Microsoft is helping Seattle's KING 5 News cover the Washington state U.S. presidential primary tonight. The TV station will use Power BI and the large Surface Hub PC to display the data about the primary results.
KING 5 was the first local TV station to begin using the large Surface Hub PC back in February and used it, along with Microsoft's Power BI data analytics tools, to offer viewers details of the "Super Tuesday" primaries on March 26. For the local Washington state primary, Microsoft says it is helping KING with some additional Power BI features:
This time around, the Power BI report will showcase more data for increased interactivity with a county-by-county breakdown of votes for both the Republican and Democratic parties, including Republican convention delegate allocations. We worked closely with KING 5 News to design a report to meet the branding needs and functionality required by a leading media company in the region.KING 5 News is using Power BI to create a report with visualizations to help them tell the story of the election tailored to a TV broadcast. The report has to stay up to date as data is uploaded from sources like the Associated Press and the Washington State Secretary of State's office. The data is loaded into an Azure SQL Database and into the report using our Direct Query technology.
In addition, the Power BI app recently added a Surface Hub presentation mode that KING 5 will use on the air:
This is a critical component to KING 5's storytelling capabilities, as KING 5 News' reporters can now use Surface Hub's pen to fluidly make notes on the report so viewers clearly identify important insights. This already would have been quite a compelling use of Power BI, but we wanted to do more. So we are using the Power BI publish to web capability to add the same report used on air to KING 5 News' website and KING 5 News' Android, iPhone and iPad mobile apps. This second screen experience allows KING 5 News to provide engaging election coverage beyond the studio, something very unique at the local level in broadcast journalism.
