Patent ID: 7181468

Claim:
A content management system for media publishing, comprising: a plurality of content management tools for managing media contents during a publication process, said plurality of content management tools providing transcoding to convert a format of a selected media item to a specific target format of a media slot corresponding to said selected media item; a publishing pipeline configured to operate in concert with said plurality of content management tools during the publication process to control development, distribution, and access of the media contents, wherein said publishing pipeline provides a plurality of environments for staged and organized development and publication of the media contents, the plurality of environments including a development/production environment, a staging environment, and a live environment; and a producer configured to generate and edit templates of media items and associated data when the plurality of environments is in a development/production environment, wherein each template of said templates includes a number of media slots, and each media slot defines a genre of media and a specific target format that is accepted by said each media slot, and wherein the format of said selected media item does not need to match said specific target format of said media slot corresponding to said selected media item because said transcoding by said plurality of content management tools provides the conversion of the selected media item format to said specific target format.