Work · Case study
Station onboarding for 108 CTV app launches
Shipping the apps was step one. Getting 108 local station teams ready to run them was the bigger lift. The training, documentation, and support model that made the rollout supportable.
Overview
An app launched in the store does not equal an app live to viewers. For the 108 local CTV app rollout, the work that mattered most happened inside the stations: training the local teams who would manage content on the CMS, run support, and own the app's day-to-day operation. The onboarding program is what turned a product into a sustained operation across every market.
The problem
Local station teams have lived in a broadcast world for decades. Connected TV is a different operating model. The work was to take what those teams already knew about news, content, and audience and add the parts they needed to run a streaming product without overwhelming them.
My role
- Built the training program: live sessions, recorded walkthroughs, and reference docs covering the CMS, the app behaviors, and the support paths
- Set up the operational handoff so stations had a clear ownership model on day one of their app being live
- Defined the launch readiness checklist that every station signed off before going live in the store
- Sat in on the early markets directly to find out where the docs were wrong and the workflow was confusing, then iterated
- Created the feedback loop so what stations learned in production fed back into the product roadmap
Product decisions and trade-offs
- Train the people who'll do the work, not the people who'll watch them do it. The training was built for content editors and station ops, not for managers. The hands-on people got the hands-on guide.
- Documentation as a product deliverable. The station playbook shipped at launch, not as a follow-up. It was treated as part of the launch artifact.
- Launch readiness as a hard gate. Stations didn't go live until they could demonstrate they could publish, support, and troubleshoot on their own. That added a week here and there. It removed a much bigger tax later.
- Iterate from the first wave. The first ten markets were learning markets for the program itself. The training material got better in real time, which made the back ninety-eight much smoother.
Outcomes
108 station teams launched into operating their own CTV app, supported by a shared training program and a documented playbook. The model that came out of this is what the company uses for future digital-video station rollouts.
What I learned
Onboarding is product work. The thing that determines whether a launched app actually serves viewers is whether the team behind it can keep it running. Designing that workflow is part of designing the app.
The first markets pay for the rest. Investing in the early markets to find the seams in the program is how you make the later ones cheap.
Documentation is the trace of operational thinking. If you can't write down what should happen, you don't yet know what should happen.