Executives at the massive Harris Corp. (N2502) booth just clued me in about their plans to better interlink their numerous broadcast content management technologies with the company’s growing digital signage initiatives, built around its InfoCaster digital signage solution.

The notion is that Harris is working right now to port many of its broadcast tool sets into the building of new out-of-home market digital signage solutions that could, down the road, pave the way for more revenue opportunities for businesses and municipalities and, potentially, broadcasters themselves.

Michael Bernhardt, Harris’ director of product marketing for graphics systems, says the company is working to take existing broadcast-oriented asset management tools and use them to manage signage neteworks. He and Harris sales executive Ted Dembicki hope to see the initiative lead to a managed service without a big IT back end, and also, new business for broadcasters by allowing them to utilize their existing content creation, marketing, and sales bandwidth to offer local communities sophisticated out-of-home networks managed by the broadcasters themselves.

Both gentlemen suggest more “crossover” of broadcast technologies with networked signage technologies is coming from Harris, and the industry generally, as broadcast, IT, and AV all march further down the integration path together.

–MG