A Study on Feature Modeling and Data Transmission Methods of Travel Program Data Service: Focusing on the Domestic Satellite Broadcasting Environment

1-1 Research Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the tourism industry in Korea. According to a survey conducted by the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute in 2020, 49.6% of domestic tourism and 37.6% of overseas tourism were not possible due to COVID-19. The Business Sentiment Index(BSI) for the tourism industry fell from 57.3p to 31.3 in the first quarter of 2020. The decrease in tourism spending led to significant losses for the tourism industry, with damages estimated at 4 trillion won under the Tourism Promotion Act[1].

The broadcasting industry was also affected by COVID-19, especially in terms of travel program scheduling. The pandemic caused a general decrease in the desire to travel, and the fear of possible consequences of filming in an area with confirmed cases of COVID-19 led broadcasters to cancel popular travel programs. For example, KBS canceled ‘Battle Trip,’ which was the top-rated program in its time slot, and ‘Walk Expedition,’ which had maintained high ratings since 2005, was also discontinued. tvN also indefinitely suspended its flagship program, ‘The Salty Tour.’ Although travel programs have started to make a comeback since 2022, they still face the challenge of reviving the weakened desire to travel caused by the pandemic .

1-2 Related Research

Various research results have been published indicating that travel programs affect the travel psychology of viewers who watch them.

Nam revealed that travel programs not only reflect the trends of travelers at the time but also lead travel trends[2]. Ju et al. experimentally proved that watching travel programs affects the travel motivations of tourists who visit historical landmarks through a survey[3]. Cho et al. revealed that overseas travel reality programs cause emotional changes in viewers and positively impact on their destination selection and visit intentions[4]. Lee analyzed the impact of travel programs on free travelers and the factors contributing to the popularization of travel programs[5]. Kim et al. also confirmed that the motivations for watching travel programs positively impact on the intention to visit travel destinations[6]. Ko conducted research on strategic utilization of travel program to improve viewers' travel intentions[7].

These studies suggest that the travel industry and broadcasters should strategically utilize travel programs to help recover from the reduced travel psychology due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

1-3 Reaserch Subject

This study is about a travel program-bounded data service providing additional information that viewers want while watching travel programs. Specifically, considering the broadcasting environment of the domestic satellite broadcaster, the study includes the following research topics.

This study conducted a survey on preferred additional information for various genres and formats of travel programs, and designed a feature model using Feature Oriented Domain Analysis(FODA)[8], a representative feature model-based analysis method, to help a broadcaster to determine the configuration of the data service(e.g. the range of travel programs supported by the data service, additional information on travel programs, and the temporal consistency between the travel program content and additional information) while considering the broadcasting environment of the satellite broadcaster that broadcast multiple travel programs through various channels.

Additionally, this study defined the information necessary for data service operation based on the feature model and devised a method to transmit this information through the Service Information(SI)[9] of DVB-S, which is the standard of the domestic satellite broadcasting. This study also confirmed whether the domestic satellite broadcasting data service standard, DVB-MHP[10], properly handles the additional information of this study using a DVB-MHP-based data service prototype.

2-1 Targeted Travel Programs

Table 1 analyzes several domestic travel programs in terms of the genres, travelling site, cast, hosting style, main content, and other features. To ensure the universality of the study, various genres such as current affairs, entertainment, and documentaries, as well as domestic and international travel destinations were included.

Table 1.

Domestic travel program analysis examples

A brief introduction to the travel programs selected in this study is as follows. ‘Walk Expedition’ is a domestically longest-running travel program that has been airing since November 2005 until now, and it is a symbolic presence of a travel program that has formed a strong fan base. ‘Travelogue Earth’ has been broadcasted since February 2008, and according to the research conducted by the Korean Gallup Survey Research Institute in July 2022, it was selected as the most informative and educational program by Koreans[11]. ‘Battle Trip,’ which premiered in April 2016, gained high popularity to the extent that its broadcast time was moved to 9 PM in June 2017 to compete with news and dramas. Since then, it has maintained its popularity, and in December 2022, it achieved a record-breaking viewership rating of 4.3%[12]. ‘Welcome, First Time in Korea?’ which began in June 2017, features a new format that foreign guests participate. It is the only travel program in Korea dedicated exclusively to domestic travel.

In particular, considering the recent trend of many travel programs being planned as entertainment programs and the diversification of formats, two entertainment travel programs with distinct formats were included. ‘Battle Trip 2’ and ‘Welcome, First Time in Korea?’ respectively make competition among participants and the misadventures of foreign visitors experiencing Korea for the first time as their main source of entertainment.

The analysis in Table 1 was used to survey the preferred additional information of viewers for each travel program in the research.

2-2 Preferred Additional Information

This study surveyed 32 university students to define the preferred additional information that viewers want for each travel program listed in Table 1. The students were asked to watch an episode of each travel program and then were surveyed on which additional information they wanted, with the following 7 items: ① location of travel, ② travel expenses, ③ customs and traditions, ④ tourist attractions, ⑤ restaurants and food, ⑥ information on hosts, and ⑦ information on participants.

These additional information items are set based on the elements constituting the format of the travel programs to be studied, but may be changed according to the intent of the broadcaster or program provider when developing the actual travel program data service.

In addition, the students were asked to rank the items they wanted for each travel program without any limit on the number of items. Additionally, through interviews, they were asked if there were any other additional information they wanted beyond those items in the survey.

Table 2 summarizes the additional information items selected by more than 50% of the respondents for each travel program, as well as those requested by more than 50% of the interviewees. It is interesting to note that for "Travelogue Earth," 68.8% of the respondents(22 out of 32) mentioned the synopsis of the previous episode as their preferred additional information. This is likely due to the format of "Travelogue Earth," where the program is divided into 4 episodes per travel destination.

Table 2.

Preferred additional information

The quality of data services that provide additional information for broadcasting programs largely depends on how useful that information is to viewers. Therefore, this study conducted a survey to investigate viewers' preferred additional information. The survey results were directly incorporated into the feature model, aiming to assist domestic satellite broadcasting companies in designing the structure of their data services.

However, it should be noted that this survey was limited to university students, which poses a limitation in capturing the preferred additional information of diverse age groups and professionals. We will address the limitation in future research tasks.

3-1 Feature Model - FODA

In software requirements analysis methodology, a feature model is a representation of a software product or system in terms of ‘features’ such as functionalities and performances that can be perceived from a user's perspective. The goal of the feature model to provide a structured and systematic way to define and manage the features of a software system, making it easier to understand, analyze, and evolve. Feature models are commonly used in requirements engineering for configuring a software[13],[14].

FODA is a representative feature model-based analysis method that defines the formal grammar and logical meaning for relationships among features, such as ‘mandatory’ or ‘optional,’ ‘exclusive’ or ‘inclusive,’ and ‘interdependent,’ as shown in Table 3.

Table 3.

FODA grammar and formal semantics

3-2 Data Service Feature Model

This research considered the following factors in designing a feature model that satellite broadcasting companies can use when developing travel program data services.

First, the satellite broadcaster must determine the additional information that the travel program data service will provide. Since travel program genres and formats vary, and accordingly, viewers' preferred additional information may differ depending on the travel programs, viewer preference information such as shown in Table 2 can be usefully utilized.

Second, since the satellite broadcaster operates over a hundred channels, including terrestrial broadcasting, it broadcasts multiple travel programs. Therefore, the satellite broadcaster needs to determine the scope of travel programs that the travel program data service should support. This research was conducted on the travel programs in Table 1, but it is expected that there will be no significant difficulty in expanding travel programs based on this research.

Third, the satellite broadcaster can decide whether to display the additional information of a travel program in conjunction with the contents of the travel program or to show all additional information at once. Suppose the additional information is conjunctive with the content of the travel program. In the case, the data service prioritizes showing the additional information about the tourist attractions, and restaurants that currently appear in the travel program.

Fourth, the satellite broadcaster needs to transmit the information necessary for operating the data service to the data service. This information includes additional information of the travel program, and when the data service supports a plurality of travel programs, includes identification information of the travel program and the additional information belonging to each travel program. In addition, when additional information needs to be provided in conjunction with program contents, information on when each additional information should be exposed is also included. Since the information that the satellite broadcaster needs to transmit to the data service is related to other features of the data service, the feature model of this study defines the information that the satellite broadcaster must transmit as features and specifies the logical relationships with other features. Figure 1 shows the feature model for the travel program data service designed using FODA grammar that reflects the considerations described above. Viewer preference information in Table 2 is defined as a feature that must be provided for the travel programs. The feature model distinguishes whether the data service supports multiple travel programs or just one travel program and defines each case as a feature. Additionally, it distinguishes whether the additional information is conjunctive with the travel program content or not, and defines each case as a feature. And, in the feature model, the essential information that must be sent when the features are selected is also defined as features, and a 'mandatory' logical relationship is given between them.

Fig. 1.

Feature model of traveling program data service

4-1 Program Additional Information Descriptors

In order to define the additional information of the travel program specified in the feature model as a descriptor, the additional information needs to be defined in more detailed items, and the data type and size to express the content of each item must be determined. For example, the additional information <Location of travel> was defined as three detailed items, <continent name>, <country name>, and <region name>, and each detailed item is defined as a string of up to 20 characters. Another example is that the additional information <Previous episode synopsis> was defined as two detailed items, <episode number>, and <synopsis>, and <episode number> is defined as a one-byte integer and <synopsis> is defined as a string of up to 256 characters. In this way, this study defined descriptors for all additional information specified in the feature model.

Table 4 shows an example of the descriptor for the additional information <Location of travel>. The descriptor_tag is an identifier that distinguishes the descriptor and uses a value in the range (0x80~0xFE) defined by the standard for user-defined descriptors. The descriptor_length indicates the size of the descriptor in bytes after this field, and the additional_info_ descriptor_ID is a unique identifier for descriptors managed by the satellite broadcaster. continent_name_length, country_name _length, and region_name_length indicate the number of characters in the continent, country, and region names, respectively.

Table 4.

Descriptor for additional information of <Location of Travel>

4-2 Additional Information Identification Descriptor

If the data service supports multiple travel programs, it must be able to identify each travel program and its associated additional information. To address this, this study defined a descriptor that can transmit the information for identifying the travel programs supported by the data service and the additional information belonging to each travel program as shown in Table 5.

Table 5.

Descriptor for identifying travel programs and their additional information

Program_number indicates the number of the travel programs supported by the data service, while program_ID is the unique identifier for each travel program managed by the satellite broadcaster. Program_name_length indicates the number of characters in the program name, additional_info_number indicates the number of the additional information provided by each travel program, and additional_info_descriptor_ID is the unique identifier for the descriptor managed by the satellite broadcaster, as in Table 4.

4-3 Additional Information Disclosure Timing Descriptor

When displaying additional information related to the currently broadcasted content of a travel program, the data service needs to know at what point during the travel program broadcast each additional information should be displayed. To address this, this study defines a descriptor for transmitting the display timing information of additional information. The display timing information for additional information consists of the travel program identifier, the number of program sections, the start and end times of each program section, and the identifier of the additional information to be provided for each program section. Here, program section refers to a specific area that is distinguished by meaningful information within the program, such as tourist attractions, participants, restaurants, background music, etc., and the additional information provided within each program section remains constant.

Table 6 shows the descriptor defined to transmit the display timing information for additional information of a travel program. The section_number represents the number of program sections, and the section_ID is the unique identifier of each program section. The start_time and end_time are the start and end times of each program section, respectively, represented as an offset in seconds from the start time of the travel program.

Table 6.

Descriptor for displaying time of additional information