Case Study: A better workflow for Comedy Central: How a cloud-based asset management system was built from scratch using open-source tools

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Abstract: Comedy Central is the television network known for satirical commentary on politics and current events, potty-mouth cartoon characters, sketch comedy shows, web redemptions and stand-up comedy. The network’s promotional efforts span print, web, social media and video. Each piece of creative content begins its life in digital form. During the development process, these video clips, graphics and web adverts require approval from a variety of internal teams and are updated in rapid-fire iterations in response to feedback. To arrive at the final edit of even a 15-second promo or a ten-second web banner advert takes days or even weeks. To streamline the process, a web-based creative review and approval system was built.

The system is designed to handle routing, approval and distribution of a full range of digital file formats. In a centralised workspace, users can upload their work and view the work of others. This real-time collaboration unites three creative and production teams and improves the speed, efficiency and transparency of their collective output. The finished system achieves the main objectives that were outlined at the beginning of the project. Its usefulness will increase over time as it grows into a searchable library of all Comedy Central work — both past and present.

Keywords: open source, workflow system, cloud-based, creative approvals