AI Takes Over Control Room and Announcer Roles; One Producer Makes Local News

From Cue-Sheet Arrangement to Video Rendering, All in One System
Production Time Cut from 3 Hours to 1
Announcers and Weathercasters Are Virtual Characters

Kim Seongjin, a manager on SK Broadband's Programming Review and Planning Team, demonstrates "B tv AI-Studio." / SK Broadband.

As artificial intelligence (AI) takes over video production, the production structure of local broadcasting is changing. A single producer now handles news production that once required control room staff and an announcer. On November 2, we saw how this works at Namsan Sowol Tower, 24 Toegye-ro, Jung-gu, where SK Broadband’s AI production solution, “B tv AI-Studio,” is in use.

During the demonstration, Kim Seongjin, manager of the Programming Review and Planning Team at SK Broadband, took us through the entire process, from entering a news script to checking the audio and synthesizing the video. This was made possible by AI-Studio, developed by SK Broadband and SK Telecom. In 2023, the companies created an AI reporter for testing, and in 2024 expanded the system to all reporters in the newsroom. After developing a production interface based on a broadcast cue sheet in 2025, they established a scheduled news system early in 2026. With a one-person production system in place, the number of scheduled news bulletins increased from one at 7 p.m. to five.

Production begins on an interface resembling a broadcast cue sheet. The producer selects the broadcast date, coverage area, and announcer, then arranges news footage and other video material in order. The first line of the input box is for the announcer’s script, and the second is for the narration to accompany the video footage. A standard opening script is provided, so only the necessary parts need to be changed. Once the text is entered, the audio is generated automatically. If an announcer’s pronunciation sounds awkward, the producer changes the spelling and adjusts the spacing to control the pacing. If everything sounds right, the producer selects a studio background and begins video rendering. Each segment is processed in parallel before all the segments are combined. “Switching to a server-based system next year could shorten the production time further,” Kim said.

“B tv AI-Studio” AI anchor production screen/SK Broadband.

The announcers and weathercasters are not real people. Using SK Telecom technology, the team created two AI characters for each role. They used only the body shapes from footage of real announcers, then created and synthesized the faces and voices separately. “If we used real people as they are, we would have to keep paying for their image rights,” Kim said. The voices come in three tones—standard, bright, and subdued—and there are three outfits. The tone is chosen to suit the nature of the story.

AI reporters, by contrast, use the real faces and voices of actual reporters. The system is trained on three to four hours of recorded scripts, then automatically reads a story aloud when it is entered. Reporters write the stories themselves, reflecting the principle that they are responsible for their reporting. If a reporter leaves the company, their AI model is deleted immediately.

With AI taking over tasks previously done by people, production efficiency has improved significantly. “A 20-minute news bulletin featuring people takes about three hours to produce, but with AI-Studio, it takes only one to one and a half hours,” Kim explained. The more efficient system has also enabled a tighter schedule for regularly scheduled broadcasts. According to SK Broadband, the ratings for its local channel, ch B tv, rose from 0.08% in 2025 to 0.22% in May 2026. The channel also climbed from 42nd to 10th in the B tv Cable channel rankings.

'B tv AI Studio' AI announcer production screen/SK Broadband.

Reporters’ daily routines have changed, too. Instead of writing stories for the 7 p.m. news, they can now report on what they covered during the day in the next scheduled bulletin. “If a court issues a ruling at 2 p.m., we can include it in the 4 p.m. news,” said Kim Gwan-sik, a reporter on SK Broadband’s Programming Review and Planning Team. “That gives us more time to do additional reporting in the field.”

For now, producers still have to manually correct the pronunciation of AI announcers and other AI voices. They tend to mispronounce unfamiliar words and numbers, so each new word needs to be checked and added to the system. Weather news also requires producers to enter three sections—today’s forecast, local details, and the weekly outlook—and add background and weather information. SK Broadband is upgrading the system to reduce this manual work. The company plans to add a feature that automatically generates weather scripts using Korea Meteorological Administration data and apply more sophisticated voice-analysis technology to captions. “Even now, caption timing is more than 95% accurate,” Kim said.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.