# A hundred screens, one edit: running an estate > An estate is structured once and then it is boring. One channel per role instead of one per screen, every screen tuned to the channel for its job, and the whole thing watched from one board. Plus the limits an estate buyer should check before committing. Source: https://channelos.tv/academy/a-hundred-screens-one-edit Published: 2026-10-29 Track: One channel, a hundred screens Lesson 4 of 4 Plan: Agency Author: The ChannelOS team **To run signage across many locations, make the channel the unit of work and cut the estate along role rather than geography: one channel for every front counter, one for every window, one for every staff room. Each screen tunes into the channel for its job, so a price change is one edit that reaches every screen playing that board, and a new site is a pairing plus a channel choice.** --- ## The short version, in 6 steps 1. Decide the roles in your estate before you pair anything, and make one channel per role rather than one per screen. 2. Name each channel after the job it does, so Front counter is still true next year. 3. On the new site's TV, open play.channelos.tv in its own browser and scan the pairing code with your phone. 4. Name the screen after the site and the position, such as Leeds front counter. 5. Tune the new screen to the channel for its role. 6. Open the Display Board, switch to the By channel view, and check the new screen's live preview matches the rest of its group. --- Nine sites, fourteen screens, and the only record of what each one is showing is a spreadsheet one person keeps. Site ten opens in March. The screens are fine; they were never the problem. The problem is that changing the Leeds board goes through a human being, and that human being has annual leave. **An estate is structured once and then it is boring. One channel per role rather than one per screen, every screen tuned to the channel for its job, the lot watched from one board. After that a new site is a pairing and a channel choice, and a price change is one edit reaching every screen on that board.** Two things before the structure. This is not a free-plan job: channels and scheduling start on **Solo**, and the plan shaped for an estate is **Agency**, at **$200 a month billed annually** with 25 screens included. And if the limits matter to you more than the mechanics, read the access section first, because that is where this decision usually gets made. ## How do I manage digital signage across multiple locations? Make the channel the unit of work instead of the screen, and cut the estate along role, not geography. The instinct is one channel per site: Leeds, Bristol, Rotterdam. It reads tidily and scales badly, because what a screen shows is decided by its job, not its postcode. Every front counter shows the same prices, every window the same offer, every staff room the rota no customer should see. So: one channel per role. **Front counter**, **Window**, **Staff room**. Three channels, fourteen screens, nine sites, and each screen tunes into exactly one of the three. The arithmetic is what you are buying. Change a price on the menu show and it lands on nine front counters, because what a screen shows is derived from the show plus the channel schedule in real time rather than pushed out file by file. There is no publish-to-devices step to repeat. The two-screen version is [the same show on many TVs](/academy/same-show-on-many-tvs). Name the channels after the job, never the month. "Front counter" is still true next year; "October menu" is wrong on the first of November, and nobody renames it. ## How do I open site number ten? 1. Decide the roles before you pair anything: opening a site should be a choice from a list that already exists. 2. On the new TV, open **play.channelos.tv** in its own browser. It shows a six-character code and a QR code. Scan the QR with your phone and that screen is yours. 3. Name the screen after the site and position, such as "Leeds front counter". At forty screens the name is the only thing telling you where a tile is. 4. Tune it to the channel for its role. 5. Open the **Display Board**, switch to the **By channel** view, and check the new tile's live preview against the rest of its group. Nothing on that list is design work, which is the test of whether the structure is right: if opening a site means building a show, the estate was cut along the wrong line. What stops nine sites drifting into nine looks is a brand kit, on **Pro** and above: [set your colours once so every show matches](/academy/brand-kit-every-show-matches). ## Can each location have its own content? Yes, three moves, in the order to reach for them. - **Its own channel**, when a site genuinely runs a different menu: a flagship with a kitchen the others lack has earned one. - **A show published straight to that one screen**, for an immediate one-off with no scheduling: the third site has a burst pipe and needs a closed notice by lunchtime. - **A takeover**, a sanctioned cut-in: it overlays the schedule on one screen or the whole channel for as long as it runs, then hands the channel back with nothing to undo. Keep the exceptions rare: a channel per site is nine separate signage setups in one workspace, and it throws away what made the estate cheap to run. For a franchise the handover is a file, not a login. A channel exports as a `.channel.channelos.tv` file and a show as a `.show.channelos.tv` file from **Solo** upwards, and importing one is not gated at all, so a franchisee on the free plan can take the group's board without ever touching your estate. ## How do I spot the screen that has gone dark? ![The ChannelOS board with every paired screen as a live tile, with status and one-tap controls](/shots/board.webp) On the **Display Board**, which shows every paired screen as a rendered live preview with live status and carries the counts across the top: **Screens online**, **Avg uptime** and **Live now**. Switch to **By channel** and the estate reads as three groups, so a screen that has dropped out is a tile you can see rather than a phone call you receive. Every screen has one-tap controls: play, pause, blank, mute, next and broadcast. Screens poll for new builds and reload themselves, and accept a remote reload from the board, which is the first thing to try on a screen still showing yesterday. Real-time control runs on Cloudflare Workers and Durable Objects, which is why blanking a wall happens while you are still looking at it. The honest caveat at estate scale: a screen already playing keeps playing if the wifi drops, and it holds the show's pictures and clips in the browser's own storage, so they are not re-fetched every loop. After a power cut it needs the connection back, because the page and the show load fresh each time a screen starts. If a site must survive a long outage on its own, a vendor selling a media player with local storage is the better answer, and that is a real reason to buy hardware. ## How do I give a regional manager access to only their sites? You can give them their own login. You cannot fence it to their sites, and that difference is the one to check before committing an estate. Invite by email and pick a role: **Admin** manages team, screens, shows and billing, **Editor** builds and publishes, **Viewer** sees the board and changes nothing. Nobody shares a password. Agency includes ten seats; beyond ten is not self-serve yet, so ask before planning around it. What a role will not do is narrow to a site: roles cover the whole workspace, so an Editor hired for Leeds is an Editor for all nine, and there is no per-screen permission. There is no single sign-on, no SAML, no SCIM and no approval workflow, so nothing stands between one edit and nine front counters. For many groups that is survivable: a Viewer seat hands a site manager the board without the keys. For a chain where a regional manager must edit three sites and no others, or where a brand team signs work off before it airs, it is not, and no channel structure fixes it. Buy a platform built for multi-tenant estates with per-site roles instead; that is a real reason not to buy us. It is the gap a demo cannot show, because nothing on screen is missing. ## How many screens can one account run, and what does Agency cost? Up to 999 on **Agency**. Solo and Pro stop at 99 paired screens each. The free plan covers one screen for ever, with a ChannelOS banner along the bottom that opens into a full ChannelOS slide for about 30 seconds every couple of minutes, which is what pays for it; any paid plan removes both. Agency's $200 a month billed annually ($2,400 a year) covers 25 screens, and each screen after that is $6 per screen per month billed annually ($72 a year), or $7.50 monthly. So fourteen screens is not an Agency estate yet. Credits pool across the estate at 1,500 a month, with a 5,000 top-up at $199. Live figures are on [pricing](/pricing). At estate scale the first difference from the incumbent most people find is that there is no player hardware to buy, commission or replace per site. The screen-by-screen version is [ChannelOS vs Yodeck](/blog/channelos-vs-yodeck). Take the screens you have and write down what each is for in three words. Count the distinct answers: that is how many channels your estate needs. If it comes back as one per site, the roles are wrong rather than the tool. ## Frequently asked questions ### How do I manage digital signage across multiple locations? Point every screen at a channel, and cut the channels along role rather than geography: one for every front counter, one for every window, one for every staff room. What a screen shows is worked out from the show plus the channel schedule in real time, so changing the price once changes it at every site on that channel. There is no per-device push to walk through. ### How many screens can one account run? Not an unlimited number, whatever the category usually implies. The free plan covers one screen. Solo and Pro each run up to 99 paired screens. Agency includes 25 and runs to 999. If your estate is heading past 999 screens, say so before you start, because that is a conversation rather than a plan selection. ### Can each location have its own content? Yes, three ways. Give that site its own channel if it genuinely runs a different menu. Publish a show straight to one screen for an immediate one-off with no scheduling. Or run a takeover on that screen, which overlays the schedule for as long as it lasts and then hands the channel back. Keep the exception rare, or you lose the one-edit arithmetic. ### How do I give a manager access to only their screen? You can give them their own login but not their own slice of the estate. Invite by email and pick a role: Admin manages team, screens, shows and billing, Editor builds and publishes, Viewer sees the board and changes nothing. Roles cover the whole workspace, though, so there is no per-site or per-screen permission, and there is no single sign-on, no SAML, no SCIM and no approval workflow. Agency includes ten seats. If a regional manager must edit three sites and no others, a platform built for multi-tenant estates is the better buy. ### How much does digital signage for 40 screens cost? Agency is $200 a month billed annually ($2,400 a year) with 25 screens included, and each screen after 25 is $6 per screen per month billed annually ($72 a year), or $7.50 billed monthly. So 40 screens is the $200 base plus 15 extra screens. There is no media player to buy per site, because the TV's own browser is the player. ### Can I hand a channel to a franchisee who runs their own account? Yes. A channel exports as a .channel.channelos.tv file and a show as a .show.channelos.tv file from Solo upwards, and importing one is not gated at all, so a franchisee on any plan including free can be handed the group's board rather than a login to your estate. It is also the thing that makes a no-lock-in claim checkable instead of rhetorical. ## Next lesson [How big does the text have to be?](https://channelos.tv/academy/how-big-the-text-has-to-be) ## Further reading - https://channelos.tv/blog/channelos-vs-yodeck - https://channelos.tv/blog/manage-many-screens-with-channels - https://channelos.tv/blog/broadcast-controls-for-your-screens - https://channelos.tv/pricing The whole curriculum: https://channelos.tv/academy and https://channelos.tv/academy.md