With competition for audience recognition intense, broadcast design is more important than ever. And for broadcasters intent on maximizing their broadcast design resources, in-house teams make a lot of sense for reasons such as economics, a familiarity with corporate goals and simple propinquity.

Dolores Keating-Mallen of ytv, which has used an in-house broadcast design team since the station’s inception, says in-house broadcast design has been integral to the evolution of the station’s distinctive look.

‘For us, it gives a lot more flexibility and more creative control,’ she says. ‘We’ve been tremendously successful at branding our network. It’s a lot easier once the team learns the look and the feel of the thing. They can have a real impact because they get it.’

Consistency is clearly the issue here: Keating-Mallen feels the brand has successfully survived the extension from screen to the spun-off magazine and cd, to the station’s website and print advertising, all of which, she says, could have easily taken on a different look had they been farmed out.

‘Having that machine in-house means we’re able to stretch our minds and make the product better because we’ve got lots of condensed input from everyone – and we find we can’t get that at agencies.’

David Errington, vice-president sales and marketing at The Score, previously known as Headline Sports, which has also used in-house broadcast design departments since the station’s inception, is adamant about the role in-house broadcast design plays in forming a distinctive look.

‘We do a lot of news and information on the fly. It’s a loose format, so we needed a lot of structure to string it all together. There’s a ton of information coming at [the viewer] and we needed something to unite the look.’

The change of branding from Headline Sports to The Score – a process which began about a year ago and is scheduled to be complete in September – underlines the sense of flexibility integral to in-house broadcast design teams. Key advantages of in-house teams that Errington cites are, ‘the flexibility and the ability to change. We do so many promotions and so many sponsorships and billboarding that it’s impossible to have it out-of-house,’ he explains. ‘It’s imperative that it’s in-house because of the ease of it.’

Shane Neufeld, general manager of A-Channel, points to in-house teams as especially appropriate for a broadcaster identifying with a number of regional local markets. Under the A-Channel plan, common elements are fused with local images for broadcast in Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg.

‘We have a channel brand and the local franchise functions within that brand. For example: station ids – all the A-Channel stations produce their own in-house station ids, which are all local. We might shoot local landmarks and scenes so the id will be a reflection of the local community. But the logo treatment at the end of the id would be the same in each market to reinforce the A-Channel brand.’

Calgary-based David Morgan, the artist in charge of broadcast design, was instrumental in designing A-Channel’s look. ‘[In-house teams] save us production costs and it helps too that the general manager of the station is just down the hall so when we have something that we’re putting to air, he can come down and give approval,’ he says.

Morgan also points out that the costs involved in taking work out-of-house would be prohibitive and, once again, not represent the station’s culture.

Cindy Terepocki, art director for Global Vancouver, charged with broadcast design that will be used in seven stations over the country, says, ‘If we do stuff in-house we have more control and better long-term results. We can do long-term planning that out-of-house might not think of – we can look two or three years ahead and stick to a game plan.’

And is it competitive? ‘Let’s put it this way – when we redesigned the set for Regina, they went up a ratings point. I don’t want to say that’s all design, but that happened twice in the Prairies.’

Johnny Michel, vice-president production and brand communication of bctv, finds venturing out-of-house once a year is more than enough.

‘We do a lot of programming out of this station – almost 34 hours a week, and that requires graphics. A lot of them we produce in-house, but once a year we do go out-of-house for a redesign of our on-air look. It’s not viable for us to have that equipment parked here if we only use it once a year. So that’s why we go out-of-house – pure financial efficiency.’

Stephen Markle, head of on-air creative work at Showcase/Life, mentions the human element: ‘Our editing, audio, and graphic suites are all side-by-side, which allows us to work in a very integrated way. Instead of projects always being produced in a linear fashion from offline to online to audio mix, our process tends to be more spontaneous with elements being passed back and forth and everyone throwing in their two cents along the way – which if we went out-of-house would cost four cents with the mark up. With all of our post people and producers working under the same roof we’ve become a great team, and the environment is very fun and collaborative.

‘With so many channels out there, it’s become increasingly important to have a distinctive and consistent look so viewers know which network they’re watching,’ Markle continues. ‘It’s quite competitive to break through the clutter, but that just drives us harder to produce spots that will jump out.’