Long-time TV clipping and monitoring service, VMS (video monitoring service) announced on Friday that they’ve shutdown their service as they file for bankruptcy (chapter 7, evidently). While their website is no longer working, the note on their site yesterday (Sunday Aug 28, 2011) read as follows:

The VMS Board with the input of qualified professionals have elected to close VMS.

Unfortunately almost all VMS personnel have been terminated effective today.

The decision has been made after exhaustively evaluating many different options and with sadness for our loyal staff and customers.

At some point in the very near future a Trustee will be appointed to liquidate VMS. We anticipate the trustee will make future communications with customers.

VMS thanks all customers for their loyal support.

My perspective, as the CEO and founder of SnapStream (a company that makes TV recording and search software used by many of the media monitoring companies out there today): As a member of the International Association of Broadcast Monitors, IABM, I had met a lot of execs from VMS over the years– but none that still worked there this past Friday. Based on conversations I had with former VMS folks this morning, Friday’s conclusion started with a big round of layoffs over a year ago. And since then, VMS had been trying to both cut costs and become profitable and they had been simultaneously trying to sell the company. VMS was one of the oldest companies in the TV monitoring and clipping business and as such, their cost structure was a lot higher than some of the companies that entered the market after them like Critical Mention and TV Eyes. I don’t think VMS ever adapted to this new market reality– for example, they still had 200 people in Kentucky that were manually reviewing lots of daily TV recordings and creating improved transcripts for them. Meanwhile, I think the market had moved on to “good enough” and cheaper services. Also, there were new options for recording and searching television (ie our product, SnapStream) that also ate into their customer base.

Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that SnapStream provides an alternative for folks who want to put their finger on the pulse of television… so if your organization gets mentioned on television a lot, SnapStream might be the right fit for you. Contact us if you think we might be a fit.

More information on VMS’s shutdown here on the O’Dwyer’s blog. I’ll continue to post updates as I hear about them.

Also, here’s a search on twitter for mentions of “VMS” (warning, a lot of “false positives” in the search results… While it probably wasn’t their biggest problem, VMS also had a search engine optimization (SEO) problem that went straight back to their name. ‘VMS’ or even ‘video monitoring service’ is about as non-unique of a name as they come!)

First of all, who knew the East Coast of the U.S. was prone to seismic activity? The last earthquake on record for the region was 1897!

When breaking news unfolds in a flash, SnapStream comes in extremely handy to rack up mentions about a particular topic. Boom, boom, boom. Today’s rattling event is a prime example of our powerful TV search technology at work. In a matter of seconds, I pulled up 100+ hits and climbing for the keyword “earthquake,” based on the local and national news channels recording at our office in Houston. (What you can record, is what you can search.)

How is your organization monitoring the East Coast quake? See examples of my TV search findings (click images to enlarge).

P.S. To all of our customers and partners in the DC and NE area, we hope you’re doing OK!

You just watched that video, right? That was our very own Sam Houston, the Academy-award-winning actor we hired to document our field trip. Just kidding, Sam’s actually our multi-talented inside salesman. (No joke, this boy can sing! Check out his vocals here.)

Now on to the outing! Not far from the metropolis of Houston lies a well-manicured city called Sugar Land, named righteously so for its rich history steeped in sugar cane. We recently visited Sugar Land’s City Hall (only a 30-minute drive from our office) to get a real insider’s view of the city government complex and of course, their extra sweet SnapStream setup!

We met with Brent Neeley, municipal television producer at the City of Sugar Land, who gave us a full tour through the facility, top to bottom. He has a cool job which involves capturing and broadcasting the city council meetings and proceedings onto the City of Sugar Land’s local channel. Plus, Brent manages the entire TV monitoring operation for the city.

“Getting SnapStream was the best investment we ever made.”
- Brent Neeley, municipal television producer of the City of Sugar Land

Brent keeps the SnapStream appliance powered up and protected in the temperature-controlled and key-padded server room (very secure). But, he accesses all of his TV recordings from his desktop PC upstairs over the LAN connection. Sugar Land has six analog tuners dedicated to recording the four major networks, the city’s local network and a wildcard for ad hoc news needs.

Now, I won’t sugarcoat it for you, this is what Sugar Land was working with before they switched to SnapStream in 2009.

While TiVo works great as a DVR for at-home use, it’s just not brawny enough to accomplish the robust TV monitoring tasks of city-level operation. That’s simply not what TiVo was created to do. Realizing the City of Sugar Land’s profound workflow transformation, it’s no wonder that Brent said, “Getting SnapStream was the best investment we ever made.”