 From the CUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. Hi, I'm John Furrier with the CUBE. We're here for a special CUBE Conversation. Obviously we're remote, we're in the studio most of the time, but on the weekends I get an opportunity to talk to friends and experts. And here I wanted to really dig in with an awesome case study around AWS Cloud in a use case that I think is game changing for local community, especially in this time of COVID. You have local communities where local journalism is suffering, but also connectedness. And connected experience is what's gonna make the difference as we come out of this pandemic as a societal impact. But there's a real tech store here I wanna dig into. We're here with Dan Drew, who's the Vice President of Engineering for a company called Digia. They make an app called Local BTV, which basically takes over-the-air television and streams it to an app in your local area, enabling access to linear TV and on demand as well for local communities. It's a phenomenal project and it's unique, somewhat misunderstood right now, but I think it's gonna be something that's gonna be really important. Dan, thank you for coming on and chatting. Thanks for having me, appreciate it. Okay, so I'm a big fan. I've been using the app in San Francisco. I know New York's on the dock and it might even be deployed. You guys have a unique infrastructure capability that's powering this new application and this is the focus of the conversation in this CUBE talk. Amazon is a big part of this. Talk about your local BTV that you architect with this platform for broadcast television. It has a unique hybrid cloud architecture. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, certainly. I mean, one of our challenges, as you know, is that we are local television. So unlike a lot of products on the markets, you know, like your Hulu's or other VMPV products, which primarily serve as sort of national feeds and things like that, we have to be able to receive over-the-air signals in each market, many channels that serve local content are still over-the-air. And that is why you don't see a lot of them on those types of services. They tend to get ignored and aren't available to many users. So that's part of our value proposition is to not only allow more people to get access to these stations, but allow the stations themselves to reach more people, right? So that means that we have to have a local presence in each market in order to receive those signals. So that sort of forces us to have this hybrid model where we have local data centers, but then we also want to be able to effectively manage those in a central way. And we do that in our cloud platform, which is hosted on Amazon and using Amazon services. All right, let me take a breath here. You have a hybrid architecture on Amazon. So it's usually using a lot of the plumbing. Take us through what the architecture is for Amazon using a variety of their services. Can you unpack that? Yeah, so obviously it starts with some of the core services like EC2, S3, RDS, which everybody on the planet uses. We're also very focused on using ECS. We're completely containerized, which allows us to more effectively deploy our services and scale them. And one of the benefits on that front that Amazon provides is that because their container service is wired into all the other services like CloudWatt metrics, auto-scaling policies, IAM policies, things like that, it allows us to manage those things in a much more effective way and use those services to much more effectively make those things reliable and scalable. We also use a lot of their technologies for, for example, for collecting metrics. So we use Kinesis and Redshift to collect real-time metrics from all of our markets across the US, that allows us to do that reliably and at scale without having to manage complex ETL systems like Kafka and other things, as well as store it in a large data lake like Redshift and query for analytics and, you know, things like that. We also use technologies like MediaTaylor, so for example, one of the big features that most stations do not have access to is real-time targeted advertising. In the broadcast space, many ads are sold and placed weeks in advance and not personalized, obviously, you know, for that reason. Whereas one of the big features we can bring to the table using our system and technologies like MediaTaylor is we can provide real-time targeted advertising, which is a huge win for these stations. What are some of the unique capabilities that you guys can offer broadcast station partners? Because you're basically going in and partnering with broadcast stations as well, but also you're enabling new broadcasts to jump in as well. What are some of the unique capabilities that you're delivering? What is Amazon bringing to the table there and what are you doing that's unique? Well, again, it allows us, because we can do things centrally, you know, as well as the local reception, it allows us to do some interesting things like if we have channels that are allowed to broadcast even outside their market, then we can easily put them in other markets and get them even more viewers that way. We have the ability to even do like hyper-local or community channels, you know, that are not necessarily broadcasting over the standard antennas, but can get us a feed from, you know, whatever zip code and whatever market and we can give them a way to reach viewers in the entire market and other markets or even just in their local area. So, you know, consider the case where maybe a high school or a college, you know, wants to show games or local content. We provide a platform where they can now do that and reach more people using our app and our platform very, very easily. So that's another area that we wanna help expand is not just your typical view of local of what's available in Phoenix, but what's available in a particular city in that area or a local community where they wanna reach their community more effectively or even have content that might be interesting to other communities in, you know, Phoenix or one of the other markets. You know, I think just to go on a side tangent here, I talked with your partner, Jim Longs, the CEO, you guys have an amazing business opportunity. Again, I think it's kind of misunderstood, but it's very clear to me that someone who follows and has huge passion for local journalism, you know, you see awesome efforts out there by Charlie Senate from the Ground Truth Project Report for America. They take a journalism kind of print view, but if you add like that Digi a business model onto this local journalism, you can enable more video locally. I mean, that's really the killer app of the video. And now at COVID more than ever, I really wanna know things like there's a mural with downtown Palo Alto, Black Lives Matters, I wanna know what's going on with the local summer restaurants, putting people up in sidewalks. Right now I'm limited to like next door or very laggy media, whether it's the website. So again, I think this is an opportunity to that, plus education. I mean, Amazon Educate, for instance, you can get a degree in cloud computing by sitting on the couch. So, you know, this is again, this is a paradigm shift from an application standpoint, but you're providing essentially linear TV to the app in the local economy. So I just wanna give you a shout out for that because I think it's super important. I think, you know, people should get behind this. So congratulations. Okay, I'm off on my little rant there. Let's get back down to some of that cloud stuff. So I think what's super interesting to me is you guys can stand up infrastructure very quickly in what you've done here. You leverage the benefits of Amazon and the goodness of cloud, you essentially can stand up a metro region pretty quickly. And it's pretty impressive. So I gotta ask you, what Amazon services are most important for your business? Well, like I said, I think for us, it's managing the central services. So we sort of talked about managing the software, the APIs. And those are kind of the glue. So, you know, for us standing up a new metro is obviously, you know, getting the data center contracts and all the other nasty stuff you have to deal with just have a footprint. But essentially, once we have that in place, we can spin up the software in the data center and have it hooked into our central service within hours. Right, and we can be starting channels literally within half a day. So that's the real win for us is having all that central glue and that central management system and the scalability where, you know, we can just add another 10, 20, 50, 100 markets and the system is set up to scale centrally where we can start collecting metrics through CloudWatch from those data centers. We're collecting logs and diagnostic information so we can detect health and everything else centrally and monitor and operate all of these things centrally in a way that is sane and not crazy. We don't need a 24 seven knock of a thousand people to do this, you know, and do that in a way that, you know, we as a relatively small company can still scale and do that in a sensible way and a cost effective way, which is obviously very important for us at our size but at any size, you wanna make sure if you're gonna go into 200 plus markets that you have a really good cost model. And that's one of the things that where Amazon has really, really helped us is allow us to do some really complex things in an efficient, scalable, reliable and cost effective way, you know, the cost for us to go into a new metro now is so small, you know, relatively speaking that that's really allows what allows us to do as a business of now we just opened up New York, you know and we're gonna keep expanding on that model. So that's been a huge win for us is evaluating what Amazon can bring to the table versus other third parties and or building our own, you know, obviously which So Amazon gives you the knock basically leverage and scale the data center you're referring to that's pretty much just to get an origination point in the territory. Exactly, that's right. So it's not like it's a super complex data center you can just go in making sure they got all the normal, you know, backup recovery and the normal stuff it's not like a heavy duty build up, is it? Can you explain that? Yeah, so one thing we do do in our data centers is because we are local, we have sort of primary data centers where we do do transcoding and origination of the video. So we receive the video locally and then we wanna transcode and deliver it locally and that way we're not sending video across the country and back type of thing. So that is sort of the hybrid part of our model, right? So we stand that up, but then that is all managed by the central service, right? So we essentially have another container cluster using Kubernetes in this case but that Kubernetes cluster is essentially told what to do by everything that's running in Amazon. So we essentially stand up the Kubernetes cluster we wire it up to the central service and then from then on it just, we just go into the central service and say stand up these channels and it all pops up. Well, my final question on the Amazon pieces is really about future capabilities besides having a CUBE channel which I would love to have on there and I told my guys, we'll get there but we're just too busy working around the clock as you guys are with COVID-19. Yeah, full on a stand. I can almost see a slew of new services coming out just on the Amazon side if I'm on the Amazon side I'm thinking, okay, Outposts is an opportunity for me. I can see SageMaker and machine learning coming in and adding value for user experience and also enabling their own stuff. They got a ton of stuff with Prime and moving people around and delivering things. The headroom for Amazon, this thing is off the charts but that being said, that's Amazon. I can see them winning with this and certainly I know you're using Elemental as well but for you guys on the consumer side what features and what new things do you see on the roadmap or what you might envision the future looking like? Well, I think part of it, I think there's two parts. One is what are we gonna deliver ourselves? So we sort of talked about adding community content and continuing to evolve the local BTB product but we also see ourselves primarily as a local TV platform. And for example, you mentioned Prime and a lot of people are now realizing especially with COVID and what's going on the importance of local television. And so we're in discussions on a lot of fronts with people to see how we can be the provider of that local TV content. And that's really a lot of stations are super excited about that too because again, looking to expand their own footprint and their own reach, we are basically the way that we can join those two things together between the stations, the other video platforms and distribution mechanisms and the viewers obviously at the end of the day. We wanna make sure local viewers can get more local content and stuff that's interesting to them. Like you said with the news, it is not uncommon that you may have your Bay Area stations but the news is still maybe very focused on LA or San Francisco or whatever. And so being able to enable the smaller regional outlets to reach people in that area in a more local fashion is definitely a big way that we can facilitate that from the platform and viewer perspective. So we're hoping to do that in any way we can. Our main focus is make local great and get the broadcast world out there and that's not going anywhere especially with things like HSE3 on the front. And we just wanna make sure that those people are successful and can reach people and make revenue and I don't know. Yeah, you got a lot of it in search and opportunity but I think one of the things that's just about your project that I find is a classic case of people who focus in on just current market value investing versus kind of the game-changing shifts is that you guys are horizontally enabling in the sense that there's so many different use cases I was pointing out from my perspective journalism. I mean, I'm like, I'd look at that and I'm like, okay, that's a huge opportunity just there changing the game on societal impact on journalism, huge education opportunity for court cutters. You're talking about a whole nother thing around TV. So I gotta ask you, pretend I'm an idiot for a minute, right? Or pretend, let's make it, I am an idiot. I don't understand, isn't this just TV? What are you doing different? Because it's only local. I can't watch San Francisco, I'm in Chicago and I can't watch Chicago, San Francisco, I get that. Why is this important? Isn't this just TV? Can I just get to on YouTube? I mean, TikTok, what is this? Talk about the- Yes or no. I mean, there's TV and then there's TV, as you know. And if you look at the TV landscape, it's pretty fractured but typically when you're talking about YouTube or Hulu you're talking about sort of cable TV channels. You're gonna get your A&E, you're gonna get some of your local through ABC and whatnot. But you're not really getting local content. And so for example, in our Los Angeles market, we, there are about 100 and something over the air channels. If you look at the cross section of which of those channels you can get on your other big name products like your Hulu's or your YouTube TV, you're talking about maybe half a dozen or a dozen. So there's, you're talking about like 90 plus channels that are local to LA that you can only get through an antenna, right? And those are hitting the type of demographics that quite frankly, some of these other players are just don't see as important. Underrepresented minorities or immigrants, the entrepreneurs of our country. Yes, exactly. So we might see a lot of Korean channels or Spanish channels or other minority channels that you just won't get over your cable channels or your typical online video providers. So that's again why we feel like we've got something that is really unique and that is really underserved as far as on a television standpoint. The other side that we bring to the table is that a lot of these broadcast channels are underserved themselves in terms of technology, right? If you look at, you know, ad insertion and a lot of the technical discussions about how to do live TV and how to get live TV out there, it's very focused on the OTT market. So again, going back to the Hulu's and the YouTube. Over the top, over the top, yeah. And so this broadcast market basically had no real evolution on that front in a while. You know, and I sort of mentioned like the way ad buying works, you know, it's still sort of the traditional ad buying that happens a couple of weeks in front, not a lot of targeted or anything ability. And even when we get to HTSC3, you're now relying on having an HTS3 TV and you're still tied to an antenna, et cetera, et cetera. Which is again, a good move forward, but still not covering the spectrum of what these guys really want to reach and do. So that's where we kind of fill in the gaps, you know, using technology and filling in the gap of receiving a signal and bringing these technologies. So not only the ad insertion and the stuff we can do for the live stream, but providing analytics and other tools to the stations that they really don't have right now, unless you're willing to shell out a lot of money for Nielsen, which a lot of local small stations don't do. So we can provide a lot of analytics on viewership and targeting and things like that that they're really looking forward to and really excited about. All right, I got to ask you to put you on the spot here. Cause I'd always see Andy Jassy at re-invent. I might hopefully I'll see him this year if they do an in-person event. He's really dynamic. And you should send him an email. He tends to read his emails a lot. And if you're a customer, I know you are. But I've had to ask you, if you bumped into Andy Jassy on the elevator, he's like, hey, why should I pay attention to dig you? Why is it important for Amazon and why is it important for the world? How does it raise the bar on society? Well, I think part of what Amazon's goal, especially if you get into their work in public sector and education, that's really where we see we're focusing with the community and local television and enabling new types of local television. So I think there's a lot of advantage and I hate the word synergy, but I'm gonna use the word synergy. As far as our goals in those areas around really helping, one of the terms flying around now is the double bottom line, where it's not just about revenue, it's about how do we help people and communities be better as well? So there's a bottom line in terms of people benefit and revenue in that way, not just financial revenue, right? And that's very important to us as a business as well is that's why we're focused on local TV and we're not just doing another Fubo where it's really easy to get an IP national feed. It's really important to us to enable the local community and the local broadcasters and local channels and the local viewers to get the content that they're missing out on right now. So I think there's a, I hate it, but I'm gonna use synergy on that front. As far as our goals. Synergy in the new normal. Synergy in the new normal. I think COVID and some of the other things that have been happening in the news with the Black Lives Matter and a lot of things going around where local and community has been in the spotlight, and getting the word out and having really local things versus, oh, I'm just seeing this thing from, three counties away, which I don't really care about and it's not telling me what's happening down the street, like we said. And that's really what we wanna help improve and support. Yeah, it's a great mission and it's one we care a lot about theCUBE. We've seen the data, content, drives, community engagement and communities where the truth is. So in an era where we need more transparency and more truth, you get more cameras on the street, you're gonna start to see things and that's what we're seeing a lot of things. And as more data is exposed, as you turn the lights on, so to speak, that kind of data will only help communities grow, heal and thrive. So to me, big believer in what you guys are doing, local BTV is a great mission, wish you guys well and thanks for explaining the infrastructure on Amazon. I think you guys have a really killer use case, technically, I mean, to me, I think the technical superiority of what you've done, the ability to stand up these kinds of networks with massive number of potential reach out of the gate, it's just pretty impressive, congratulations. Great, thank you very much and thanks for taking the time.