Software developed by The Associated Press Broadcast division for producing, timing, and directing television news programs. The system is scalable and flexible enough to handle anything from the local news at a small-market station to large networks spanning remote bureaus in multiple cities.
The basic organization of each news broadcast is called a "run-down" (US) or "run-order" (UK). The run-down is a graph listing scripts, video, character generator data, teleprompter control, director notations, camera operator cues, and timing estimates for each section of the show.
ENPS integrates scripts, wire feeds, device control, and production information in a server/thin-client environment. On the server side, ENPS runs an identical mirror server (called a "buddy") at all times as a fail-safe. If the primary server fails, all users are redirected to the buddy server until such time as the primary comes back on-line. All document changes are queued on the buddy and copied back to the primary automatically when it returns to production.
Device control can be managed either through a serial interface, or the MOS (Media Object Server) protocol. MOS functionality is included in the base ENPS license, but may be an extra add-on for the device that needs to interface with ENPS.
The ENPS client is primarily driven by Active X controls pushed from the IIS (Internet Information Services) on the server side. The client, therefore, will only run in the Microsoft Windows operating system.
ENPS was originally developed by The Associated Press in the United Kingdom. This causes some confusion where certain parts of the user interface contain British English in the US version.
Interesting Trivia: The user interface for the ENPS client has small green dots, called "rovers." The term "rover" comes from the floating, bouncing balls in the TV show The Prisoner.