might need the material by 9:00.  Our clients have to be able 
to determine when they pick up the material."

Putting the information on a commercial information network service wasn't 
the answer, either.  "We looked at several network-based data services 
within our industry," Joyce said.  "In virtually every case, their 
reliability was questionable at best.  And the expense associated with 
uploading all of our information to such a network -- then paying a per-byte 
charge to store it there -- was prohibitive."

The volatile nature of TV Data's extremely dated products created another 
problem.  "Even if we overlooked the added expense of using a commercial 
network service, once the data was out there, we'd have extremely limited 
control when it came to purging and updating it."

For TV Data, an in-house data service was the only way to go.  "It gave us 
ultimate control over our products -- how the service is configured, how 
long we want the material online, how often it's updated.  With our own 
system, we can react to client needs much more quickly and help them with 
trouble-shooting if and when they need it."

An in-house BBS was the solution many of TV Data's clients were looking for, 
too.  To test the concept, the company first offered single line access to a 
PC running ProComm Plus in Host Mode.

"After about six months, it got overwhelming," Joyce said.  "The phone line 
was always busy.  That was when we knew we had to set up a multi-line BBS."

As he looked for the right BBS package, Kevin kept running into TBBS.  "I 
found out from everybody I deal with that TBBS is the de-facto standard for 
a BBS in most settings," he said.  "I scoured the countryside looking for a 
multi-line BBS.  Out in the public domain there are tons of them, but 99 
percent of them are junk.  So I contacted a few industry people I knew -- 
Hayes, U.S. Robotics and even DataStorm, the publishers of Procomm Plus -- 
and found out that all three of them are using TBBS.  That pretty much sold 
me on the product."

That was a little more than one year ago.  Kevin said the system was easy to 
install.  In spite of Kevin's overall lack of previous experience with 
bulletin board systems, he got TV Data's TBBS running in just a couple of 
days, then spent about two weeks fine-tuning the system and getting the 
menus to look exactly the way he wanted them to.

"My big interest is both networking and data communications," Joyce said.  
"I deal with all the small systems internally at TV Data, from the PCs and 
Macs to the network (we're operating PDP11 MicroVaxs).  Primarily, I do in-
house maintenance of software and systems and also provide client support of 
all software and systems that we have in use, but I had virtually NO BBS 
experience before I got involved with setting up our TBBS system."

Kevin made extensive use of TBBS' unique flexible menu configuration 
templates to design a BBS that would be uncluttered and easy to use from the 
first call.

"We have a pretty simple operation," he said.  "Our TBBS allows clients to 
dial in, find and retrieve their data, and log off.  Basically, I have only 
about two to three levels of menus.  Clients can select a specific file 
area, depending on the kinds of data files they need.  There is also a 
Utilities and Upgrades area where we supply general public domain utilities 
like StuffIt or PKZIP, and upgrades to software that we provide to the 
client."

TBBS' easily configurable menus appealed to Kevin.  Most other nearly 
acceptable BBS packages he investigated had static menu structures that 
couldn't be easily changed to offer TV Data's clients the kind of simple, 
uncluttered menu that Kevin knew they'd want.

"Our system had to be as simple as possible," Joyce said.  "Our end users 
are usually people with limited technical backgrounds and we wanted it 
absolutely as streamlined as possible, to avoid confusion.  The stripped-
down simple menu structure also makes it much easier to write script files 
that allow our users to just plow right through the system and get 
everything they need automatically.  Either way, it helps get each client in 
and out quickly, so we can better handle the peak load."

Peak load handling is as important to TV Data as is simplicity.  "Our 
system's kind of unique in that way.  We have a real peak load period from 
about 9 a.m. to noon weekdays.  Our newspaper clients operate on a deadline 
so there's a lot of contention for the lines all at once.  Then, the rest of 
the day and evening, it's pretty much idle.  We have to deal with the 
ability to handle this peak load situation, which explains why we're already 
adding on lines and serial ports and modems.  When the client wants the 
material we have to have it on the board and ready for them to get in and 
get it."

Behind the scenes, there's a lot more going on than TV Data's clean, simple 
menus would imply.  "We run a 16 Mhz 286 PC clone with a DigiBoard PC/8, 
fully populated with all eight lines in use.  These are set up as two rotary 
banks of four lines each, so our customers can call one number if they have 
Hayes V-Series modems and another if they're running U.S. Robotics Courier 
HSTs.

"But, the REST of our hardware setup is probably the most unique aspect of 
our TBBS operation," Joyce added.  "Basically, our PC has an Ethernet 
controller card, called a Depca Board, hooked into our thin-wired Ethernet 
Decnet backbone, so the PC appears as a node on the Decnet.  The PC has 
multiple virtual drives set up on it.  I have TBBS set up on a virtual drive 
which is essentially on the MicroVax and all the associated client file 
areas are also on virtual drives on the MicroVax.  The PC's processor is 
executing the TBBS application but all the software and associated files are 
physically located on the MicroVax."

This arrangement proved its worth one weekend when there was a hard disk 
failure on the PC.  "I just had to yank the troubled PC out and plug in 
another one," Joyce said.  "It booted right back up, running TBBS.  We also 
enjoy the added security of the regularly scheduled backups that are a part 
of the MicroVax's hard drive maintenance routine.  When it comes to disaster 
recovery and backups, that's really nice."

The set-up also suits TV Data's file processing procedure like a glove.  We 
can easily integrate with our PDP11," Joyce said.  "As far as the actual 
file production goes, we have PCs and Macs that do the file processing and 
any required data compression.  They then simply transfer the completed 
files to the MicroVax, placing them into the virtual drive area that the 
PC's TBBS is looking at.  It's all seamless and virtually automatic."  
According to Kevin, only a VAX BBS package could have been more seamless.

"We looked at VAX BBSs," he said.  "But the problem is the MicroVax is a 
pretty expensive piece of equipment to tie up operating a task like this.  
Besides, there simply isn't a lot of good software or available file 
transfer protocols to choose from anyway.  This is why running our BBS on a 
PC with TBBS is a nice way to go.  TBBS is a very nice piece of software 
that's easy to set up and install and, with the way we've set it all up, we 
can still enjoy the main benefits of a DEC environment."

Kevin says the system literally runs itself.  This saves valuable time so 
he's free to spend more time with individual clients, recommending modem 
types and communications software, working with them hand-in-hand any way 
they need, to get them online and downloading data.  He helps clients all 
the way, too, including pre-written or custom-written macro scripts for 
their terminal programs to automate their logon and downloading procedures.

The BBS keeps getting more popular.  "We're now putting most of our Mac-
oriented clients on the BBS," Joyce said.  "This is the group for which our 
old wire delivery format used to be the most popular method of delivery.  
Now we immediately put any client receiving our data to a Mac right on the 
BBS instead."

All told, more than 1/3 of TV Data's wire clients are now using the BBS.  
And Kevin says their competition is starting to mimic what they're doing, 
although he says he's not sure if they're actually latching onto TBBS.  Of 
course, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery -- and the strongest 
indication that you're doing something right.

Kevin feels TBBS is the right track for TV Data and his feeling's have been 
proven right so far.  The only change he plans to make soon, besides adding 
more lines and modems, is the addition of SYSOM, the TBBS Option Module that 
allows remote and console access to DOS and TBBS utilities while callers are 
connected to the system.  "I'm finding I have a constant need to add log-ins 
when the system's busy so that's without doubt the next piece of the package 
we intend to purchase," he said.

Kevin says that the type of people who want TV Data's information has 
diversified over the past few years.  The music industry is now using their 
listings to determine royalty fees and the number of cable guides published 
across the country is growing at a rapid rate.  It all adds up to a growing 
need for TV Data's information with everyone wanting it as quickly as 
possible.  It's a sure bet their TBBS will continue to grow to meet the 
growing demand.

- END -
PS1290-3
Rev. 12/90

Copyright (C) 1994 eSoft, Inc., All Rights Reserved.  Permission granted
to distribute this file in its entirety, without modification, to any
interested party.  Any other use requires the written permission of
eSoft, Inc.

IMPORTANT:  The information herein is subject to change without notice.
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