News & Video Streaming Portal for Mtavari TV

Goals and Requirements

• Create a unified portal combining news and entertainment streaming.
• Handle high traffic loads (250,000+ daily users).
• Provide advanced content management for an integrated newsroom.
• Support multiple content distribution channels.
• Offer multilingual content authoring and translation workflows.
• Enable TV show subsites with branding and customization options.
• Ensure SEO-friendly content delivery.
• Integrate with custom VOD and live streaming solutions.

Solution

Omedia developed a headless Drupal platform as the backend, coupled with a Next.js frontend application. This architecture provided a top-notch content management experience for editors while delivering a fast, modern user interface for visitors.

Key features delivered:

• Advanced news publishing system for the integrated newsroom.
• Integrations with on-air systems, Facebook Instant Articles, and Google AMP.
• Custom-built analytics and content analysis capabilities.
• Multilingual content authoring and translation workflows.
• TV show subsite system with branding and customization options.
• SEO-friendly server-side rendering.

To handle the high traffic loads, Omedia implemented a multi-layered caching strategy, leveraging Drupal's internal caching combined with Varnish and Cloudflare.

EPG System

We developed a sophisticated Electronic Program Guide (EPG) system, leveraging Drupal's core content types and customized Views output. This solution provides Mtavari TV with a flexible and powerful tool for managing their broadcast schedule across multiple platforms.

The EPG system offers programming editors an intuitive interface to effortlessly manage the TV schedule. Editors can easily create, edit, and organize programming slots, with the ability to clone entire days or weeks for efficient scheduling of recurring content. The system allows for seamless linking of existing shows, episodes, or videos to each element in the schedule, ensuring consistent content representation across all platforms. Advanced features include the ability to set multiple properties for each program, such as identifying reruns or specifying age restrictions, providing viewers with comprehensive information about the content.

The EPG system's output is serving both direct viewers and distribution partners. On the Mtavari TV website, the schedule is displayed in an interactive, user-friendly format, allowing viewers to easily browse upcoming programs and access additional content details. Additionally, the system generates the EPG data in various industry-standard formats for distribution to cable providers, reducing manual effort and minimizing the risk of scheduling discrepancies across different platforms.

Branded Show Sub-sites

Mtavari TV's new platform has the ability to create highly customizable sub-sites for individual TV shows. This powerful functionality allows editors to craft unique digital spaces for each program, reflecting its distinct identity while maintaining overall brand consistency.

Through an intuitive interface, content creators can define key visual elements, color schemes, and custom layouts for each show's pages. For instance, a news program might feature a timeline of breaking stories, while an entertainment show could showcase a gallery of celebrity guests. Despite this flexibility, the system maintains strict layout controls to ensure a cohesive user experience across the entire platform.

Newsfeed Management

Mtavari TV's website serves as both an entertainment hub and a comprehensive news portal. The newsroom editors have full control over the main homepage, news section sub-homepages, and various news listing blocks.

Leveraging Drupal's powerful Entityqueue ecosystem, combined with Views and Blocks, editors can easily define the logic for news listings in every section. Each listing block can display manually curated news, automatically populated content from predefined View outputs, or a combination of both. This system ensures complete editorial control while allowing for automation when manual curation isn't necessary.

Although primarily designed for news, this versatile system also manages listings for other content types such as shows and hosts, providing a consistent and flexible content management experience across the platform.

Outcome

The new platform successfully unified Mtavari TV's digital presence, combining news and entertainment content into a single, powerful portal. The solution effectively handles 250,000 daily users, providing uninterrupted service and a seamless experience for both content creators and consumers.

Throughout the project, the Omedia team demonstrated a strong understanding of our business needs and provided valuable insights and recommendations. Adopting Drupal as our core CMS met our needs and the custom features exceeded our expectations. The end result was a high-quality system that has improved the user experience of our editors and users alike.

Kote Urushadze, Head of Digital, Mtavari TV

The headless Drupal architecture allows for flexibility in content delivery across multiple channels while maintaining a consistent backend for editors. The custom analytics and content analysis tools provide valuable insights for content strategy.

By consolidating their digital offerings, Mtavari TV has positioned itself to accumulate more online traffic and boost digital ad revenue, furthering its strong digital presence that reaches over a million users monthly.