CBS News & Stations

Bridging markets for seamless coverage

Before Max Cloud entered the picture, sharing weather content between sister broadcast stations was a time-consuming ordeal, involving multiple steps of building, uploading, downloading content, and exchanging numerous emails. Any required changes meant starting the entire cycle over, eating up valuable time and resources. Ashton Altieri, Senior Coordinating Producer & Group Meteorologist at CBS News & Stations, puts it best: “We’ve come a long way from the primitive systems used decades ago. Today, we’re integrating all platforms into a single system with capabilities that span linear, streaming, social, and any other channel coming next.”

Working in local television markets from Des Moines to Denver for over 20 years, Ashton now helps lead a group of 14 CBS owned and operated stations nationwide, covering a wide swath of the country: From Midwest tornadoes to Western blizzards, California’s wildfires and atmospheric rivers, to tropical storms or hurricanes headed toward Miami. Along with unique weather patterns, each market has unique audience expectations, so balancing these factors while maintaining consistent quality and brand identity can often be a complex task.

Kicking collaboration into high gear

Max Cloud has transformed the way CBS News & Stations collaborate across all markets. Since Max Cloud gives CBS meteorologists like Ashton shared cloud lockers that hold content for use across the group, it allows the entire group of 65+ meteorologists to easily “go into content sharing mode.” If, say, the West Coast is experiencing disruptive weather, the group can quickly activate stations in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Los Angeles, and content gets created to tell the story of an atmospheric river, for instance, which gets pushed out across all three California stations.

Brand consistency, coast to coast

Since CBS News and CBS Television Stations consolidated under one structure, maintaining a cohesive brand identity has become crucial. “It’s super important for audiences to associate the local station in the markets we serve as being an extension of CBS News,” Altieri notes. “Max Cloud has helped us maintain that brand identity and style across all our stations.” This may include everyday graphics, icons, as well as resources for backup purposes either during major weather events or to provide forecast content for markets without a local meteorologist in our group. One of the more impressive outcomes: The democratization of high-quality content across stations —  elevating smaller stations and markets —  giving them full access to the “razzle-dazzle,” if you will, of a major market station.

Weather-ready, anytime, any market

Altieri explains, “From the Max system I have at my office, I can access the content from any CBS station and quickly ‘become that station.’ I can pivot, or quickly make changes from one market to another…within two to three minutes. It’s like the idea of a central hub pushing our material to its satellites…except with Max Cloud, everywhere can be a hub.”

If there are specific items that all fourteen weather teams need to receive, Max Cloud can easily deliver those files directly to all sites, and ensure they’re in the right file directory. So, when Ashton and team notice content that really shines, they encourage stations to communicate as soon as it’s available. For example, in the lead-up to Labor Day weekend this year, they created a custom weekend forecast that looks polished and customized, designed by a motion artist, so the entire group has a Labor Day weekend forecast that both fits their style guide and really stands out.

Ashton’s group views the tool as a tree with roots spreading across their respective stations. Through seamless collaboration, outstanding brand consistency, and equipping smaller stations with top-tier resources, Max Cloud has given CBS News & Stations the tools to handle challenges and deliver exceptional weather coverage across its network map.