Caracol Televisión by the numbers
Caracol Televisión is the leading television network in Colombia, akin to NBC, ABC or CBS in the United States. Caracol's news division alone averages over 15 million monthly users. In addition to news, the network also produces sports and entertainment content. Over 5,000 employees work at Caracol to create and deliver quality content that is key to the company's success.
In the best of circumstances, migrating content publishing and launching a new system is a challenge, yet working with the Brightspot team across time zones and multiple geographies felt like a team effort with all of us working with one mind and one goal.
The Caracol Televisión challenge
Caracol's primary goal in considering a new CMS platform was to reduce costs by streamlining multiple content tools, hosting environments and technology solutions. Overall, the broadcaster wanted to improve knowledge between journalists and various departments for enhanced content production.
Recognizing that the media industry was facing historic, ongoing disruption, Caracol more broadly sought to transform its content business quickly to get ahead of the curve. The company knew that it needed the right solutions to stay relevant at a time when many media organizations were struggling to survive.
What's more, the move to a digital-first world prompted by COVID-19 further accelerated the need for a transformation. Caracol enlisted Brightspot soon before the pandemic hit, leaving the business with an added challenge of wanting to accomplish a quick and seamless deployment while dealing with remote editorial and operations teams.
The Brightspot solution for Caracol Televisión
Brightspot and Caracol worked together for four months, from selection to go-live. In that time, Caracol successfully migrated all of the content publishing and management for its six sites to Brightspot CMS. Even though each site has different designs and structure, all teams can now manage them from the same place.
What made this deployment even more remarkable was the quick implementation, training and migration of an entire editorial operation in the midst of an emerging global pandemic. Teams working remotely across countries and timezones during COVID-19 lockdowns delivered a successful operation in record time.
Today, Brightspot helps all six sites share and reuse content between teams, who benefit from the the ability to set up workflows within each newsroom and assign permissions to creators. For instance, a reporter could seamlessly connect her article with a photo from one colleague and a radio clip from another team, all in one place. Also, in order to satisfy Caracol's focus on digital evolution, Brightspot makes it easy to integrate different and new media types, such as videos, into content. When development teams add new features using Brightspot, they can be implemented across sites and teams, supporting the need to only develop once and use everywhere.
Caracol Televisión project highlights include:
- The success of Brightspot's solution for Caracol was evident almost immediately, with the network seeing its site traffic increase by 20% in the first week.
- A key highlight of the project was successfully training the Caracol team to operate its new CMS self-sufficiently. The first training was held in mid-January, and by early March the Caracol team was fully trained.
- The new tech infrastructure makes it easier for the team to launch digital experiences for its various audiences.
- One of Caracol's main goals, cost reduction, is being realized. Brightspot provides many tools that Caracol doesn't have to contract with other providers. Additionally, the company is spending less on developing new features, and saving employee time that can be applied instead to maintaining the tech stack.
Caracol TV in brief
