Well I know that two of the stations in my area (possible a 3rd, but I haven’t been able to confirm it, and these two stations are ‘twinstick’ stations) do accept both Quicktime MOV files for commercials, but they also accept commericals on Betacam SP and SX. But the MOV files are uploaded to a file-sharing site and are visible to other clients of the stations, and the stations do say, and this is a direct quote from their guide lines, “If confidentiality is an issue, it is best to send a tape.” Plus there is also the issue of compression. Sure if the video goes to Betacam SX there is compression applied there, but when you do a file, it needs to be with certain compression out of a list of compressions that the station accepts. Plus, with both stations, they ultimately put the commercials uploaded to their site right too tape before airing (in their guidelines it even says that they need three days to transfer the commercial to tape), so too avoid any loss of signal and quality, at least in my area, outputting commercials for clients on Betacam would be better than doing a file upload.
I’ve even worked at a place in the past where we shot and edited everything in NTSC, and we sent a tape of the show to a station in Europe, and we had to work with that station’s guidelines, and the main one was too send the tape on Betacam SP in NTSC because they would handle the conversion to PAL. So I know that even if a someone got me to do a commercial or show that would be aired on a network, Betacam SPwould probably be one of the options forsending the commercial/show (and I’m basing this on the fact the two stations I mentioned above belong to two different networks owned by the same parent company)and my clients would probably want the commercial looking its best on the air.
