5 Painful Ways Your Entertainment Data Can Bite You

When you’ve invested the time, energy, and capital—you want your entertainment data to dazzle you. Not bite you where it hurts.

And rest assured, when entertainment data bites? The fangs sink deep into tender, fleshy parts that you do not want pierced.

Here are the incisors you want to avoid at all costs:

Irrelevant or wrong image.
Ah, yes. Images. Here’s a bite that can cause temporary blurring of vision.

The wrong image? That’s just obviously…wrong. If you’re showing an image for the current season of Two and a Half Men and Charlie Sheen is in the image instead of Ashton Kutcher? That’s a big problem. Because, as you well know, somebody out there will notice.

And that’s if it’s a benign misplacement of image. Because not everyone can know every show, images must be correct and APPROPRIATE every time. And what do we mean by that?

Appropriate means you shouldn’t look for a movie poster of a golf event. And what if you discover a movie poster of Caddyshack being used for a live golf event? Well, prepare to treat the wound and we hope the fangs don’t sink in too deeply.

At FYI, not only do we have an incredible database of rich media images, we’re specialists at making sure each and every one is correct, appropriate, and clear.

Irrelevant or wrong data.
Once again, wrong is wrong and that’s just wrong. Think for a second about all the ways wrong data can have you in its jaws, gnawing away.

Improperly delivered viewing info (viewers expecting one show and getting another), viewers complaints, advertiser issues (wrong program or episode’s subject matter in direct conflict with sponsor’s business), rights or tracking losses…well, if you’ve been bitten by one of these nasty blunders or have another tale of falling victim to wrong data, you know the pain bad data brings.

Duping of records.
You surely want to put a muzzle on this.

Duping of records is the data pitfall of two records being created for the same piece of data.  Whether the two records differ slightly—one has the name of the gaffer, the other does not—or whether the records are identical and there are just two separate program IDs, duplication of the same piece of data?

Well, that’s not just a bite. It comes with a good deal of venom, too.

Two records for the same information creates a rights tracking nightmare—as well as complicating commercial scheduling, creating the potential for duplication of programming on the air (program runs out of schedule), and generally disrupting any semblance of control over that piece of data.

Luckily, FYI has built-in procedures—like our own program IDs which we can use to perform the function of second-party verification for clients—that spot duping and a variety of other data maladies.

In fact, FYI is so good at maintaining data that we’ve identified duping on the part of some very big networks—before they were aware of the problem.

What if a show changes networks? New program ID? We’ve got an answer for that. And every single other contingency that can pop up to create bite marks on your efforts.

Confusing or incomplete metadata.
What’s the difference between an announcer and a narrator? How do you differentiate between the host, the anchor, and the color announcer for an NFL football game with a pre-game show?

If you haven’t thought about these things—and if you haven’t made provisions for them with well-considered metadata fields? People will be confused, inaccurate, and not very happy.

Because, you see, the data can bite them, too.

Data can also be confusing with something as simple as an open data field within a record. “Nulling” out irrelevant fields like the play-by-play announcer for a soap opera makes the data clearer and more precise. It is telling the computer—or any interested humans using the data—“We have determined that this field does not pertain to this record.”

Much more decisive and explicit than a field left empty because there was no data to input.

Not season, episode, or series explicit.
People without FYI’s devotion to entertainment data probably aren’t constantly thinking about the distinctions in programming.

For example, half hour length cartoon programming typically contains three distinct, unique, and individual produced smaller units. Those single cartoons can appear in a myriad of places.

So, when FYI gets a program like that, it’s even broken down into the individual units. Anything over a minute long, whenever possible, is identified and then reiterated wherever it appears.

The problem of explicitly clear data is exponentially multiplied with a franchise like Star Trek. A myriad of films, multiple series, and crossovers within all of it—directors, actors, writers, you name it.

If each element is not distinct and unique? Good luck differentiating between Jeffrey Combs SEVEN different Star Trek roles along with the series and episode titles. From rights tracking to program searches to fan club info.

And how are shows related to each other? Example: Saturday Night Live was called NBC’s Saturday Night Live for the first five years. Should the data be separate for these two distinct shows? After all, the average person would expect the original Not Ready For Primetime Players to be found in association with Saturday Night Live, not the lesser known title.

What’s the answer? Well, the answer is that at FYI, someone is thinking about the tiniest of data details just like this. Why? First off, we don’t like being bitten.

But the real reason is devotion. A commitment. We’re specialists in entertainment data. And, if we’re not championing every tiny byte of factual accuracy and detail? The kind that brings about technologically fluid results with human considerations in mind? WHO ELSE WILL?

So to avoid dangers of the sharp and nasty teeth of data pitfalls (and these are just a few off the top of our head) contact FYI. We’ll turn those painful bites into productive bytes.