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Despite staff cuts and tight budgets, JCPenney aggressively puts video to work as an integral part of its corporate communication and training programs.

The heart of JCPenney’s broadcast facility is its Technical Operations Center, which contains not only a vast array of routers and servers, but also more than 100 tape decks for tape duplication.

“The remodeling project is being driven by the need to get all of the production facilities together,” says Alan Langford, the facility's creative production and network manager. More specifically, he explains, the goal of this remodeling project is to relocate the five Avid editing suites that are currently housed on the third floor at JCPenney headquarters to the basement where the rest of the television facilities are located. Once that's done, he says, all of the facility's equipment will be tightly integrated, making it easy to share files and move video around without having to run up and down the stairs. That's especially important when you're talking about running around a building as big as this one.

Though just three stories high, the JCPenney headquarters in Plano, Texas is a mammoth structure that covers four or five city blocks and houses some 3,000 employees. The video facilities are located in the basement of the sprawling building, and a quick tour reveals the credibility of Langford's claim that it is one of the largest television facilities in the Dallas area, larger even than the studios of many local TV stations.

Langford's tour of the facility starts in Edit Bay One where chief engineer Scott Hamil is working to finish the installation of an Avid Symphony system. The room previously housed one of the department's two linear tape-based editing systems. But that system is being eliminated to make room for the Symphony. “Scott hasn't been getting much sleep lately,” Langford says. “He's been putting in 12-hour days trying to get everything done.

“At least he has something nice to watch while he's working,” adds Langford with a chuckle, pointing to a nearby monitor where fashion models are showing off the latest line of JCPenney swimwear. “We shot that here a couple weeks ago. We'll use that piece for our in-store videos, and we'll also broadcast it out to the stores to give the associates a preview of what's coming up.”

From here, the tour moves on, and it takes a good 45 minutes to see everything. There are four more edit rooms, which house three Avid Xpress systems, one Avid Xpress DV system, and one linear tape-based system; three stages of varying size, each equipped with a collection of studio cameras, robotic cameras, lights, and backdrops; two control rooms with every device a TV station could want; a transmission room; an audio post room complete with a voice-over booth; and a tape duplication room with 100 1/2in. decks. There's even a green room, a makeup room, and a crew lounge.

On the upper floors, there's a computer graphics and animation department, a distance learning studio, and a large meeting room with a stage and the capacity to seat a live audience of several hundred.

From Control Room A, staff members direct the taping of a segment with JCPenney Company CEO Allen Questrom.

By the time the tour is over, it's easy to understand why Langford is so proud of the facility. It is, he admits, unusual for a corporation to have such an extensive studio. At the same time, it would be wrong to conclude that Langford is living in a corporate video paradise with free rein to acquire whatever equipment he wants. Like many other corporate video departments, the one at JCPenney feels the sting of budget cuts and the pressure of tightening belts. Two years ago, the department lost 50% of its staff in a layoff, and the number of on-staff producers was cut from 12 to three.

At the same time, the adoption of new video technologies has proceeded at a slow and careful pace. Until about two years ago, virtually all of the department's video projects were finished on linear tape-based systems, and even now almost all of the cameras owned by the department are old Beta SP or Digi Beta units. Only just now is the department beginning to experiment with the DVCPRO format, having recently bought two Ikegami HL-V75W DVCPRO field cameras and several DVCPRO decks.

Meanwhile, more cutting-edge technologies, such as streaming and DVD are still on the wish list, and HD video barely registers on the radar screen as something worth considering.

JCPenney’s broadcast facilities include three different stages; Stage 1 is set up for a styling salon shoot.

But even with those limitations, Langford and his staff are able to pump out an incredible volume of work. Each week they broadcast via satellite 25 to 30 hours of video programming to their stores — programming that consists of everything from seasonal sales meetings to how-to seminars to interactive training sessions. In addition, they produce hundreds of hours of programming each year that is distributed on tape either for viewing by JCPenney personnel or for use in JCPenney's in-store video displays that are often located in the junior's and young men's departments of the stores.

In all cases, the goal of the video is the same — to serve as a corporate communication and training tool that enhances the company's efficiency and bottom-line profitability. It would be fair to say there are few corporations that can rival JCPenney in the extent to which video is used for that purpose.

Ask Tim Park what he likes best about working at JCPenney, and he doesn't hesitate. “For me, the most rewarding part of the job is just getting to play TV,” he says. “As long as I can play TV, I'm happy.”

Park has been “playing” at TV for a long time. He got his start in the broadcast world in 1979 and has worked as a shooter and editor for a couple of TV stations. He's worked in sports, shooting the Dallas Cowboys and Dallas Mavericks, and he's worked on feature films, television commercials, and various live events. In 1998, he joined JCPenney where he is currently a senior producer — one of the three to survive the layoff a couple years ago. Prior to working here, he'd spent a couple years in the corporate video department at Radio Shack.

Park says he ended up migrating to the corporate video world primarily to get away from the hectic lifestyle of the broadcast world. “I loved doing broadcast,” he says, “but I was on-call all the time. I could be called out to shoot anything at any given moment. And since I was ready to start a family, I just wanted to get away from that kind of demand. In corporate television, you can schedule things pretty much according to your store hours, so more often than not, I can walk out of here at 5:00 in the afternoon.”

The tradeoff, of course, is that the subject matter in the corporate world is not always as exciting as in the broadcast world. As you'd expect, Park and the other staff members shoot a fair number of talking head videos, which is pretty dry stuff any way you slice it. Still, says Park, “we try to make all our productions fun. Anytime we can come up with a creative angle or use some humor in delivering our message, we try to do that. So each and every piece is a challenge in terms of trying to figure out how to deliver this message in an interesting and hopefully entertaining way.”

Perhaps his favorite things to shoot are the fashion shows and the bits for JCPenney's hair salons. “The styling salon does a lot of stuff,” he says. “They're probably a little more on the edge because of the clientele they have. They tend to be a little wilder group.”

Such videos are often vendor-supported by companies such as Paul Mitchell or American Crew. One recent American Crew-sponsored video, for example, focused on new hairstyles for men and featured several models and a stylist giving step-by-step instructions on how to customize different cuts for different shaped heads. And, of course, there was advice on how to use American Crew's products to maintain proper hair care. Such a piece, which also featured a splashy opening sequence and an appearance by American Crew president David Raccuglia, gives the JCPenney staff a chance to stretch their creative wings.

Park says he also enjoys the opportunities he has to use the JCPenney facilities for various pro bono projects. Among other things, they've done work for the American Cancer Society and the National Council of LaRaza, a nonprofit organization that works on behalf of the Hispanic community. And just this past summer, the department helped Dallas put together its bid to be the host city for the 2012 Olympics. “Although Dallas was cut in the first round, we produced their bid document video for them,” says Park. “It was about five minutes long, and we were very pleased with what we did with it. We were able to get a lot of partners in the community to help with it without having to spend a lot of money.”

Freelance cameraman Stephen Mitchell captures the action as a hairdresser demonstrates proper hairstyling techniques.

On a day-to-day basis, however, the projects are of a more mundane — though always very practical — nature. There are videos to be made about the best way to manage your 401k plan, videos about new catalog distribution procedures, and videos about new packaging and labeling standards. There are also live broadcasts that need to be conducted, such as executive vice president and CEO Vanessa Castagna's regularly scheduled monthly program in which she provides sales reports and brings in guest speakers to talk about anything from inventory strategies to personnel changes. Often these broadcasts are done from the upstairs meeting room in front of a live audience.

These sessions are pretty interactive and allow for an exchange of ideas between people, according to Park. “For example,” he says, “you might have a person in the jewelry division that just bought a shipment of jewelry from the Orient and they had to move it thru L.A. during the strike. Maybe they were able to do that successfully and still be on time, whereas somebody in another division may have had problems. So this kind of forum with a live audience allows people to ask questions and learn from one another.”

Of all the projects the video department works on in the course of the year, by far the most challenging are the three seasonal sales meetings (SSMs) that the company conducts just prior to each new selling season. These events are designed to roll out the company's strategy for the next season, and all the management teams in all the stores around the country are expected to tune in for the broadcast.

The broadcasts consist of both taped material as well as live broadcasts from company executives speaking in front of an audience in the upstairs meeting room. Preparing for the event takes all of the video department's energy.

“We'll spend days taping all of our leaders from each one of the merchandise divisions,” says Langford, as he explains the scope of the work involved. “For the last one, we had something like 48 presenters we had to videotape. Then Tim and some of the other crew members will go out to a local store and do a store walk-through so we can show everyone how they should be displaying their merchandise in each department — women's, men's, jewelry, housewares, and so on. We'll do those shoots from like 4 a.m. to 10 a.m. before the stores open. Then we have to edit all that stuff together.

“Usually we have about a 30-day period to turn all this stuff around,” he adds. “So it gets pretty hectic in here.”

The practice of broadcasting these SSMs is actually a fairly new one and is a perfect example of how Langford's department is constantly looking for new ways to make itself useful to the company. Two years ago, JCPenney would fly its regional and district managers into Plano for these meetings. They'd spend several days soaking up the information, and then carry back the key messages to their store managers who, in turn, would pass the information on to department managers, assistant department managers, and sales associates.

Now that the meetings are broadcast, the company is saving money in travel costs, and because people are spending less time traveling and more time in the stores and offices, the company is also gaining productivity.

JCPenney began using these meeting broadcasts right around Sept. 11. Although Langford says the terrorist attacks were not the catalyst prompting the company to move in this direction, they did help confirm the feeling that the strategy to reduce travel was a good idea.

But of all the benefits that the company is deriving by broadcasting these meetings, Langford is convinced that the most important may simply be that they allow company executives to deliver a consistent message to all employees. “With the broadcasts everybody hears the same thing at the same time and gets the same message,” he says. “Under the old system, the regional managers would tell their district managers something, then they'd tell their store managers something, and they'd tell their staff something. This way everyone hears it all at the same time in the same way.”

Editor John Fillo is hard at work in one of the three Avid Xpress editing rooms located at the JCPenney facility.

Park agrees, adding that the broadcasts “also give the store manager the discretion to bring in anybody he wants to have see the message directly. So if he really likes what's being presented by the women's division, he can bring in any of his people from that department to see that piece.”

The company's relatively recent decision to use its video technology to turn its SSMs into a broadcast event is fully in keeping with a corporate culture that's long been supportive of finding new ways to use video technology to advance the company's corporate objectives.

When JCPenney first built its broadcast facilities back in the mid-1980s, its main purpose was to support the company's unique decentralized buying process. Unlike most of its competitors, JCPenney allowed each store manager to decide what products they wanted to sell in their store. To help the store managers make those decisions, the company would do live broadcasts showing all the available merchandise from which the stores could choose.

“Sometimes these broadcasts would go on for eight hours,” recalls Langford, “and the store managers would just sit there and watch them and make notes about what they liked and what they didn't like. And they would actually buy their merchandise that way.”

Three years ago, all that changed as JCPenney began adopting a more centralized buying process that took the buying decision out of the hands of the store managers. When that happened, there was no longer a need for those marathon merchandise buying broadcasts. And at that point, Langford and his department had to find new ways to make video useful to the company.

“If we had to go out today and rebuild this place,” Langford admits, “we wouldn't have the kind of stages and facilities we have downstairs today. But they're paid for, they're here. So it's up to us to figure out how to take advantage of them.” Broadcasting the SSMs were a perfect way to do that.

“I think most people that do business in the corporate world understand the value of being able to instantaneously communicate a message via broadcast,” adds Park. “But I think the reason that our organization has used broadcast in such a big way is that our executives have always been aware of the technology and how much of an impact it can play. And everyone that works in the building really understands the benefits of having it here. They appreciate the value in being able to communicate with all the stores instantly. By providing that ability, I think we help with the bottom line. We can help drive sales by keeping our associates informed and by training them.”

This drive to continually find new ways to make their department more useful to the company also extends to the practical way Langford and Park think about technology. They never buy technology for technology's sake. Their first priority is always to find ways to use existing technology more efficiently, and then beyond that to bring in new technology that can offer the most immediate impact on productivity.

In the last two years, the most important technology purchases the department has made have been Avid's Unity system and the Symphony system, both of which have allowed the department to realize the benefits of an integrated, nonlinear workflow.

Prior to the arrival of the Unity system two years ago, the four Avid Xpress systems were primarily used as offline systems to generate an EDL that was hand-delivered to a tape-based editing suite for final mastering. Moreover, because the systems weren't connected, people couldn't share files, and editors would often have to take turns using the workstations if the files for different projects happened to be on the same machine.

“Adding the Unity made a world of difference,” says Park. “For example, in producing our seasonal meeting broadcasts, we can have several editors working on different segments at the same time, and then marry them all up into a show reel before going to tape. It's also a lot easier to handle client-driven revisions. In a linear world, you may have to lay off 30 minutes of reel to make one change. Using the Avids, we can make virtually any revision in a few keystrokes during the client final approval process.”

As for the Avid Symphony system, he says, “that has given us the capability we used to only have in a linear tape room. We now finish virtually everything with the NLEs. We can cut a piece in an Xpress room and move it into Symphony for a final polish. In addition, the Symphony gives us room to grow into doing more complex things. Its title tool is stronger than any we've used in the past, and it has great color correction capabilities.”

The recent holiday remodeling of the facility represents the culmination of this effort to create a more integrated production process. Among other things, says Park, by moving the Avids downstairs, they can be tied directly into the acquisition process. “When we are doing a studio shoot we used to go straight to tape and then digitize the tape to Avid for finishing,” explains Park. “Now we can digitize the studio feed, or any other source, straight to the Avid, so we can capture the video as we're shooting. We'll roll a backup on tape, but the capture time is actually happening as we are shooting.”

With improvements to the production process now all but complete, Langford admits his thoughts have turned to ways he'd like to improve the company's method of distributing video. At the top of his wish list is the desire to move out of the VHS world and into DVD. But since that would require not only some new DVD replication equipment, but also the purchase of DVD systems for all JCPenney stores, that project will have to wait until it gets some corporate funding.

Even more expensive would be fulfilling his wish to move into streaming. Streaming technology, he says, would provide an excellent way to distribute in-store video to point-of-sale displays, eliminating the current VHS distribution method, as well as eliminating the need for employees to gather in a central area to watch video broadcasts. The ability to stream video directly to the desktop would be an especially welcome solution at the Plano headquarters where meeting space is always limited.

But as nice as it would be to have streaming capabilities, Langford is acutely aware that implementing it would be enormously expensive. Right now, the company only has 56K lines going out to the stores, so introducing streaming would require a major overhaul to the company's networking infrastructure.

“I'd love to be able to do it,” Langford says. Despite the benefits streaming might offer, he acknowledges he has yet to make a solid business case for the technology. Indeed, truth be told, he has not convinced himself that the kind of video communication currently being broadcast to the stores via the satellite TV network would change or improve much with streaming technology.

Ultimately, he concludes, any changes to the company's networking infrastructure would only happen in response to an overall corporate need. And with that in mind, his main strategy right now is to work as close as possible with the IT department to be sure that his concerns about video distribution are taken into account as new corporate-wide IT plans are formulated.

“Maybe within the next year we'll be able to do some streaming within the Plano building,” he says hopefully. “But that's a totally different issue from going out to 1,100 different locations. I think we're a long way from making any moves in that direction.”

Sidebar
Embracing Distance Learning

Donna Eells and Robert Grimm from JCPenney’s HR department conduct a telecourse from a stage specifically set up to handle distance learning.

NOT ALL OF THE PROGRAMS BROADCAST OVER JCPenney's satellite TV network are created by Alan Langford's associate communications department. The company also sports an Interactive Distance Learning (IDL) division run under the auspices of the Human Resources Department, and every week they broadcast various “telecourses” out to JCPenney employees.

The telecourses are broadcast from a small staging area located on the first floor of the Plano headquarters. Instructors stand at one of two podiums located on the stage, and up on the wall in large letters are the words “The Learning Place.”

The Learning Place stage is pretty much a do-it-yourself affair that comes equipped with robotic cameras that the instructors can control on the fly or program ahead of time. While Langford's department helps maintain the equipment and schedules the broadcasts, the HR department pretty much handles the production of the telecourses on their own.

More than just one-way broadcasts, the Learning Place sessions are interactive affairs. Viewers around the country interact with the instructor by using a distance learning system sold by OneTouch of San Jose. From the viewers' perspective, the system consists of a set-top, VCR-sized box that's hooked up to their television. One or more keypads are attached to the box on extendable cords, and viewers use these to communicate with the presenter.

The sessions start with each viewer identifying themselves to the system by keying in their social security number, allowing the corporate office to track who's watching the broadcast. As the telecourse proceeds, the instructor can ask multiple choice questions and viewers respond by pressing the appropriate letter on their keypads. The system then quickly calculates the results of such a poll and displays the results graphically.

The keypads also come equipped with microphones that allow viewers to ask questions. To do that, viewers simply press a button that lets the instructor know they want to speak. The system lets the instructor easily identify the viewer and then open up a two-way audio line for them.
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