LONDON—Blue Lucy has integrated with Comcast Technology Solutions’ VideoAI, an artificial intelligence-powered video analysis platform that scans content and generates metadata on everything from chapters and sentiment to celebrity appearances and ad breaks.

The integration connects CTS’s VideoAI analysis directly to Blue Lucy’s orchestration engine, where automated workflows are activated to route assets, trigger transformations and deliver content based on what VideoAI discovers.

The integration is intended for businesses with a content archive, regardless of size or industry. A rights owner can have assets in a back catalog chaptered, sentiment-scored and delivered to the right platform. A localization company can trigger dubbing or subtitling workflows once VideoAI flags a language or region cue. A broadcaster can use VideoAI's detectors, for brand safety or ad break detection, and route it into an existing delivery pipeline.

Blue Lucy said the integration offers its customers:

• Enhanced archive intelligence: Metadata that VideoAI generates on the archive can automatically trigger an action or transformation within a workflow, adding a new layer of automation to archive management.
• Enhanced monetization: Ad break detection, contextual advertising signals and brand safety flags flow directly into delivery, giving users an additional route to turn archive content into revenue more quickly.
• Lighter manual load: Automatic operational segmentation and chaptering further reduces manual review time for content teams.
• Enhanced flexibility: Customers can pick the capabilities relevant to their content and connect them to the neccessary parts of their workflow without adopting the full suite.

More information on Blue Lucy and Comcast Technology Solutions is available on the companies’ websites.

AUBURN, Ala.—Pliant Technologies has begun shipping its CrewCom Flex product line in the United States.

CrewCom Flex, a frameless matrix intercom system and complete matrix IP-based intercom solution, converges wired, wireless and virtual voice communication on a standards-based AES67/SMPTE ST 2110 backbone without the limitations of traditional matrix hardware frames.

Designed for broadcast, live event, sports, corporate AV and production professionals, CrewCom Flex combines Pliant’s proven CrewCom wireless intercom technology with a new ecosystem of wired panels, desktop panels, wired BeltPacks and browser- or app-based virtual intercom panels that can be deployed in cloud-native or local infrastructure, the company said.

“CrewCom Flex was designed from the ground up to address the changing realities of modern production communications,” Pliant Vice President of Global Sales Gary Rosen said. “By eliminating the traditional matrix frame, we’re providing customers with greater flexibility, lower total cost of ownership, simplified system management and nearly limitless scalability.”

At the core of the CrewCom Flex product line are the new CrewCom Flex Main Panel [CKP-16] and Desktop Panel [CDP-16], which Pliant said combine the familiarity of traditional hardware with the flexibility and advantages of frameless, distributed IP communications. Pliant’s new CrewCom Flex four-channel [CBP-24] belt pack is designed for flexible production workflows, the company said.

The belt pack features an integrated microphone and speaker that allows users the option of communicating without requiring a headset.

Users can add expansion panels to create customizable user stations, Pliant said, as each panel and desktop panel functions as its own intelligent distributed matrix. Unlike traditional matrix- based intercom systems that rely on centralized hardware frames, CrewCom Flex uses a distributed processing architecture, eliminating single points of failure and enabling scalability, Pliant said.

CrewCom Flex is standards-based with AES67 and SMPTE ST 2110 support for seamless AoIP and VoIP integration and includes ST 2022-7 compliance for maximum reliability in mission-critical applications.

The Flex product line also includes CrewCom Flex Virtual Intercom, an integrated browser-based VoIP communications solution available in 4-, 8-, 16- and 36-key virtual user configurations. Flex Virtual Intercom can operate as a standalone communications system or integrate seamlessly into larger CrewCom Flex deployments. Accessible from PCs, Macs, tablets and mobile devices, it offers deployment flexibility for remote and distributed production teams.

CrewCom Flex also integrates directly with existing CrewCom wireless intercom systems through CrewCom’s 32x32 Dante/AES-67 Digital Audio Network Interface [CXD-32CF], which provides routing and expansion capabilities into and out of a CrewNet infrastructure using EtherCon copper and dual LC fiber connectivity.

System configuration and management are done via updated CrewWare 2.0 software.

More information is available on the company’s website.

TORONTO—The North American Broadcasters Association (NABA) has joined Trusted Partner Network’s (TPN) “Fix It or Risk It” campaign, a new initiative designed to raise cybersecurity awareness and strengthen cybersecurity practices across the broadcast media, film and entertainment industry.

The campaign officially launched during the 2026 IBC Show in Amsterdam, where there were several panels, networking happy hours and other events held as part of the launch campaign.

“Cyber threats are more prolific than ever today,” NABA Director-General Rebecca Hanson said. “It’s increasingly important for the media industry to take cyber precautions seriously, and the Fix It or Risk It campaign helps raise that awareness for media professionals across all departments and seniority levels.”

NABA’s Cybersecurity Committee has consistently worked to promote best practices and has released a series of free, publicly available Cybersecurity Recommendations over the years. Now, through this partnership with TPN on Fix It or Risk It, NABA hopes to help encourage organizations across the spectrum of the entertainment industry to take action before vulnerabilities become incidents.

“Our view is that cybersecurity is not just a problem for film, or broadcast, or any one individual industry; cybersecurity is everyone’s problem,” Terri Davies, president, TPN, said. “By providing free resources, education, security alerts and ongoing campaign content, Fix It or Risk It meets people at their own level and helps them take practical steps that fit the way they work – whatever their role, organization or budget.”

On the heels of the official launch of the Fix It or Risk campaign, Davies was a guest speaker at NABA's CyberUniversity 2.0 event held at The Greene Space at WNYC radio in New York on Oct. 20. The impactful one-day event convened cybersecurity experts from a range of industries, including broadcast and film, law enforcement, higher education and more for a full day of workshops, panels, real-world case studies and actionable insights into the ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape broadcasters face daily.

Click here for more information about the Fix It or Risk It campaign.

A live game can now be a TV broadcast, a live stream, a mobile highlight and an immersive experience. For the rights holders and distributors, each is a potential source of revenue.

But the commercial question is bigger than how many places a game can appear. Rights holders and distributors must consider how much additional work and cost each destination creates.

The challenge is to make those experiences distinct for viewers without rebuilding the production process for every outlet. To generate revenue from the digital dollars they capture, rights holders and distributors need to evaluate incremental profitability, not just reach.

A Wealth of Live Feeds, Clips, Archives and Immersive Experiences
In the past, a broadcast network like NBC would air Olympic events on multiple, linear channels. Viewers who wanted to watch an Olympic event such as a soccer match had to tune in to a certain channel at a specific time. However, because of the venue-viewer time difference, gold-medal events in prime time may have happened nine hours earlier. So, NBC went to great lengths to shelter event results from the Olympics to deliver the big surprise for the audience.

Now it is pushing out that data to everybody all day, every day, giving viewers real-time access to current data and clips, as well as archives, through streaming. But NBC also packages Olympic events within a unique broadcast so viewers tune in for a destination experience.

In-stadium MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL fan experiences used to boil down to ticket holders staring at the diamond, court, field or rink. Now in-stadium and home viewers can use their devices to see different camera angles and focus in on their favorite players and never miss a shot. And rights holders, distributors and venues are working to engage ticket holders from the moment they walk into stadiums, while they’re in their seats, at concession stands and even postgame.

Creating and monetizing in-game experience apps using data about player firsts and sports records is one way they’re using content to drive engagement and revenue. Organizations can also then pull that content forward to create documentaries akin to “Hard Knocks,” the HBO and NFL Films series on NFL teams. They can reuse that content again later at key times, such as when players retire and get into the Hall of Fame or when the team wins the Super Bowl.

Businesses are also using sports content to create experiences beyond homes and stadiums. People pay admission at Cosm venues to experience live events in immersive environments that feel like arenas. Fox Sports has a multi-year live sports deal with Cosm to bring college football, the Daytona 500, MLB and NFL in a shared reality merging virtual and physical worlds.

The Opportunity to Capture More Digital Dollars Requires Operational Change
Effective content use requires businesses to manage content in a modern, cost-effective way.

This is even more important today amid the massive media layoffs.

Many broadcasters, cable TV companies, leagues, streamers and other entities are now starting to create content platforms, production environments and supply chains that can feed multiple arms of distribution while reducing complexity, operating costs and technical overhead.

To get started, businesses should:

• Understand their content rights and figure out how best to manage them
• Implement common workflow strategies
• Establish reusable production elements
• Enable shared content access and rights information
• Create differentiated final outputs

The Bottom Line
Distributing more content is great. But the real goal is to make each additional offering economically worthwhile. Before adding another feed, format or destination, rights holders should ask: What new revenue can it generate, and what additional work does it require?

Common production frameworks and workflows that enable companies to create content once and employ it for many uses makes customizing content both easier and far more profitable.

At Adobe Max this week, Adobe announced a number of new upgrades its Creative media production suite, including new agents and tools in Adobe Firefly, Creative Cloud and Adobe GenStudio

Adobe is expanding the Adobe Creative Agent, a partner creatives can direct with their own words, across Creative Cloud and Adobe Firefly so they can hand off complex, multi-step tasks and spend more time on the taste, style and vision that makes their work stand out.

Adobe also previewed local MCP integrations for Creative Cloud tools that will let creative professionals direct the third-party agents they already use to make changes in their native project files in Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and After Effects. For enterprises, Adobe is bringing CX Enterprise Coworker into GenStudioto help marketing and creative teams accelerate campaigns and deliver on-brand content at scale with agents.

Adobe Firefly, the AI creative studio combined new creative tools for video, audio, image and design, a choice of top industry AI models and the Adobe Creative Agent together in one place. Across Creative Cloud, Adobe is delivering new tools, agents and performance upgrades, including Relight in Photoshop and Color Mode in Premiere, that help creative professionals work faster.

Adobe has also expanded its partnerships with Google and Microsoft building on collaborations with Anthropic and OpenAI. With Google, Adobe is putting its creative and productivity tools in more Google products and experiences, adding Google’s latest frontier AI models to Adobe’s tools and exploring new AI-powered editing capabilities for Photoshop with Google DeepMind.

With Microsoft, Adobe is delivering optimized versions of Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects and Substance 3D Painter (beta) for high-performance Arm-based Windows PCs, and access to Adobe Express’ quick and easy creation tools in Microsoft Photos on Windows.

Adobe Firefly is expanding into an AI creative studio that brings together Adobe's pro-grade creative tools and the industry’s top models from Adobe, Topaz Labs and partners including ByteDance, Google, Kling, OpenAI, ElevenLabs and more, along with the Adobe Creative Agent as a creative partner.

New innovations in Adobe Firefly include:

• Adobe Creative Agent: A creative partner, powering the Firefly AI Assistant (beta), brings new customization, Plan Mode and Model Selector capabilities so creators can direct the work, stay in control and stand out with work that reflects their unique taste, style and vision.
• Always-on agents (preview): Agents for creative workflows that can take on recurring tasks, from organizing incoming assets and checking quality to preparing content for different channels, and continue working in the background even when creators step away.
• Firefly Video: A single workflow for building a story and assembling a video, with new tools that deliver everything needed to transform ideas and existing assets into polished videos, from social content to short films.
• Firefly Design (beta): A new design editing space that brings together tools for illustration, image editing, animation, 3D and print on a single canvas where creators can take a brand identity or social campaign from first idea to final review.
• Firefly Image: A set of new editing tools that give creators the control to change just one part of an image and keep everything else as it was with Edit Object, along with Relight and Retouch that pair prompt-based edits with manual precision.
• Quick Actions: A gallery of ready-to-use workflows, from one-step fixes like Remove Object and Thumbnail generator to guided workflows like Build Product Ad.
• Firefly Graph (beta): A new tool that helps creators build and iterate on custom, repeatable workflows to scale creative work.

Firefly Builder (private beta): A new tool that helps creators transform ideas into interactive, on-brand prototypes, like a website, presentation or app, using natural language, with no code required.

Adobe is introducing new innovations across Creative Cloud, combining agents with powerful editing tools and performance enhancements that help creative professionals accelerate workflows and advance their craft.

New innovations in Creative Cloud include:

• Adobe Creative Agent: Powers expanded AI Assistants (beta) in Illustrator, Premiere, InDesign, After Effects and Frame.io so pros can direct and execute complex, multi-step tasks in their own words and get more done, faster, while staying in control of their work.
• Local MCP integrations (preview): An integration that lets creative professionals direct their preferred third-party agent to make changes locally to their Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and After Effects project files, with layers, sequences and compositions staying editable.
• New features and performance enhancements: Innovations across flagship products include features like Generative Restyle and Relight in Photoshop, a first-of-its-kind color grading system with Color Mode in Premiere, Open Eyes (beta) in Lightroom, and Co-editing (beta) in InDesign that speed core workflows and expand what pros can achieve.
• Topaz Labs models: New image enhancement models, Wonder 4 and Image HDR, deliver upscaling, denoising, deblurring and sharpening capabilities to transform images with richer detail.

For marketing and creative teams, Adobe is bringing CX Enterprise Coworker into GenStudio, its end-to-end content supply chain solution, to help teams manage complex campaign workflows through a conversational interface.

New innovations include:

• Agentic partner across campaigns: Through a conversational interface within Adobe GenStudio, creatives and marketers will be able to direct campaign planning, creation and activation while Coworker coordinates AI agents and workflows.
• Automated brand adherence: Adobe Brand Intelligence, an agent that continuously learns and enforces brand standards, is expanding its capabilities including Intelligent Reflow so teams can automatically adapt designs to new sizes and layouts. It is also coming to Photoshop Illustrator and InDesign to bring brand guidance into the tools creatives already use.
• Agentic ideation and planning: Ideation Space is a new AI-powered collaborative canvas in Workfront, Adobe’s marketing planning and project management solution. It combines ideas from creatives and marketers with performance data and other context gathered by Coworker to help turn strategy into a structured campaign brief.
• Governed creative workflows: Firefly 3D Digital Twin, which creates pixel-perfect 3D replicas of products, will let teams and AI agents change a product’s labels and materials and generate product images without requiring a physical photoshoot every time a detail changes

LONDON—U.S. streaming services added more than 3,700 hours of premiered creator-led programming in Q3 2026, up from 927 hours a year earlier, according to Ampere Analysis's latest research.

Fox-owned Tubi accounted for more than three-quarters of the total. Ampere’s most recent U.S. consumer survey found that audiences for ad-supported streaming services skew older, while younger viewers watch the most social video. This helps explain why services such as Tubi are bringing YouTube and TikTok creators into their catalogues.

Ampere found that reality accounted for 65% of creator led content, with short-form (<20 minutes in length) now accounting for 37% of new releases, almost 10% higher than the previous quarter

On SVOD, new creator-led content grew 75% over the last quarter, led by Prime Video, which added more than 230 hours of content. Ampere found that most of this content appeals to a social video audience, including 12 hours featuring YouTuber Danny Duncan, who boasts over 8.2 million subscribers on the platform.

Netflix and Prime were the top SVOD when ordering creator-led commissions, with the 117 titles across both platforms already surpassing that of 2025.

Also in Q3, the vast majority (94%) of creator-led content was made by independent production companies. Ampere found that many creators license shows they first made for platforms such as YouTube, giving them a way to reach new audiences while retaining creative control and ownership of their work.

TikTok and YouTube are the top sources for such content, which is now starting to influence film and TV programming. TikTok has commissioned titles for the first time since 2020, ordering 10 first-run TV seasons via Creatorverse Incubator, a co-commissioning agreement with Tubi. These series, including Asking for a Friend starring Sabrina Brier, will enjoy an exclusive window on the platform when released.The familiar stars fronting this content are expected to introduce a new, social-first consumer base to long-form streaming platforms. Promotional content posted by the creators themselves is likely to further drive reach. Meanwhile, TikTok gains exposure to the more mature VOD audience.

“After investing in sports and podcast rights to broaden their offering, streaming services are bringing in familiar faces from YouTube and TikTok, said Ricardo Parsons, Analyst at Ampere Analysis. “For ad-supported services in particular, creator-led shows are a way to compete for the time viewers spend watching short-form video. Ampere expects more partnerships that help creators reach a wider audience while allowing them to continue monetising their content independently on social platforms.”

Federal Communications Chairman Brendan Carr’s days at the head of the FCC may be numbered if one Democratic senator has his way.

“I don't think Chairman Car is going to be around more than another three or four months, because when we have the gavels in here, he will be here once a month,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján said during a hearing by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on the nomination of FCC Chairman Carr’s legal advisor Danielle Thumann to be the third FCC Republican commissioner today. “And Mr. Carr, if you're listening now, know you're going to be in this body once a month, if not more, and in the House of Representatives as well, answering questions. And you don't have the protection of the gavel any longer.”

As one of the first Senate committee hearings to be held since the mid-term elections a week ago that saw Democrats regain control of the House and Senate, the event served as a preview of how the new majority will approach issues important to broadcasters.

Even before the elections, civil rights groups complained that any hearing for Ms. Thumann should also include a renomination hearing for FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the sole Democrat on the commission, which has five when at full capacity.

Several Democratic senators raised that issue again and questioned the appropriateness of the hearing.

“I strongly believe we should be considering the renomination of Commissioner Anna Gomez, the sole remaining Democrat,” said Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Col). “She is someone I have supported and is serving on an expired term.”

With FCC rules mandating a minimum of three commissioners for a quorum, her presence in the current two-to-one Republican majority is necessary for the FCC to conduct business, Hickenlooper said, adding that a recent Supreme Court decision could allow President Trump to fire Commissioner Gomez, resulting in no Democratic representation on the commission.

“Unfortunately, I don't think it's a coincidence that today's nomination is moving on its own, but I don't think this strategy will age well in a new Congress or a new administration,” he added.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) agreed, saying “we should be absolutely ensuring that we have a full commission, and that's three Republicans and two Democrats.”

He also disagreed with the committee’s approach to the hearing itself.

“We should be investigating the FCC, not confirming a Brendan Carr advisor to the commission,” Markey said. “We should not be confirming a Republican nominee without also renominating and confirming Anna Gomez, the Democrat, and filling the other vacant Democratic seat.”

In her opening remarks, Thumann said, if confirmed, she would focus on modernizing America’s communications networks, strengthening public safety and fighting consumer fraud.

“Protecting consumers from illegal robocalls and fraud and scams must remain the agency’s top consumer protection priority,” she told the committee.

Thumann has been Carr’s legal advisor on and off for several years and advises him on matters before the Wireline Bureau, the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau and the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau.

With the FCC considering reducing access to the FCC’s popular e-rate program, Markey—who created the program that expands broadband access to rural areas—asked Thumann for her position. While thanking the senator for his leadership and success of the program, she said she didn’t want to “prejudge” an open proceeding.

Markey called her answer “unacceptable.”

“The FCC is actually considering the elimination of the E-rate program, but you cannot give this committee a clear answer about whether it has the legal authority to do so. Schools and libraries deserve better than that.”

While the future makeup of the commission and the future of e-rate were part of the agenda, it was Carr's approach towards the First Amendment that drew the most consternation from Democratic committee members.

Asked by Sen. Markey if the FCC has the authority to punish a broadcaster because the president disagrees with its news coverage, Thumann was evasive.

“Broadcasters are subject to public interest obligations as part of the public trustee model in exchange for the licenses that they hold, as part of those public interest obligations, they are subject to many different rules and requirements,” she replied. “And the FCC is charged with enforcing and investigating the public interest standard against broadcasters.”

Markey criticized her, saying that the constitution guarantees First Amendment rights to broadcasters.

“This should be a straightforward constitutional limitation because the FCC cannot punish a broadcaster simply because the president doesn't like its coverage,” Markey said. “Yet Chairman Carr, your boss right now, has threatened to do exactly that.”

Thumann was more upfront with Committee Chairman Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) who cited numerous instances of Democratic Presidents threatening investigations into broadcasters for airing content they didn’t agree with, and even bringing up the commission's investigation of eight ABC-owned stations after Carr threatened the network for airing an episode of the Jimmy Kimmel Show.

“If you are confirmed, will you commit to basing licensing decisions on the law and the record, and to not using the FCC's authority to pressure or punish a broadcaster for protected speech?” Cruz asked the nominee, to which she replied, “yes.”

Sen. Luján warned Thumann that the new Democratic majority will hold the commission to account and that she should carefully consider whether her decisions will ensure that the FCC is “a full, independent body.”

Reflecting on his vote to approve Carr as chairman, Luján said he doesn’t recognize the chairman any more.

“He's a different commissioner today than he was then. I don't understand it,” he said. Addressing Thumann directly, he said “You have a strong future in this world, influencing policy in America. Be mindful of your decisions and your character, and don't let Brendan and Donald, the president and the chairman of the FCC, hurt you and diminish you and your future. I'm not going to ask you a question about it, but I certainly hope that you reflect on that.”

Apple will roll out a new feature for its Apple TV app Nov. 13 that gives viewers the option to watch supported titles with sign language interpretation.

The company will launch the feature with Apple TV’s global premiere of “Being Heumann,” a film based on the true story of disability rights activist Judy Heumann.

Interpretation for American Sign Language and British Sign Language will also be available for the movie “F1.” Later this year, “Way of the Warrior Kid” and “Greyhound” will follow, with more Apple Original titles to come. When turned on in Apple TV app settings, the sign language option will appear on supported Apple Original titles.

“At Apple, we believe everyone should be able to enjoy great stories and entertainment,” Sarah Herrlinger, Apple’s senior director of global accessibility policy and initiatives, said. “Bringing sign language interpretation to Apple TV is an exciting step forward in making the viewing experience more accessible and inclusive for deaf audiences. Accessibility is a core value at Apple, and we’re proud to continue creating experiences that allow more people to enjoy the content they love.”

Apple TV said its sign-language experience is designed and tested by deaf and native signers. Each performance is crafted to fit and complement the Apple Original film it interprets, the company said.

“It’s incredibly meaningful to see our beautiful language authentically represented onscreen,” said Daniel Durant, who appears in “Being Heumann” and directed the film’s sign language interpretation. “Bringing this experience to life required a lot of care to ensure every translation captured the emotion and meaning of the story. I’m proud to have been part of ‘Being Heumann’ and thrilled to see Apple TV supporting greater accessibility for deaf audiences.”

Titles with sign language interpretation will be labeled with a sign language icon, making it easy to know when the option is available. Viewers can enable the feature in Apple TV app settings, then press the sign language button while watching. Search will also make it easier to find titles that feature sign language with simple phrases like “with ASL.”

PLANO, Texas—For the second year in a row, Netflix sits atop the Parks Associates “Top 10 List of U.S. SVOD Services,” with Prime Video maintaining its No. 2 spot.

The listing, based on estimated number of subscribers through September from Parks Associates’ Streaming Video Tracker, also showed that HBO Max has moved ahead of Paramount+.

“HBO Max couples a deep library of legacy titles, including ‘The Sopranos,’ ‘The Wire,’ ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Friends,’ with hit new originals, such as ‘The Pitt’ and ‘House of the Dragon,’” said Michael Goodman, director of entertainment research at Parks Associates. “Gaining access to HBO Max’s award-winning content library is one of the things that made Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) attractive to Skydance. Now that the acquisition is complete, the focus shifts to content strategy, bundling and pricing, as well as how much the company can invest in streaming growth while managing significant acquisition debt.”

[Also Read: Skydance Confirms HBO-Paramount+ Bundle}

The Parks Associates Streaming Video Tracker identifies 275 subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services, 141 advertising-based video-on-demand (AVOD) services, and 60 FAST platforms in the U.S. market. The firm also identifies 243 premium SVOD services, 85 transactional video-on-demand (TVOD) services, 110 FAST channels, 55 ad-supported SVOD services and eight virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs).

The Top 10 List of U.S. SVOD services is:

1. Netflix
2. Prime Video
3. Hulu
4. Disney+
5. Peacock
6. HBO Max
7. Paramount+
8. Apple TV
9. YouTube Premium
10. ESPN Select

Parks Associates also found Netflix grew its reach into U.S. internet households to 67%, up 3% from the prior year. Apple TV reaches 22% of U.S. internet households, up from about 20% in Q3 2025, and that 58% and 69% of Disney+ and Hulu subscribers, respectively, use ad-supported tiers.

“The next phase of SVOD competition will be defined by how effectively providers balance subscription pricing, advertising revenue, and customer retention,” Goodman said. “Our research shows that 54% of U.S. internet households subscribe to five or more SVOD services, yet household video spending is relatively stable. Consumers are willing to maintain multiple subscriptions, but providers cannot assume that more subscriptions will translate into more spending.”

The research firm will highlight its findings during the ninth annual Future of Video: Business of Streaming, Nov. 17-18, in Marina del Rey, Calif.

EVANSTON, Ill.—Northwestern University has deployed a Grass Valley K-Frame VXPE production switcher, Kayenne control panel and five LDX 100 Series cameras at its new Ryan Field stadium to support coverage of Wildcats football and other events.

The acquisition is part of the university’s $875 million investment in its new 35,000-seat Ryan Field, which opened Oct. 2, when Northwestern hosted Penn State in a nationally televised football game.

Working with broadcast technology consultant Anthony James Partners, Northwestern selected Grass Valley technology to meet the new venue’s production requirements with support for 1080p, UHD and HDR workflows.

Located north of Chicago, Northwestern University is in the Big Ten. Its proximity to the Big Ten Network’s Chicago broadcast facility, which also uses Grass Valley technology, was an important consideration in the equipment selection.

“Ryan Field is a major investment for Northwestern, and we wanted production technology that reflected the ambitions of the new stadium,” said Roberson, director of broadcast operations for live events at the university. “We needed a reliable, high-performance system that our staff and students could operate confidently, with the flexibility to handle different types of live coverage. The Grass Valley equipment gives us those capabilities while maintaining continuity with the technology used by the Big Ten Network.”

The university’s athletics department produces live event coverage and in-venue content, with students working alongside professional production staff.

The Ryan Field control room uses a Grass Valley K-Frame VXPE production switcher with a Kayenne 3 M/E control panel. The compact K-Frame system provides 40 inputs and 20 outputs, internal multiviewing and support for 12G UHD production.

The camera installation includes three LDX 150 cameras and one LDX 135 for fixed game coverage, as well as a wireless LDX 135 for roaming and sideline positions. Two of the LDX 150 cameras are equipped with adapters for 80x box lenses, supporting long-range coverage from elevated positions.

Four XCU Xpress UXF base stations connect the cabled cameras, with IP and 12G SDI connectivity options. Five Grass Valley Creative Grading panels and a CCS-ONE camera control server provide camera shading and color management across the system. Selecting a common LDX camera platform simplifies operation and crew training.

Installation began this spring and was completed during the summer. The production system was ready for the stadium’s October debut. The project formed part of a wider construction program with a demanding opening schedule, and the new control room successfully supported its first live event.

More information is available on the Grass Valley website.

ALPHARETTA, Ga.—Flanders Scientific has introduced seven QD-OLED reference monitors across the new VP and V series.

Designed for professionals who need accurate, dependable images without the full on-board tool set of the company’s XMP monitors, the new models make professional HDR and SDR reference monitoring more accessible. Both series will begin shipping in November.

VP and V monitors use the same QD-OLED panels, color technology and GaiaColor calibration and analyzer capabilities as their corresponding XMP models. They’re priced lower because they exclude advanced features, such as onboard waveform and vectorscope, Look LUT support, Livegrade integration, processed SDI outputs and front-panel keypad. For those who address those functions elsewhere in their workflow, the two new series offer savings while preserving the image quality essential to color-critical work.

The VP Series targets postproduction facilities that need accurate monitoring and professional SDI connectivity but may already have dedicated hardware or software for scopes and look management.

Available in 26.5-, 31.5-, 55- and 65-inch sizes, VP monitors feature four 12G-SDI inputs with clean SDI outputs, alongside HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4. Quad-view monitoring supports independent color configuration for each input, allowing users to view multiple sources on one display. The new platform also supports 120 Hz refresh and stereo 3D with an optional active-glasses system.

VP Series pricing starts at $7,995 with savings of up to 30% compared with the equivalent XMP model.

The V Series offers Flanders’ lowest-priced entry into QD-OLED reference monitoring for customers who do not require SDI connectivity. Available in 26.5-, 31.5- and 55-inch sizes, these monitors feature HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 inputs.

Applications include color grading over HDMI or DisplayPort, editorial, VFX, animation, game development and audio post. A facility can use XMP or VP monitors in its primary grading suites and V Series monitors in complementary rooms, the company said, bringing consistent reference image quality to more of the production process.

V Series pricing starts at $5,995, up to 48% below the equivalent XMP model.

Both series include GaiaColor AutoCal and GaiaColor Analyzer for calibration and performance verification, HDR and SDR LUM Coloring exposure tools, custom markers and red-, green-, and blue-only viewing modes.

More information is available on the company’s website.

E.W. Scripps said the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed plan for reimbursing TV stations that must move from C-band satellite services next year is “incomplete” and underestimates expenses.

The FCC plans to auction C-band satellite spectrum starting next July and reimburse the costs of the transition to incumbent users. The agency has released initial reimbursement plans in a “Cost Catalog,” but Scripps said the FCC’s database of incumbent earth stations is outdated and, if not fixed soon, that ,could jeopardize the auction schedule.

“Scripps supports the legal and policy reasons behind the Commission’s decision to quickly auction more C-band spectrum, but the short timeline for the auction does not mean the Bureau should rush to complete preliminary steps, such as adopting a new Cost Catalog,” the station group said in a filing. “Auction bidders and incumbent earth station operators will both benefit from a Cost Catalog that contains accurate, complete cost figures, whereas an inaccurate, incomplete Cost Catalog risks sending false signals about post-auction expenses and timelines. False signals will hinder the bidding for Upper C-band spectrum and slow the post-auction transition.”

Scripps echoed the National Association of Broadcasters. In October, NAB told the commission that in addition to simplifying and making the reimbursement process more flexible, the FCC needs to update equipment and service-cost estimates to reflect current market conditions, and “expand the catalog’s equipment and service categories to encompass the full range of modifications and replacement distribution arrangements necessary to maintain substantially the same service anticipated price increases, and the actual costs of specialized equipment and installation services.”

Since the C-band Cost Catalog was last updated in 2020, Scripps said, a simple general inflation adjustment is insufficient.

“Indeed, costs for vital raw materials and energy will keep increasing as data center and artificial intelligence expansion continues to vacuum up resources," they told the commission. “NAB’s common sense suggestion to use current equipment quotations and installation estimates, along with cost ranges that are sufficiently broad to capture reasonable variations, should be implemented before the Cost Catalog is adopted.

“Adopting an accurate Cost Catalog and allowing earth station operators to update their earth station registrations so the registrations are accurate will speed the post-auction transition process and allow auction bidders to plan accordingly,” Scripps concluded.

Skydance, which closed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery a month ago, plans to offer an HBO Max-Paramount+ bundle by early next year, according to Skydance CEO David Ellison.

The announcement came amid the release of the combined company’s third-quarter financials. Revenue at Paramount’s direct-to-consumer services grew to $2.5 billion for the quarter, 11% over the year-earlier period, which was also impacted by the August 2025 close of the Skydance-Paramount merger. Average revenue per user rose 14% and subscriptions increased 6%.

Currently, HBO Max and Paramount+ have a combined base of 203 million subscribers. Amazon’s Prime Video, the No. 2 streaming service worldwide, has about 200-210 million subscribers. Netflix leads the pack with more than 300 million subscribers.

[Also Read: Parks: Netflix Is Top SVOD Service of 2026]

With content that spans news, sports and a wide range of popular film and TV franchises, Skydance CEO David Ellison told analysts in a conference call that he thinks consumers “will be delighted” with the proposed bundle, which he called “our first step towards combining the two services.”

“By bringing these services together, we are well positioned to deliver for a broad range of audience cohorts,” Ellison said. “And given this, we really do expect to grow region engagement, improve retention and increase revenue and profitability in line with, or ahead of, the leading competitors over the long term.”

Pricing has not been publicly discussed, but Ellison said Skydance would base it on “discipline and consumer feedback, so we can continue to grow the services” during the bundle phase.”

Ellison also updated shareholders on the company’s plans to deal with a decline in linear TV. By 2030, he said, Skydance expects to move “a meaningful majority of revenue and profit from TV to our streaming and studios businesses.”

As to when or if Skydance will merge HBO Max and Paramount+ into one service, Ellison was coy, telling reporters during its call with Wall Street analysts that, “long-term, the plan is basically to bring them together,” but that “it’ll take a period of time to do that.”

“I think in the immediate [term], you will see them operated separately, with things like bundling or things that you’ll be able to see accelerated in the relatively short term,” he said. “I can’t be specific about that yet today.”

BURLINGTON, Mass.—Avid today launched Ready to Play, an AI-powered creative tool for Media Composer.

Ready to Play, developed by Avid and built with Google AI models, including Gemini and Veo, enables editors and postproduction teams to create, understand and transform media. The optional extension for Media Composer Ultimate and Enterprise allows projects to advance even when footage is missing, hard to interpret or unfinished, while ensuring editors remain in control of creative decisions.

Ready to Play is the first in a series of new AI offerings planned through Avid’s expanded strategic collaboration with Google Cloud. Available as an optional extension for Media Composer, Ready to Play initially gives editors access to three AI-enabled workflows: Create Video, Modify Video and Analyze Video, connecting Google's AI capabilities to the clips, bins and metadata with which they already work.

New media and information are brought into Media Composer for editors to review and use, while preserving existing sequences and source material. Create Video and Modify Video generate separate outputs instead of changing originals, and Analyze Video adds new AI analysis metadata without overwriting existing metadata.

As projects take shape, editors often need to work around missing assets, unlogged footage and unfinished visual elements. Ready to Play helps them tackle these challenges within Media Composer. The three AI-based features support these activities:

• Create Video: Enables editors to generate video clips from text prompts or still images that can be extracted directly from clips or sequences in their project, bringing selected results directly into a Media Composer bin. These can be used as temporary B-roll to visualize scenes before shooting or as placeholders while final graphics or VFX shots are being prepared.
• Modify Video: Allows editors to use text prompts to explore visual changes to existing footage while preserving the original media. For example, editors could remove an unwanted boom mic or other distracting objects from a shot, potentially avoiding a reshoot, or quickly create visual variations to share with collaborators and VFX teams.
• Analyze Video: Uses Google AI models to analyze selected footage and generate customizable descriptions that can be added to clip metadata in Media Composer.

Available now as an optional extension for Media Composer Ultimate and Enterprise users, Ready to Play comes at no additional charge from Avid. Access to supported Google Gemini models requires an eligible Google Cloud billing account, with users managing any applicable usage charges directly through Google Cloud.

More information is available on the company’s website.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr announced Monday that Will Holloway has joined his office as a legal adviser.

Holloway has spent the last seven years with the commission. He most recently served in the same role for fellow Commissioner Olivia Trusty.

“Will began his career at the FCC as an honors attorney, and I look forward to drawing on his counsel on a range of matters,” Carr said Monday in a release.

Allison Howell and Keelin Ferris also serve Carr as legal advisers.

Holloway’s FCC Background
As a legal adviser for Trusty, Holloway led legal and policy analysis on wireless, space, international, engineering and technology and public safety issues, according to the commission’s release.

Prior to that role for Trusty, he served as counsel for the FCC’s Broadband Data Task Force from 2022 to 2025. There, he offered legal and policy support on matters related to the implementation of the Broadband DATA Act and the FCC’s Broadband Data Collection.

Before that, Holloway served in the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau as an attorney adviser focusing on broadband mapping and wireless infrastructure.

Holloway joined the FCC in 2019 as an honors attorney in the Wireless Bureau’s Competition and Infrastructure Policy Division. That same year, he received his J.D. from Catholic University. He earned his undergraduate degree in 2011 from Sewanee: The University of the South.

This article initially appeared in Radio World, sister brand to TV Tech.

MONTREAL—Haivision is inviting broadcast, media and production professionals worldwide to share their perspectives on the latest technology trends and challenges for its 2027 Broadcast Transformation Report.

Now in its eighth year, the Broadcast Transformation Report has become an industry benchmark for understanding the technologies, workflows, and trends shaping the future of broadcast and media production.

The report will provide insights into the state of technology adoption and highlight major trends in live video contribution, remote production, IP workflows, AI and other innovations.

Haivision is seeking responses to the survey through Dec. 21. Participants will receive early access to the findings and can enter a drawing to win a MacBook Neo laptop.

The survey is available online.

More information is available on the company’s website.

NEW YORK—Hearst Television has elevated Kevin Kalia to regional director of engineering effective Jan. 1.

Kalia had been director of engineering at Hearst-owned ABC affiliate WCVB-TV in Boston since 2023 and will remain based at that station.

He’ll share groupwide engineering oversight with Hearst TV’s two other regional directors of engineering, Michael Saffell, based at WMUR-TV Manchester, N.H., and Greg Turner, based at WBAL-TV Baltimore.

“Kevin has demonstrated the leadership and technical judgment needed to guide engineering across our enterprise,” Hearst Senior Vice President, Broadcast Engineering and Technology Stefan Hadl said. “He brings a strong understanding of broadcast operations, a track record of solving complex challenges, and the ability to build trusted, effective teams. His experience as well as his commitment to innovation and reliable, high-quality service make him exceptionally well suited for this role.”

At WCVB, Kalia launched Hearst’s first-ever virtual set, used for news programs “Chronicle” and “On the Record.” He also led the technical teams responsible for the national Boston Marathon telecast coproduced with ESPN, the national Sail Boston telecast and WCVB’s annual holiday specials.

Prior to WCVB, Kalia was director of engineering at WGAL-TV, the Hearst-owned NBC affiliate in Harrisburg, Pa. He led that station through the pandemic and the largest renovation in its history. He also built WGAL’s relationships with the region’s universities and high schools to provide resources to media students, Hearst said, including a grant from the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters to fund new equipment for McCaskey High School that served as a template for other Pennsylvania schools.

Prior to WGAL, he was assistant chief engineeer at WYFF-TV in Greensville-Spartanburg, S.C.; content acquisition and technology manager at WTAE Pittsburgh; and a news producer at WTAJ Altoona, Pa. He is a member of SMPTE, a graduate of Penn State University and a participant in the Hearst Management Insitute.

SAN JOSE, Calif.—Adobe today announced 10 filmmakers will receive a combined $1 million in grants and introduced a new Film & TV Fund Board including several influential entertainment leaders.

The company launched its Adobe Film & TV Fund in 2024. To date, more than 1,000 creators have received support in the form of fellowships, financial support, mentorship and access to its professional creative tools. Adobe has worked with partners, including Gold House, Rideback RISE and Sundance Institute, to assist filmmakers.

Earlier in 2026, Adobe announced a new way for filmmakers to receive funding from the nearly $10 million it has pledged this year. The $1 million in grants for Adobe’s “inaugural cohort” of recipients puts “resources behind filmmakers and their projects at a stage when development funding can determine whether an idea moves toward production,” the company said in its announcement.

Recipients will also have access to Adobe’s professional creative tools, including Premiere and Firefly to assist in their creative process.

The work of the 10 filmmakers receiving the direct grants spans narrative features, documentaries, shorts and student films. Nominations were submitted by industry and community organizations. Adobe chose recipients with input from its fund’s advisory board.

Recipients include:

Narrative Features

• Austin Everett, writer-director. A two-time Black List writer and one of Variety's 10 Screenwriters to Watch, Everett has three features in development with Columbia Pictures, Lionsgate and TriStar. His directorial debut, “Akiya,” is a horror film starring Karen Fukuhara and Robbie Amell about a couple whose new home in rural Japan is haunted by spirits. 
• Lara Everly, director. An award-winning director working across narrative and branded content, Everly brings humor to unexpected stories. Her feature, “Reconstructing Charlie,” adapted from her short film, follows a woman navigating an early breast cancer diagnosis. 

Documentary Features

• Sue Ding, director. A 2026 Creative Capital Awardee whose short documentaries have premiered at SXSW, IDFA and True/False, Ding explores the Asian-American teens who shaped Southern California's 1990s import car culture in “Rice Rocket Revolution.” 
• Molly Gillis, filmmaker. A New York Times video editor whose award-winning shorts have screened at SXSW, Outfest and Palm Springs ShortFest, Gillis follows American comedians performing solo shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in “Fringe.” 

Shorts

• Jasmine J. Johnson, director, writer and producer. Johnson's shorts have screened at SXSW and Tribeca with support from Tribeca, Chanel and The Gotham. Her film “BREAK” follows a young surfer whose painful accident goes viral without her consent. 
• Gabriela Garcia Medina, filmmaker. A two-time Tribeca fellow and alum of the Academy Film Accelerator and Film Independent Directing Lab, Garcia Medina tells the story of an upbeat Uber driver saving to reunite her family in the U.S. in “Cuqui.” 
• Maria Burton, director. Having directed six independent features and recognized as one of Variety's "Talent to Watch," Burton explores the story of Jerrie Cobb, one of the first women tested for spaceflight, in “How High the Moon.” 
• Spencer Jamison, filmmaker. A Film Independent Episodic Lab fellow featured in CAA's showcase of rising Black filmmakers, Jamison explores family and grief in “Numinia,” following a musician who inherits her grandparents' home. 

Student Films

• Djibril Keita, filmmaker. An NYU Tisch graduate film student raised in Mali and the United States, Keita explores identity and technology in “Verified,” following a delivery driver locked out of his work app after an accident changes his face. 
• Olajide “Kay” Hamed, writer, director and producer. An MFA directing candidate at Chapman University's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, Hamed explores Booker T. Washington's historic 1901 dinner with Theodore Roosevelt in “Dinner at the White House.” 

Adobe’s Film & TV Fund Advisory Board includes:

• Jon Mone, film producer, founder and CEO; former Universal Pictures production executive.
• Kerstin Emhoff, Emmy-winning producer, co-founder and CEO of PRETTYBIRD and Ventureland. 
• Lena Waithe, Emmy-winning writer, producer, actor and founder of Hillman Grad. 
• Phil Sun, founder and CEO of 1v1 Entertainment; co-founder and managing partner, M88. 
• Reggie Hudlin, Oscar-nominated producer, director, president of Hudlin Entertainment; former president of entertainment of BET.
• Sophia Rzankowski, executive, Superconnector Studios. 
• Stacy Smith, founder, USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative; USC professor. 
• Stacy Martinet, Chief Content and Creative Officer, Adobe. 
• Stacey Walker King, Chief Brand Officer, MACRO. 

More information is available on the company’s website and on Adobe’s blog.

Cloud-native and containerized technology was one of the clearest trends at IBC 2026, yet few broadcasters are moving wholesale from one infrastructure model to another. Their environments are increasingly mixed. Some applications remain on dedicated hardware, others run as virtual machines or containers, and certain workloads move into public cloud or are spun up temporarily for specific events.

Bare metal suits workloads that depend on dedicated hardware, deterministic latency or high-density I/O, while virtual machines let established applications run on shared infrastructure with little redesign. Containers, managed through orchestration, support rapid deployment and scaling for software built to use them. Public cloud supplies capacity on demand for temporary and event-driven workloads.

The question for monitoring is whether the architecture should follow the workload rather than dictate where that workload has to run.

Monitoring Placement: Latency, Performance, Resilience and Cost
Where probes sit is one of the most consequential decisions in a hybrid design. In low-latency contribution and live production, probes belong as close as possible to the point where the stream is fully visible. Problems such as frozen video, audio silence or missing captions then surface immediately.

A probe placed in the cloud can add delay from network conditions and buffering, although the extent of that delay depends on the workflow. In an all-cloud architecture, contribution feeds and monitoring data that share a capacity-constrained link can put both QoS and QoE at risk.

Capacity planning follows from the number of streams, their bitrates and codec complexity, and the depth of decoding required. A system that performs well during routine operations may struggle during a major live event, when stream counts and processing demand peak.

Continuously decoding and analyzing hundreds of streams demands significant computing resources, and placement compounds the problem. When monitoring shares infrastructure with production services, competition for those resources can compromise both fault detection and the services being monitored.

Dedicated servers or separately provisioned container pools help isolate workloads and keep performance predictable. Monitoring should be sized and isolated for peak demand, whether that capacity is permanently provisioned or added for the event, since average utilization understates what a major event requires.

Isolation matters for resilience as well, because monitoring depends on independence from the systems it observes. When a probe runs on the same server, network segment or cloud region as the workload, a single outage can disrupt the service and leave operators unable to see the failure. Placing monitoring on separate hardware, in another availability zone or with a different provider preserves visibility during the outage.

Placement also shapes cost, which depends on compute and cloud-provider pricing and on the volume of data moved and the path it takes. Transporting full-bitrate streams from the cloud to a central operations center can incur substantial, recurring transfer charges. Analyzing streams where they reside and forwarding only alerts, metadata and low-resolution thumbnails can significantly reduce that traffic.

No single location offers the best balance of latency, performance, resilience and cost in every situation, so a distributed architecture is often the best fit. Lightweight analysis runs close to each workload, and results are consolidated into a unified operational view.

Portability and Consistency Across Environments
Moving workloads between environments should never break the ability to track performance and compare results over time. Operators need to see how a service behaved before a move, during the transition and after it settles into its new environment. End-to-end monitoring makes this possible by applying the same measurements everywhere while recognizing that each observation point serves a different purpose.

Packet-level analysis within the managed network shows what is happening in transport, and OTT manifest checks and player data such as rebuffering reveal how the service reaches viewers. Infrastructure and network metrics help explain why problems occur, although direct monitoring of the service itself remains essential.

Consistency begins with shared definitions. Black frames, freezes, silence, out-of-range loudness and caption gaps should carry the same test parameters and thresholds in every deployment. Alerts should follow the same severity levels, notifications and escalation paths, so that results and responses can be compared across environments.

Those definitions become more useful when monitoring connects to the rest of the operation. Open APIs link monitoring to orchestration, ticketing and analytics systems, so teams can automate workflows and act on findings without moving information between tools by hand.

Correlation across the delivery chain adds a further layer. When a problem appears at the output, operators can trace it back through ingest, encoding and distribution, even when those stages run in separate environments.

Infrastructure Independence and Future Operations
The goal of end-to-end monitoring is consistent, connected visibility across the whole delivery chain, with many observation points managed from one place. Teams can then find problems, trace their causes and protect service quality regardless of where the workloads run.

Infrastructure independence means being able to deploy video quality and compliance monitoring wherever the content resides. Monitoring that can run as software in any of these environments supports that goal by allowing media companies to place or relocate probes throughout the workflow.

Over the next three to five years, a sound first step for engineering leaders is to make monitoring consistency a prerequisite for infrastructure expansion. That consistency across environments ultimately matters more than commitment to any one deployment model. Operations and IT teams should verify that every proposed environment can support their monitoring requirements before moving workloads into it. Setting that requirement early preserves visibility and control as infrastructure evolves.

The national broadcast networks, combined with local TV affiliates, garnered nearly half of all TV midterm election coverage last week, according to a report.

The report by Madhive Maverick AI analyzed how viewers consumed news across televisions, connected devices, and streaming platforms on election night, Nov. 3.

It found that by 10 p.m. ET, more than half of all TVs in use were tuned to the news, four times more than on a typical Tuesday evening. Between 8 p.m. and midnight ET, news accounted for half of all total TV viewing, compared to one in seven on an average Tuesday, the report said.

Broadcast and local stations captured 48% of total news viewing during primetime, which on Nov. 3 was 7 p.m. to midnight, compared to 29% on regular Tuesdays. Cable news accounted for 41%, down from 55% on an average Tuesday, and streaming news was down 11%, a decrease of 16% from a normal Tuesday.

Among broadcasters, NBC News led the field, averaging 6.8 million viewers during its primetime broadcasts.

Spanish-language TV’s share of the growth nearly doubled to 7.6%, which accounted for 25% of all minutes viewed in California, Madhive said.

States with the highest interest in their elections also scored high viewership, with Texas coming out on top. In that state Madhive said 63 out of 100 TVs were tuned to election news in primetime, with 43 out of 100 visiting news via phones or computers and 26 per 100 via streaming.

Iowa saw the highest increase, with primetime news viewing reaching 54 in 100 TVs in use, representing 3.5 times the normal Tuesday audience.

Maine viewers stayed up the latest: By 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning, half of all TVs were still on, five times the normal rate.

Web traffic also soared, with 43 in 100 active household internet connections visiting a news site or app on a phone or computer between 7 p.m. and midnight, nearly double the 24 in 100 from the prior week.

To determine its numbers, Madhive's smart-TV panel tracked over 3.5 million TVs active in primetime (defined as 10-plus minutes spent on election/news content) compared against two prior Tuesdays, Oct. 13 and Oct. 20.

Digital data was derived from ad-supported web, app, and streaming activity across over 99 million household internet connections (excluding shared and carrier IP addresses) compared against Tuesday, Oct. 27.

LONDON—Vizrt has built a proof-of-concept integration with the Story Object Model (SOM), shown at IBC 2026 in Amsterdam as part of the Smart Stories Accelerator project.

Live production tools, such as a rundown system, media asset management and graphics, hold fragments of the same story without a shared understanding of its editorial meaning. SOM addresses this by giving every tool in that chain, including AI agents, the same live account of what a story is about, what's happening and what has been confirmed or held.

“Systems have long shared the rundown and the media,” Jon Roberts, chief technology officer at ITN and co-author of the Story Object Model, said. “For the first time, the story itself becomes a first-class object they can subscribe to, with its editorial state, lifecycle, compliance position, sources and relationships to other stories. That means every tool that speaks SOM works from the same story, updated the moment it changes. Confirm a figure once and the ticker can follow. Hold a fact on legal advice and the graphic carrying it knows before anyone puts it to air.”

Smart Stories was an IBC Accelerator 2026 incubator project. Its hurricane demonstration followed a breaking news story from end to end across a story context bus.

The story is live from the first wire alert—before any footage exists—and every connected tool subscribes to it. When something changes, a person confirms it once. That update is then propagated to every connected system, with each output responding appropriately: updating automatically, waiting for operator approval or triggering an alert for further human review.

In the Smart Stories project, a human makes a judgment once, and execution is graduated by output. SOM 1.0 is free to implement with no membership or permission needed.

The specification’s authors are ITN’s Roberts; Morag McIntosh, head of AI at QTV; Alex Bassett, vice president of Innovation at NBCUniversal; and John Boucklos, director of data innovation at NBCUniversal.

Roberts, McIntosh and Bassett conceived the model and led the project alongside Brian Hopman, vice president and general manager of workflow solutions at Associated Press. The project’s 14 champions include ITN, BBC, NBCUniversal, AP, Reuters, Sky, ITV, Channel 4, Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, the EBU and SMPTE.

Circle City Broadcasting announced late last week that it has reached an agreement with DirecTV that returns three of its stations to the satellite TV service.

WRTV returns to DirtecTV after a two month absence, while WISH-TV and WNDY-TV are back on the service after having been removed more than seven years ago.

With the lengthy dispute over retransmission fees now resolved, WRTV is now available to DirecTV subscribers,, with WISH and WNDY expected to be added back to the lineup in a few weeks, according to the station group.

“This agreement is a significant milestone for our viewers and advertising partners,” said DuJuan McCoy, Owner, President and CEO of Circle City Broadcasting. “We are pleased to restore and expand access to all three of our stations across DirecTV’s platforms throughout the Indianapolis market.”

While financial terms were not made public, the station group said the agreement "expands access to its local television stations throughout Central Indiana,” and “brings WISH-TV, WNDY-TV and WRTV together under a new carriage agreement, giving DirecTVV subscribers access to all three Circle City Broadcasting stations.”

Fox announced on Friday that it has finalized its $22 billion acquisition of Roku. The network, which announced the landmark deal in June, is designed to ramp up Fox’s presence in the streaming/FAST/OTT market.

Roku is now part of Fox Digital Platforms, a division of Fox Corp.

Anthony Wood, founder and CEO of Roku is joining the Fox board of directors as co-chair, Fox Digital Platforms, a newly formed division that includes Roku, Tubi, Fox One, Red Seat Ventures and other digital products and services across the company. He will work with Paul Cheesbrough, who is now co-chair and CEO of the division.

Fox said it expects to save $400 million within two years following the transaction close, “with additional potential revenue upside.”

“The closing of this acquisition advances the long-term strategy of Fox,” Lachlan Murdoch, executive chair and CEO of Fox Corp., said.

Fox said it will keep Roku “as a leading open ecosystem for the broader streaming industry,” something Wood emphasized in his statement.

“We started Roku more than two decades ago to give people a better way to watch TV, and that mission doesn’t change today,” Wood said. “What does change is our reach and resources. Fox has a deep respect for Roku’s culture and wholly shares our commitment to staying open to every content partner. Our teams will keep building and innovating as they always have, now with the support and capabilities of Fox behind us. I’m proud of what Roku’s employees have built, and I’m excited about what comes next.”

In April, Roku announced it now had more than 100 million customers worldwide. Right after the deal was announced in June, Horowitz Research reported that nearly four in ten U.S. streaming platform users choose Roku to stream content, outpacing top competitors Amazon Fire TV and Samsung’s Smart Hub interfaces, each of which are used by almost one in three streamers.

While networks purchasing consumer hardware companies are rare in the 21st century, this type of transaction harkens back to the days when RCA dominated broadcasting by owning both the manufacturing and distribution (aka NBC). Today, though, Roku's biggest attraction to Fox is its ubiquity, its relationship with streaming services including Disney+ and Amazon Prime, and most importantly, data.

Murdoch stressed his commitment to maintaining Roku's partnerships.

“Beginning today, our top priority for the combined company is to continue to relentlessly serve audiences and partners, while reinforcing the openness and choice that is the essence of the Roku platform,” Murdoch said. “Our shared entrepreneurial passion and clear conviction toward building the future together with our new Roku colleagues gives us great confidence in the opportunities ahead of us.”

Roku has had a healthy 2026 so far, reporting 23% revenue growth in the first nine months, with $4.1 billion in sales.

Rachel Saldivar, a production and postproduction sound mixer, recordist and audio engineer, recently used Sony’s ECM-778 shotgun mic during the filming of “Drifter,” a new feature film set against the backdrop and culture of drift racing.

The microphone proved to be a valuable addition, she said, especially in capturing the intensity and nuance of the story. The ECM-778 performed reliably in confined spaces, such as inside a car.

The ease of use, size and installation flexibility of the ECM-778 met Saldivar’s unique needs on the project. “Part of what makes the ECM-778 such a great microphone is its low profile. With a small size and smaller capsule, it’s easier to plant and mount places,” she said.

The mic’s size and installation flexibility also proved to be valuable in scenes set in a bathroom. “There wasn’t a lot of room for me to get the boom operator in there, so we were able to plant the mic with clips on the side of the shower to still get the boom recording,” Saldivar said.

The versatile ECM-778 provides stability across a range of different circumstances. It offers a consistent reduction in off-axis sounds, despite shifting between subjects and delivers greater dialogue and clearer voice response from subjects and actors in different environments with varying noise levels. Saldivar described its sound as “very true to voice tone” and said the mic offers “more saturation in the highs.”

Saldivar also said the ECM-778 made it easy to capture accurate ambience, a helpful characteristic for dynamically changing shoot scenarios.

“The ECM-778 performs really well both outdoors and indoors. In a run-and-gun situation where you can’t switch to a different microphone, Sony’s ECM-778 can go from a noisy exterior environment to an interior with ease,” she said.

“You get enough ambience in the recording, but the side rejection significantly reduces wind, street and traffic noise pick up in the recording. The voice of the subject is well saturated in the recording even in noisy environments like a busy street.”

More information is available on the Sony website.

FREDERICK, Md.—RCI Custom, a U.S.-based manufacturer of custom connectivity products, has selected Neutrik Group Americas as its preferred brand for its purpose-built connectivity panels.

The company manufactures wall plates, rack panels, and engineered connectivity panels for systems integrators, broadcast engineers and other professional AV customers. While RCI Custom offers connectors from several manufacturers, Neutrik has been its leading choice for several years.

“We offer any and all connectors available to AV and broadcast people, but we have led with Neutrik for several years,” Doug Macuch, president and founder of RCI Custom, said. “It’s a connector that’s highly regarded by most industry professionals and is accepted by everybody as a standard.”

RCI customers using PanelBuilder SE, its online design configuration tool, can specify Neutrik audio, fiber optic, video and power connectivity, in addition to engraving, grouping boxes and other panel requirements. The company then manufactures the panel to that design.

RCI Custom’s standard product offerings, including its Press Mult products, also incorporate Neutrik connectors.

“Neutrik’s reputation within the professional AV and broadcast industries is an important part of the value the company brings to RCI Custom's customers,” Macuch said. “Neutrik’s consistent quality is what makes it stand out from other connector manufacturers. Their connectivity is something nobody questions—everyone knows it will work.”

With its combination of custom engineering, manufacturing expertise and Neutrik connectivity, RCI Custom said, integrators and broadcast professionals are provided with a flexible way to turn project-specific requirements into finished connectivity solutions.

The relationship between RCI Custom and Neutrik Group Americas extends beyond connector selection. “I really enjoy my relationship with the people that I work with at Neutrik Group Americas because they directly understand what we’re going through,” Macuch said.

More information is available on the RCI Custom and Neutrik Group websites.

Just days after Democrats swept the midterm elections, Congress is ramping up its investigations of the FCC.

On Thursday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) sent a letter to Chairman Brendan Carr, notifying him that all all records pertaining to an ongoing inquiry by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations minority be readily accessible by the end of November.

Blumenthal was referring to an inquiry he and fellow Democratic members of the committee instigated more than a year ago over FCC actions that Blumenthal said “erode and undermine freedom of speech and freedom of the press and bear on the laws governing media consolidation.”

In March 2025, the senator opened an inquiry into what he termed the FCC’s "abuse of power, including dubious investigations and misrepresentations of law to silence free speech." The Connecticut senator said the chairman has never responded to his request for records applicable to these concerns, despite sending three letters over the past 18 months—in March 2025, July 2025 and February 2026.

"The Subcommittee expects you to carefully review and follow the enclosed production procedures to ensure that all records produced can be accessed and reviewed in a timely manner," Blumenthal wrote. “Please begin producing responsive records by November 30, 2026, with additional records to follow on a schedule agreed upon in advance by Subcommittee staff.”

Blumenthal added that “failure to voluntarily produce the requested records and information by January 4, 2027, will leave the Subcommittee with no choice but to consider alternative measures to obtain compliance.”

Free Press Action Co-CEO Jessica J. González accused Carr of censorship and voiced the organization's support.

“Chairman Carr has loyally followed Trump’s demands to censor the press," she said in a statement. "He’s facilitated corruption and leveraged his authority to help the president squeeze special favors and bribes from companies seeking FCC merger approval. We thank Senator Blumenthal for making this issue a priority as Democrats take the gavel of the Investigations Subcommittee. 

“Carr’s capricious abuse of the law has no place in a legitimate democracy. The statutes that govern the FCC’s power and the U.S. Constitution do not permit Brendan Carr and the FCC to violate the public’s right to a free press just because the President’s fragile ego demands it. In his haste to please Trump, Carr has chilled the speech of all media, including those that don’t even fall under the agency’s authority.

“Over the past two years, Carr has regularly violated his oath to support and defend the Constitution. He’s been more than happy to browbeat and jawbone broadcasters into silence though his claims have zero legal merit. We believe Carr’s actions should lead to his removal from office, by impeachment if necessary.”

The letter was one of several the senator sent this week; other investigations are planned over cryptocurrency abuse, immigration enforcement and donations by Big Tech companies to the White House ballroom.

CNN has reported that its multiplatform Election Night in America coverage saw record setting viewership and engagement levels across television, streaming and digital platforms.

Across platforms, CNN’s US midterm election coverage had a multiplatform worldwide reach of 71.4 million. This worldwide reach number includes CNN, CNN International and streaming viewing both in and out of home, on top of audiences consuming CNN.com, CNN’s mobile apps and social and radio engagement. This registered as CNN’s best US midterm performance in the company’s 46-year history, the company said.

On U.S. television, it was the second largest midterm performance in CNN history and the best day and prime performance since the 2024 U.S. Election Day. Among total viewers, CNN ranked #1 in all of cable in Sales Prime with 3.105 million, the first time CNN has ranked #1 in cable for a midterm election this century.

Among P25-54, CNN ranked #1 in all of cable in Total Day, Prime, and Sales Prime, with 1.512 million in Prime, more than Fox News and MS NOW combined (771k and 665k).

CNN also says it attracted the youngest audience in cable news in primetime, with a median age (59) more than a decade younger than most other election coverage offerings on cable. CNN was 10 years younger than Fox News (69), 13 years younger than MS NOW (72) and younger than CBS (63) and ABC (62) networks.

CNN saw double-digit growth among both demos compared with the 2022 midterm elections. In Prime, CNN grew by +59 per cent among P2+ (4.14 million vs. 2.6 million) and +43 per cent among P25-54 (1.51 million vs 1.05 million). In Total Day, CNN’s audience was up +45 per cent among P2+ (1.55 million vs 1.06 million) and +31 per cent among P25-54 (480k vs 367k). CNN also claimed the top 6 of the day’s top 10 cable telecasts across all networks. CNN ranked #3 in Prime across all television networks (broadcast and cable) among P25-54, behind only NBC and ABC, and #4 among P2+, behind NBC, ABC and Fox News.

Coverage of Election Night in America also aired on CNN International and CNN en Español around the world, whose audience levels are not captured in these US television numbers.

The US midterm Election Day also broke records for CNN’s All Access streaming offering, driving new subscriptions and delivering the highest day of live viewership since it launched in October 2025. CNN’s programming on YouTube led to over 80 million views across the channel on Election Day and the day after, making CNN #1 among news outlets for YouTube channel views, the company said. Election Day and the day after were also the top two days for CNN’s YouTube viewership in the history of the channel. Additionally, CNN’s flagship social channels garnered over 11 million cross-channel engagements and over 140 million cross-channel social video views.

All figures are based on Nielsen and Comscore data.

Sage Alerting Systems has notified users of Sage Digital ENDECs of a mandatory security update. The product is used at many U.S. radio stations.

“This update falls under the FCC’s recent rules change requiring prompt installation of security updates,” President Harold Price wrote in an email.

“The issue involves several certificates issued by a Certificate Authority called eMudhra that have weak, easily guessable, private keys. These certificates are a ‘trust anchor’ for certificate chains used to verify access to websites. The weak keys can, in the right circumstances, be used to spoof domain names.”

Price said that IT organizations worldwide are blocking or removing the affected root certificates.

The Sage ENDEC does not automatically update its software; users must manually install Sage’s software update. Links to the release note and download page are at the bottom of this story.

“It is unfortunate that this issue was discovered close to the National Periodic Test and the PHP problem,” Price said Thursday evening.

“However, the three items are not related. The ENDEC does not use PHP, but we do have the eMudhra root certificates that were in common use. Sage can help users who are unfamiliar with the update procedure; email to support@sagealertingsystems.com for assistance.”

Tech details
The alert is for Digital ENDEC model 3644 and applies only to users in the United States.

The free firmware update is version 96-2, also known as 96-02, for U.S. users running Rev96 or Rev96-1. (Sage noted that all active Sage ENDECS should already have been running at least the Rev96 version, issued in February 2024, to stay compliant with FCC Part 11 rules.)

Version 96-2 removes compromised eMudhra root certificates used to secure TLS connections for alert audio servers. The release also resolves SMTP email attachment compatibility issues with some mail servers and allows the use of “&” and “+” in web GUI passwords.

Rev 96-2 Release Notes: https://www.sagealertingsystems.com/rev96-2-release-notes.pdf

Rev 96-2 Download Page: https://www.sagealertingsystems.com/rev96-2download.html

This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand Radio World.

Avid has released a Pro Tools update that includes an AI-powered extension for separating audio into individual elements, as well as improvements to the Windows experience.

The Pro Tools Stem Separator Extension enables audio post production professionals to isolate individual elements from existing recordings without having to export files to external applications or upload audio to cloud services.

Using AI, it separates recordings into up to six stems—vocals, drums, bass, guitar, keys and other—which Avid said opens up new possibilities for editing, sound design, and repurposing existing audio. Users drag audio into the extension, preview the separated elements and bring the resulting stems back into their Pro Tools session as individual tracks, added the company.

The latest release also introduces High DPI support for Windows to deliver sharper, more readable visuals on 2K, 4K, and 8K monitors.

Intelligent per-monitor scaling improves the experience of working across displays with different resolutions, while enhanced compatibility scaling helps deliver a more consistent interface, said Avid. The update additionally introduces improved dark theme support for Windows title bars, menus and common dialogues, creating a more cohesive interface.

Pro Tools 2026.11 also includes Playlist Clip Colour Coding, providing more consistent colours across tracks for different takes to simplify session organisation.

Imagine a control room minutes before the evening newscast. An alarm indicates a problem with the program output. An AI-generated incident summary blames a Precision Time Protocol (PTP) clock failure and recommends restarting network equipment. The summary sounds authoritative. But the monitoring evidence in this hypothetical situation does not support the diagnosis.

What should a novice engineer do? The safest first move is to locate the failed stage of the signal path, establish what remains on air, and consult the facility's approved escalation procedure. A confident explanation is no substitute for observing the plant. That is the judgment a broadcast disaster-recovery drill should teach.

TV Tech recently described how AI-assisted documentation can amplify errors when data and oversight are weak. The next challenge is teaching engineers to interrogate that documentation under production pressure, while protecting transmission continuity.

Broadcast Recovery Has Its Own Failure Modes
A generic IT exercise might ask whether a server came back online. A broadcaster needs additional answers. Was the correct program restored to the transmitted output? Did sound stay synchronized? Are captions and emergency alerts functioning?

U.S. requirements for accessible emergency information make the first question consequential even after the picture returns. What happened to the commercial log, remote contribution feed, streaming output, and any affected distribution partners?

Consider a facility using SMPTE ST 2110 for separate, synchronized video, audio, and ancillary-data streams. A healthy-looking picture on one multiviewer cannot establish that the entire output chain is sound.

Engineers may need to examine source and receiver status, PTP lock, routing, encode/decode stages, and off-air confidence monitoring, depending on the architecture. The important skill is knowing which observation can distinguish one failure hypothesis from another.

Redundancy adds another complication. Cisco's 2026 validated IP-media design describes separate ST 2022-7 paths, redundant PTP infrastructure, and explicit switch, link, and clock-failure testing. A trainee who sees an amber-network alarm should ask whether the blue path remains healthy before treating the entire program chain as failed. Conversely, two green network dashboards do not establish that a downstream playout or transmission problem has been resolved.

The routing-control layer matters too. AMWA's NMOS IS-04 and IS-05 specifications distinguish discovery and registration from connection management. A problem with a control interface may require different evidence from a missing media stream. During a drill, make the trainee identify the distinction rather than guess from a single screenshot.

This technical detail has an organizational counterpart. A station can have excellent backup equipment while only one veteran knows which switch, vendor, or temporary workaround will restore service. A recent Radio World discussion of chief-engineer knowledge transfer illustrates why written instructions must survive the chief engineer's absence. The drill should expose missing knowledge before the next incident.

Build One Safe, Deliberately Misleading Scenario
Start with a 40-minute tabletop exercise or an isolated, non-air test environment. A senior engineer chooses a plausible local failure: a missing source at a receiver, a stale route after maintenance, or a disrupted contribution feed. No exercise should deliberately interrupt a live transmission or trigger an actual emergency alert.

Give the trainee a mock event log, a simplified signal-flow diagram, an excerpt from the current approved runbook, and a polished AI-assisted report. Plant one tempting but unsupported diagnosis in that report. For example, the report might assert that the PTP grandmaster failed, even though simulated endpoint clock status remains healthy and a downstream output monitor shows the first observable loss.

Ask the trainee to explain which three measurements would discriminate among the candidate causes. The answer will vary by facility, but the method should be consistent: identify where the last known-good signal appears, locate the first confirmed failure, examine related alarms, and distinguish evidence from speculation. Every proposed action should include the expected observation and the reason that observation matters.

This is precisely where NIST's guidance on confident but erroneous generative-AI output becomes operationally useful. A diagnosis phrased fluently can still be fabricated or incomplete. Requiring the trainee to cite a telemetry value, an approved diagram, or a witnessed test interrupts that tendency to accept the first coherent explanation.

Next introduce a realistic decision under time pressure. The primary playout chain is degraded; the backup is available, but an engineer has not verified the current playlist and associated assets. Should the operator cut over immediately? The trainee should identify who has authority to invoke failover, what service-continuity checks are essential, and which team must be notified.

Broadcast disaster-recovery arrangements for parallel cloud playout illustrate why backup schedules and media availability are part of readiness, beyond the existence of a second server. A dedicated disaster-recovery environment also requires working integrations and alternate access paths, particularly when the same outage may affect primary and backup services.

A second-stage inject can make the problem harder: the picture has returned, but the caption path or emergency-alert chain has not been checked. Under FCC rules on Emergency Alert System equipment readiness, monitoring and transmitting functions must remain available while covered stations operate.

In an actual incident, follow the station's applicable operating procedures and reporting requirements. In training, have the trainee name who verifies EAS status and how that verification gets recorded, without generating any live alert.

Evaluate the Reasoning, Not the Speed of the Guess
After the scenario, the senior engineer should compare the trainee's evidence trail with the expected safe decision sequence. Did the trainee identify the first confirmed failure point? Check an independent signal or log? Challenge the AI report's unsupported leap? State which uncertainty remained? Seek approval before a disruptive change? Verify the right output and services after a simulated recovery?

Use a simple four-part scorecard: evidence quality, operational restraint, escalation, and restoration verification. A trainee who says “I do not know yet” while narrowing a fault deserves more credit than one who confidently recommends rebooting a core device. That is an assessment of the reasoning displayed in this exercise, not a promise of measured reliability gains.

Include one communication test. Who tells master control, production, engineering leadership, affiliates, or a service provider what has changed? Microsoft's disaster-recovery planning guidance emphasizes explicit activation authority, escalation paths, communications, and failback criteria. Those principles become more urgent when a live event, an ad break, and a transmitter chain operate to different clocks and deadlines.

Finally, turn the exercise into a small documentation improvement. Record the incorrect hypothesis, the observation that disproved it, the correct escalation contact, and one runbook passage that needed clarification. TV Tech's recent discussion of cloud monitoring underscores the value of current, connected diagnostic documentation. Update the controlled source rather than creating another isolated note that future shifts cannot locate.

Repeat the drill with a different fault and another engineer after the team has updated its runbook. One iteration might use a studio-to-transmitter link outage; another might simulate a remote-production feed loss or a backup playout mismatch. Keep the scenario tied to the actual signal path, staffing, and escalation authority of that facility.

Good disaster recovery depends on equipment, documented procedures, and people who can tell a plausible story from a verified fault. With AI making plausible stories easier to produce, broadcasters have a strong reason to practice that distinction before it matters on air.

WASHINGTON—The FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau has issued a public notice reminding broadcasters and others that the Federal Emergency Management Agency will conduct a nationwide Emergency Alert System test in coordination with the regulator on Nov. 17.

FEMA will transmit the EAS test nationwide at 2:20 p.m. on Nov. 17 using the Integrated Public Alert Warning System (IPAWS).

EAS participants are required to file EAS Test Reporting System (ETRS) Form Two on or before Nov. 19 and Form Three on or before Jan. 4, 2027.

The bureau advises participants to upgrade their EAS equipment software and firmware to the latest versions and to ensure their equipment can receive and process the National Periodic Test code, the “six zeroes” national location code and operate in compliance with Federal Communications Commission rules.

It also reminded participants to review their state EAS plans for monitoring assignments and to make sure their equipment is configured properly monitor those sources.

EAS participants updating software or replacing equipment after filing an ETRS form must update their ETRS Form One filing to reflect the equipment and software version that they will use on the day of the nationwide test. Filers can update previous forms in ETRS by selecting the “My Filings” menu option and then clicking on the record for that form.

Participants should also take the steps needed to ensure that hearing impaired, deaf, visually impaired and blind viewers have full access to the EAS messages per section 11.51 of commission rules.

That section requires analog and digital TV stations, cable systems, wireless cable systems, wireline video systems and direct broadcast satellite providers to broadcast national alerts in a manner that enables those with disabilities and those without access to all EAS content.

EAS text must display:

• At the top of the television screen or where it will not interfere with other visual messages (e.g., closed captioning).
• In a manner (i.e., font size, color, contrast, location, and speed) that is readily readable and understandable.
• Without overlapping lines or extending beyond the viewable display (except for video crawls that intentionally scroll on and off of the screen).
• In full at least once during any EAS message.
• The audio portion of an EAS message must be played in full at least once to ensure it is accessible to viewers who are blind or have low vision.

The test message audio and text elements are designed to be identical to the greatest extent possible and will state: “This is a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System, issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, covering the United States from 14:20 to 14:50 hours ET. This is only a test. No action is required by the public.”

EAS participants should ensure individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing and those who are blind or visually impaired have full access to the message.

• Visual messages must be readily readable. Text should scroll at a speed that allows the viewer to read and understand the message. For example, to the extent possible, the crawl speed should allow viewers to read the crawl as if they were going to read it aloud.
• The background and text colors should sufficiently contrast to allow for readability. For example, a bright green background with white text may not provide sufficient contrast. Green and red should also be avoided as viewers who are color blind have difficulty seeing these colors.
• Audio messages should be spoken at a pace that allows a listener to understand the content.

More information on the accessibility requirements is available online.

The FCC is making an instructional video available on how to complete the test reporting forms. It is available online.

PITTSBURGH—NEP Americas, part of NEP Group, has expanded its end-to-end solutions for media companies with new scalable, IP-based flypack production kits deployed from the U.S. and available to customers worldwide.

NEP’s flypacks provide the same capabilities as its mobile units and are used on remote productions when bringing a full mobile unit onsite is impractical, the company said.

Powered by NEP’s Total Facility Control (TFC) broadcast control system, the flypack kits can work as independent systems, combine with each other or pair with any NEP dynamic facility to scale to meet the needs of productions of any size. They incorporate the technology to support all formats, including 1080p, HDR and 4K.

“We continue to look for new ways to give our customers flexible resources that adapt to the needs of their productions, and these new flypack systems are a great example of this,” Howie Rosenthal, chief commercial officer for NEP Americas, said.

“They were tested and proven on two of the largest international sporting events this summer, helping host broadcasters reach audiences in the millions. Now, they’re available to be deployed on live productions of every size and scale, whether it’s an everyday regional production or another global event. We’re excited to continue to expand the remote production capabilities we’re providing to our partners in the Americas and beyond.”

NEP’s flypack kits are designed with the ability to incorporate NEP Platform, its ecosystem of trusted software applications for media production.

During one recent international sporting event, the flypacks used NEP Platform to deploy Riedel’s SimplyLive solution for video switching, replay and multiviewing capabilities, orchestrating software applications alongside traditional hardware-based tools. NEP Platform gives media companies greater choice and control over how they build smarter and leaner production workflows.

The flypacks also use TFC, NEP’s broadcast control system, to enable operators, engineers and technical teams to manage IT and network environments from a single system. They tie into NEP’s Connected Solutions facilities, including NEP’s Dallas Datacenter and South Florida Production Hub, and can connect with NEP’s global hubs.

More information is available on the company’s website.

VITEC will retire the Datapath corporate brand next year, bringing its product portfolio under the VITEC brand.

The move, which comes about a year after VITEC acquired Datapath, will unify the company’s identity across its range of technologies and solutions. Datapath’s established product names, technologies and engineering expertise will continue as part of VITEC.

“Over the past year, our teams have worked closely to bring our operations together, building on the strengths of both businesses,” VITEC Deputy CEO Nicolas Quesne said. “We now feel the time is right to take the next step and move forward together under one VITEC brand.

“Both businesses have strong engineering foundations and highly complementary expertise. Bringing these strengths together creates a broader, more connected portfolio of solutions and services, supported by VITEC’s global presence and customer support capabilities. This gives our customers greater access to our combined expertise, with the reassurance of a consistent relationship and support as we continue to help them deliver the right visual content in the right place, at the right time.”

All individual Datapath product names will remain unchanged. Customer support will continue as part of the wider organization. All existing Datapath offices will remain open with team members continuing as part of VITEC.

Since its founding in 1982, Datapath has provided real-time video processing for large-scale video walls, AVoIP content distribution and KVM control in mission-critical control rooms, commercial applications and creative environments. This expertise will continue under the VITEC brand.

Throughout 2026, VITEC and Datapath have continued to align their operations and systems by building on the integration work started following the acquisition. The combined hardware and software portfolio brings together capabilities spanning video processing, video walls, AV-over-IP, IPTV distribution, encoding and decoding, KVM and control room applications.

“Datapath has been built on the talent and commitment of our people for more than four decades, alongside the strong, long-standing relationships we have developed with our customers,” David Griffiths, vice president of global sales at Datapath, said.

“Those trusted relationships remain enormously important as we move forward as VITEC, and we remain committed to maintaining the high standards our customers have come to expect. We now have an exciting opportunity to build on that heritage, continue developing the technologies our customers rely on and create new opportunities for the future within the wider VITEC organization.”

The new VITEC website will go live later in the year, bringing the Datapath portfolio together with VITEC’s wider offering. Datapath-branded product materials will transition to the VITEC brand into 2027.

More information is available on the company’s website.

SYDNEY—When the remote location of a world championship cycling meet challenged the traditional outside broadcast model, Gravity Media developed a custom solution to facilitate Beyond Productions’ coverage, connecting specialist crews in Western Australia with production control in Melbourne more than 1,860 miles (3,000 kilometers) away.

For the first time, the UCI Gravel World Championships were held outside Europe. The event brought together the world’s best gravel cyclists to compete in the valleys and forests of Nannup, Western Australia.

Producing a world-class broadcast from this remote corner of the country presented a significant commercial challenge. The travel, accommodation and logistical demands of a conventional outside broadcast (OB) deployment threatened to consume almost the entire local production budget.

Gravity Media brought together its various service teams to develop an alternative approach. By centralizing production control at its Production Center in Melbourne and reducing the operational footprint in Nannup, Gravity Media made the complex remote production happen, bringing together the infrastructure, connectivity and technical expertise required to produce a world-class sports production.

Covering a gravel course across challenging terrain required a flexible, multicamera approach that could follow the action wherever it unfolded. Camera operation combined fixed cameras at key points, including the start and finish, with mobile and aerial coverage from chase motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), drones and helicopters.

Getting video back from a geographically dispersed course was a significant technical undertaking. RF links, supported by mobile and cellular-bonded connectivity, helped connect the live camera operation across the course.

Multiple digital satellite newsgathering (DSNG) vans, positioned at different sites, supported the workflow, multiplexing and transporting feeds to the Melbourne production center. Gravity Media’s CELBO remote production technology supported cameras on the ground at the start and finish.

This distributed approach enabled the production to draw on multiple camera platforms across the course while keeping production control centralized in Melbourne, reducing the need for a traditional OB deployment at the venue.

At the heart of the operation was Gravity Media’s Production Center, where control-room operations and virtual hosting supported Beyond’s production.

The center received, processed and synchronized multiple live feeds from Nannup. The production was integrated across Gravity Media’s facilities, with the domestic and world feeds produced in the control room supported with localized commentary in the virtual hosting studio environment. EVS systems further supported the production workflow.

Communications infrastructure was important in coordinating operations across such a vast distance. A complex IP network was established and satellite internet zones completed the communications loop, while GPS tracking was integrated through the motorcycle links to support the production.

The workflow supported Beyond’s production of an international world feed for cycling audiences around the globe alongside dedicated coverage for Australian audiences on SBS featuring custom interviews, live crosses and commentary.

Boost Graphics, Gravity Media’s Belgium-based live graphics and virtual production subsidiary, played a vital role. Drawing on its experience with major European cycling events and the UCI, Boost Graphics brought specialist knowledge to the production and helped integrate GPS tracking into the broadcast to elevate the viewing experience.

This collaboration combined technical capabilities with event-specific expertise that extended beyond a traditional OB operation. From designing the camera and transmission workflow to establishing communications across the course and integrating the production in Melbourne, teams worked across service areas to solve challenges that required a tailored approach.

The project showed what can be achieved when established ways of working are reconsidered and specialist teams collaborate to extend their technical capabilities and problem-solving expertise.

More information is available on the company’s website.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—Abhijit Pol has joined connected TV firm LG Ad Solutions as senior vice president of product engineering.

Pol, most recently head of monetization engineering at Pinterest, will oversee development of the company’s advertising and technology solutions. He’ll focus on advancing the company’s ad platform, improving campaign effectiveness and measurement, simplifying advertiser workflows and effectively applying AI, LG Ad Solutions said.

“Product and technology innovation are central to our business and our ability to deliver for advertisers,” said Michael Hudes, CEO of LG Ad Solutions, to whom Pol will report. “Abhijit brings an exceptional combination of technical expertise, product thinking and experience building advertising platforms at scale. Just as importantly, he understands how to translate advertiser needs into product innovation and bring new capabilities to market.”

Pol joined Roku as the company was establishing its advertising business and helped build its first advertising technology and data platforms, LG Ad Solutions said. He later led engineering teams across machine learning, measurement, addressable advertising and audience intelligence as Roku’s CTV advertising business grew.

Earlier in his career, he had been a founding engineer at programmatic advertising firm Rocket Fuel, helping advance its application of machine learning, automated decisioning and real-time optimization.

“I’ve had the opportunity to shape several major developments in advertising technology, from the early evolution of programmatic and machine learning to helping establish connected TV advertising and advancing AI-driven advertising and measurement,” Pol said. “LG Ad Solutions gives me the opportunity to bring these experiences together. The true global scale of the LG Smart TV ecosystem provides a powerful foundation.”

NEVADA CITY, Calif.—Joseph Hopkins has joined media workflow and measurement technologies provider Telestream as chief revenue officer.

A media tech executive with 20 years of experience, Hopkins will work with Telestream’s leadership, product and commercial teams to build on its solutions portfolio, deepen strategic partnerships and identify new opportunities, the company said. He is tasked with steering commercial operations as Telestream integrates practical artificial intelligence and automation tools into its workflow and measurement products, it said.

“Joseph brings a unique combination of commercial leadership, entrepreneurial thinking, and a deep understanding of where the media industry is headed,” Telestream CEO Benjamin Desbois said. “Throughout his career, he has helped organizations navigate significant technology transitions, identifying new opportunities and building the teams and strategies needed to capitalize on them. As we continue to evolve Telestream’s business offering and value proposition, Joseph’s experience and perspective will be instrumental in helping us accelerate growth and strengthen our position in the market.”

Hopkins most recently was cofounder of Alchemy Creations, a media technology advisory firm. Before that, he was chief revenue officer at Make.TV, which was acquired by LTN Global and held senior positions at Verizon Digital Media Services. Earlier, he worked at iStreamPlanet on some of the earliest live streams of major sporting events, including the Super Bowl and Olympic Games.

“Our customers, as well as those of our partners and resellers, are looking for ways to operate more efficiently, create better experiences for their audiences, and find new opportunities for growth,” Hopkins said. “Telestream has the technology, expertise, and established presence in critical media workflows to help them do that. I'm excited to work with the team to deepen our customer relationships, better understand their evolving priorities, and help them achieve their business goals.”

In the battle for news supremacy covering the Nov. 3 U.S. midterm elections, NBC News was the clear winner, with 6.8 million viewers during its primetime broadcasts, according to Nielsen.

ABC News was the runner-up, averaging 5.12 million. MS NOW drew 4.19 million, CNN averaged 4.17 million viewers, Fox News Channel had 4.08 million and CBS News drew 2.73 million average.

Overall viewership among the six networks was an estimated 27 million, up 6.3% compared to the 2022 midterms, which drew about 25.4 million.

Here are the final numbers (updated 11/5 per Nielsen Big Data + Panel):

• NBC, 6.7 million
• ABC, 5.1 million
• Fox News, 4.3 million
• CNN, 4.1 million
• MS NOW, 3.7 million
• CBS, 2.7 million
• NewsNation, 576,000
• Fox Business Network, 346,000

Data wiz Steve Kornacki was NBC News’ star of the evening, with the “Kornacki Cam” ranked No. 1 among election livestreams on YouTube, garnering a record 29 million views across platforms, including 6.1 million on YouTube, NBC said.

Kornacki lasted about 10 hours on the network, retiring around 3:26 am on Wednesday morning. Later he updated his fans with this tweet:

Fox News—which led coverage with 7.4 million total viewers in primetime during the 2022 midterms—has gone through a ratings slump in recent months, reporting a 27% year-over-year decline in its latest quarter. Earlier this week, Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch attributed the dip to “viewer fatigue.”

CINCINNATI—GatesAir has added a series of new monitoring, reporting and network architecture enhancements to its AirWatch365 managed service shaped by real-world experience across an expanding U.S. beta program. GatesAir is now gathering operational data from 18 TV and FM radio transmitter sites, providing its service team with an increasingly diverse base of real-world information to refine AirWatch365 ahead of broader commercial adoption.

Available globally for TV, FM and DAB/DAB+ radio transmission systems, AirWatch365 provides continuous transmitter monitoring and diagnostic support through GatesAir’s 24/7 Network Operations Center (NOC). The managed service combines centralized monitoring, analytics and GatesAir RF expertise to help broadcasters identify developing problems, accelerate troubleshooting and improve the reliability of increasingly distributed transmission networks.

GatesAir introduced its AirWatch365 Edge Gateway at NAB Show 2026 as an on-premises appliance for gathering and normalizing operational data from transmitters and associated infrastructure. Since then, GatesAir has expanded the underlying monitoring architecture to accommodate different customer IT and network security requirements.

A new AirWatch365 fleet performance dashboard provides GatesAir specialists with a centralized view of transmitter health and performance across monitored sites. The dashboard provides nationwide, regional and individual site views, allowing users to drill down from an entire transmitter fleet into specific systems and components. GatesAir is also developing read-only customer access to the dashboard.

New reporting tools can quickly generate transmitter health reports using the accumulated operational data. These reports will support AirWatch365 incident response as well as quarterly performance summaries, providing broadcasters with both immediate diagnostic intelligence and a longer-term view of transmitter health.

GatesAir has also added a weather overlay to the fleet dashboard that allows GatesAir specialists to visualize weather patterns in relation to transmitter locations, providing additional context when investigating incidents and helping teams associate transmitter events with severe weather or changing environmental conditions.

GateAir has also refined how AirWatch365 connects with customer networks and and now offers architectural options that allow AirWatch365 to operate within or outside a customer firewall based on IT requirements.

For customers that permit AirWatch365 inside the firewall, transmitter data and log files can flow automatically into the monitoring environment without manual intervention. GatesAir has also developed an architecture for customers that require the AirWatch365 Edge Gateway to remain outside the protected network. In these configurations, transmitter telemetry can be securely relayed from within the customer network to the Edge Gateway without providing GatesAir direct access to the transmitter or internal network.

Real-world testing has additionally allowed GatesAir to validate the bandwidth requirements for AirWatch365. The service requires very little data throughput, opening monitoring possibilities for remote transmitter and translator sites with limited connectivity. In some cases, basic cellular connectivity can provide sufficient bandwidth for AirWatch365 data collection.

With a growing volume of real-world transmitter information, GatesAir says it is applying AI-assisted analysis to transmitter alarms and operational data to help its service team interpret events and identify potential root causes more efficiently. The technology can translate complex, engineering-oriented alarm information into more accessible diagnostic guidance while considering related transmitter parameters and historical information.

For more information on AirWatch365, visit www.gatesair.com/services/gatesair-care.

Norwegian audio technology company Nomono has introduced an alpha API and MCP server that opens the audio enhancement pipeline behind its Nomono Studio to broadcasters, production companies, and developers.

The initial release of Nomono Labs targets immersive and broadcast production, the company said. It enables broadcasters to record multiperson interviews on location. Users upload the speaker’s lavalier track and ambisonics recording into Nomono Labs, which delivers every voice separated and cleaned to broadcast-loudness standards.

The solution delivers stereo and binaural mixes, or ADM masters in the Dolby Atmos, EBU, and IAMF profiles.

At launch, it accepts any lavalier kit alongside a Sennheiser AMBEO or Zoom H3-VR ambisonics microphone, with more arrays to follow, the company said.

“Five products (Separation, Enhancement, Spatialization, Analysis and Delivery) run on the same processing chain already behind every Nomono Studio recording,” said Nomono. They isolate and clean each voice to broadcast loudness standards, measure each speaker’s position from the ambisonics recording and follow them as they move, and report who speaks when.

Outputs include processed and unprocessed files per mic, stereo and binaural mixes, and spatial audio master files that open directly in video editing tools like DaVinci Resolve or DAWs like Pro Tools.

This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand TVBEurope.

SAN JOSE, Calif.—Roku has unveiled Roku Outcomes, a machine learning-powered tool that enables marketers to target ads toward specific consumer actions, bringing the discipline they use for search and social to premium TV inventory.

Roku Outcomes offers two purpose-built optimizations, including:

• Roku Outcomes Amplify: Designed to maximize unique and incremental household reach, helping brands connect with new audiences while managing frequency. Marketers can set target audiences, reach goals and frequency controls, including goals for reaching households beyond linear TV or an existing media plan.
• Roku Outcomes Actions: Drives advertiser-defined conversions, including app installs, first-time views, sign-ups, subscriptions and trials.

With Roku, the ad, app install and first stream all happen on the Roku platform. That gives marketers closed-loop measurement within a single ecosystem, connecting ad exposure to installs and subsequent viewing. These signals continuously feed Roku’s machine learning models, which adjust bids and delivery in real time as campaigns are running.

“Performance marketers want to know: Did it drive action and at what cost?” said James Kelm, vice president of products, advertising, media at Roku. “Roku Outcomes lets our media and entertainment clients set the CPA they need and puts the scale and attention of TV behind it with measurement they can trust because the ad, the install and the first stream all happen on the same platform.”

For brands looking to reach new households beyond their existing media plans while managing ad frequency, Roku Outcomes lets marketers set target audiences, reach goals and frequency controls to extend campaign reach more efficiently.

Roku Outcomes works across Roku’s premium advertising ecosystem, including Home Screen native experiences and in-stream video. Roku Outcomes Actions is initially available for media and entertainment advertisers, with support for purchases, website visits and cart activity planned.

More information is available on the company’s website.

RTÉ, Ireland’s national public-service broadcaster, rethought how it would approach mixing commentary for the 2026 World Cup soccer tournament, June 11–July 19, choosing to combine Calrec’s Type R system with its SMPTE ST 2110 network.

Prior productions would have required six commentary booths—each with its own operator on a mixer. But this year, RTÉ signals from each booth fed a single multimix area where one operator handled all feeds. For the entire tournament, a team of four operators covered 104 matches held across North America.

From an operational point of view, the biggest benefit came in the form of productivity. “I think there were four operators mixing these 104 matches; that’s pretty much the biggest win,” said Roland de Groot, media production and infrastructure manager at RTÉ.

RTÉ has relied upon Calrec, especially in television, for a long time. Since 2023, Synthax Audio, Calrec’s U.K. partner has installed Type R in seven of the broadcaster’s radio studios as part of a large-scale upgrade project.

So, when RTÉ’s TV sound operations team set out the requirements for a multimix commentary area, RTÉ and Calrec’s engineering teams collaborated closely to shape the solution.

“We’re already very familiar with the Calrec Type R for radio,” de Groot said. “When the TV Sound Ops team gave us their list of technical and operational requirements, some of the engineers in my team said: ‘Actually, I think we can cover this pretty much with a Type R, maybe 80% out of the box.’”

The architecture for the tournament mirrored the broadcaster’s radio installations, in which dual main and redundant Cores and an analog breakout box are connected to RTÉ’s ST 2110 network.

“The mixer is 2110, our commentary boxes are 2110, and our comms system is 2110,” de Groot said. “All the signals, all the sources and all the destinations are connected to our 2110 house router, and all this combined allowed us to build a very powerful, very flexible system.”

The two Calrec Cores sit in a rack room, and the quiet, passively cooled analog breakout box sits in the gallery. It also connects to the network rather than the Core itself. If the on-air Core were to develop a problem, the system fails over to the standby Core, which reconnects to the breakout box automatically in about a second. The Type R consoles connect via standard Cat6 cabling to a switch, which links them to the Cores.

“It’s effectively a data center system, which is accessed by the consoles over standard IP,” said de Groot. “It’s a rack room in the building, but technically it could be anywhere.”

The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee announced on Tuesday that it will hold a hearing on the nomination of Republican Danielle Thumann Severs to the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday, Nov. 10.

Thumann Severs, a former legal adviser to Commissioner (now Chairman) Brendan Carr, was nominated by President Donald Trump in August.

If approved, she would be the fourth commissioner and give Republicans a 3-1 majority. The last time the FCC had a full complement of commissioners was Jan. 19, 2025. Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel resigned Jan. 20, with Democratic Commissioner Geoffrey Starks and Republican Commissioner Nathan Simington departing that June.

In scheduling the hearing, Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Texas) appears to have ignored the pleas of House Democrats, who last week asked Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to include Gomez’s renomination in tandem with Thumann Severs’ hearing.

The hearing, which will also include three other nominations, is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. EST in Room SR-253 and will be livestreamed.

The MaxxKonnect Group has acquired FCCInfo.com, a popular industry data resource, from Cavell, Mertz & Associates.

“The broadcast industry in general is getting smaller, we all know that,” said Josh Bohn, president and CEO of MaxxKonnect, a broadcast technology solutions provider based in Pelham, Ala.

“Resources are getting strained more every day. This site simplifies so many tasks by demystifying the FCC site.”

FCCInfo.com is a free data resource that is used by many broadcast industry professionals including the staff of Radio World; it provides searchable access to FCC broadcast, auxiliary, microwave, land mobileand antenna structure records.

It is not affiliated with the Federal Communications Commission, but most of its data comes directly from the agency’s public databases.

Its AM, FM and TV data primarily originates from the FCC Media Bureau’s Licensing and Management System database. The Wireless Bureau’s ULS database is the source of its broadcast microwave and land mobile data, while “Places” data comes from the USGS’s list of populated places, and tower information from the FCC Antenna Structure Registration database.

“It’s a chore to hunt through the LMS for things, some of which are almost impossible to find unless you happen to know where to look,” Bohn told Radio World.

Cavell Mertz is a technical consulting firm that since 2023 has been part of Capitol Airspace Group. It is based in Alexandria, Va.

“I, like so many thousands of others in our industry, use FCCInfo almost daily,” Bohn said. “One day, Gary Cavell and I were chatting, and we determined it was the right fit for both of us for MaxxKonnect to take over the care and feeding of it.”

[Read Radio World's 2019 profile of Gary Cavell, when he and Cindy Hutter Cavell received NAB’s Engineering Achievement Awards for radio and TV, respectively.]

Much of FCCInfo.com’s code had been written years ago by Dan Ryson for an internal Cavell Mertz software tool. The company decided to take it public as an industry benefit in 2002.

Bohn said MaxxKonnect plans to modernize the back-end code base and eventually may revamp the site’s user interface.

“We have no plans to paywall any of the existing search option services on the site. We may add some premium features which may include a fee, but the existing searches that everyone has been using for more than 20 years will continue as they are, completely free of charge.”

The Cavell Mertz team will remain involved as advisers.

“With all our other workload, we felt that we really haven’t had the time to pursue the improvements and new services we wanted to offer as the industry evolved,” Gary Cavell said.

“The MaxxKonnect team has considerable depth, fresh ideas and available staff, which we feel lends itself to taking the site to the next level. We also wanted to make sure that the tool was preserved for everyone’s use going forward by people whose hair wasn’t as gray as ours. The firm has always been interested in teaching and sharing knowledge whenever we can.”

The FCC publishes LMS (AM/FM/TV) data daily as well as a complete update of ULS (broadcast auxiliary) and Antenna Structure Registration data once weekly. FCCInfo.com’s automated import routine is set to match the FCC’s pace, according to an FAQ. The dates of import are shown at the bottom of pages containing FCC data. The “populated places,” ZIP code and airport databases are updated sporadically.

The site also offers integration with Google Earth, allowing a user to display station facilities, microwave paths and registered antenna structures on interactive maps.

This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand Radio World.

Netflix has announced “AI Discover,” a new tab on the streamer’s TV app which is currently being deployed in beta mode to select viewers.

Netflix says it will begin rolling out early discovery experiences, starting with one that takes stock of a viewers’ vibes to determine their preferred show or movie.

“There’s more to enjoy and discover on Netflix than ever, but what sounds right for a quiet night in may look different for family movie night or a few spare minutes,” the company said in a blog post. “We’ve spent years refining how you discover, with recommendations tailored to your tastes, from what you Thumbs Up to what you add to “My List.” Now, AI Discover joins the mix as a new way to explore.”

The first experience within AI Discover is built around themes that can be narrowed down to a viewer’s specific tastes. Here’s how it works:

• Start with a theme: Pick from a range of themes, each previewed with a clip from a show or movie. Some match how the viewer wants to feel (“Something Light,” “Scare Me”), your crew (“Family Movie Night”), or how much time they have (“Quick Watches”). Others might reflect what’s new or popular, or what they’ve been watching lately.
• See what they gathered: Choosing a theme brings up matching recommendations.
• Go deeper: More specific themes surface so the viewer can keep searching until something feels right, or choose “Something Different” for a fresh set.
• Tune your picks: Every title has a "Tune Your Recommendations" button, right next to “Play” and “My List.” Use it to keep a recommendation, or to ask Netflix not to recommend something again.

“What we’re most excited about is how it feels to use. Tell us what you’re after, and the experience adjusts” Netflix said. “Tell us a recommendation isn’t for you, and we’ll remember it in AI Discover, so it won’t keep turning up. AI Discover is powered by a new intelligence layer we’ve been building that responds to what members tell us in real time and keeps learning.”

AI Discover will begin rolling out in the U.S. to members who use Netflix in English on supported TVs, and will gradually be opened up to more subscribers over the coming weeks. Those who have access will find a “Discover” red gem icon and a “New” label in the top navigation on their TV.

California Governor Gavin Newsom this week proposed expanding the state’s current Film and Television Tax Credit Program from $750 million to at least $1 billion, and making it the nation’s largest capped film and TV tax credit.

The expansion would include credits for above-the-line talent, $100 million for independent productions, rewards for companies that commit to more than one production in California, and an extension of the tax credit through 2040. The governor also renewed his call for Congress to pass the Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act (MPTERA) by the end of the year. That proposed legislation would create a 20% federal film and TV tax credit that can stack with state programs.

“California created the modern entertainment industry; we’re the capital of entertainment and we’re going to keep it here,” the governor said in a statement. “At least $1 billion in tax credits means more investment flowing into our economy and more opportunity across the industry. Through this expansion, we will maintain the momentum and success of our historic expansion last year. But states can’t shoulder the cost alone, which is why I am calling on Congress to back up an expanded tax credit by passing national film and TV tax credit legislation already on the table.”

“A $1 billion California Film and TV Tax Credit would strengthen California’s creative industries, support more good-paying jobs, and keep our entertainment economy growing,” said Dee Dee Myers, Senior Advisor to Governor Newsom and Director of the GO-Biz. “Expanding the credit would also make California more competitive for the productions, talent, and investment that drive this industry.”

“I’m grateful for Governor Newsom’s leadership and his call to expand California’s Film and TV Tax Credit to over $1 billion,” said Colleen Bell, Director, California Film Commission. “The California Film and TV Tax Credit has become one of our most important tools to increase production in California, support crews and strengthen the creative economy that makes this state the entertainment capital of the world.”

“I’m grateful to Governor Newsom for his unwavering commitment to the workers and small businesses that are the backbone of California’s iconic film and television industry,” said Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Hollywood). “Our work last year to expand California’s Film and Television Tax Credit Program to $750 million annually and modernize the program is delivering results, bringing back tens of thousands of jobs in its first year.

"While we’ve made tremendous progress, we must continue building on that momentum to ensure California remains the film and television capital of the world," Zbur continued. "This is about protecting the future of an industry that has helped define California for generations and ensuring the next generation of creative workers and small business owners can raise their families right here at home.”

The proposal is in addition to the Newsom’s expansion of the California Film and TV Tax Credit last year, raising the annual credit from $330 million to $750 million, a $3.75 billion investment over five years through 2030. The Governor's office claimed that the first year of his expanded California Film and TV Tax Credit delivered;

• Applications up 82% compared to the previous year.
• $8.25 billion in direct production spending to date, including $5.3 billion in qualified expenditures and $3.2 billion in qualified wages;
• 261,000 background performers measured in days worked;
• Year over year, film shoot days rose 52%, and TV shoot days rose more than 7%;
• More than 8,600 California filming days, including 1,823 out-of-zone days, ensuring the benefits reach counties and regions across the state, and
• Over 43,000 cast and crew jobs created.

Canon has introduced Camera Control Centre, a new free software application that brings setup, control and management together in a single platform for PTZ and multi-camera productions.

The software aims to help broadcasters standardize workflows, maintain consistent image quality and scale productions with ease, said the company.

The software supports the full production workflow, including:

• Camera discovery and initial setup
• Remote PTZ camera control
• Colour matching across Canon and non-Canon cameras
• Firmware updates and device management
• Centralized monitoring and operation

New features include the ability to compare up to four camera feeds simultaneously and quickly adjust settings such as white balance, shutter speed and iris from a single screen. Users can also save and recall settings across multiple cameras.

Camera Control Centre supports up to 200 compatible devices, enabling organisations to manage large camera deployments from a single application, said Canon. Batch management capabilities further simplify configuration, updates and maintenance across multiple cameras.

When it comes to the current market for streaming standards, SRT remains king, according to a new report from Rethink TV.

In “Open Internet Contribution Protocols Forecast: 2026-2032,” the researcher charts the growth of open internet transport at the expense of legacy satellite and dedicated internet access (DIA) fiber lines, with growth propelled by new sources of live events—particularly tier-two sports, news reporting, music concerts, and livestreaming events, where the prosumer market can drive new shipments and open the door for these protocols.

Over the past decade, Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) has emerged as a practical solution for primary contribution, as well as cloud integration, playout, and multisite connectivity, evolving from its original use for reliable, low-latency video delivery over unmanaged IP networks, according to the researcher.

Other protocols in Rethink’s report don’t fare as well.

“RIST remains an ‘academic exercise’ for many vendors, with its most ardent supporters viewed as something of a ‘clan’ that always lets perfect be the enemy of the good (SRT in that case),” the researchers write. “Still, few people we speak to completely write RIST off. Most believe it will grow, but none believe it will surpass SRT. Most welcome it if it solves problems for them, but most believe SRT does enough, and that the extra features RIST might provide are not worth the hassle of upgrading.”

SRT, meanwhile, is still viewed as a ‘de facto standard’ by most, according to Rethink.

“In greenfield deployments, SRT adoption is essentially a given these days, and on the equipment side of things, finding a device that does not support SRT is still very difficult. For RTP and RTMP, they will continue to linger, but they are decidedly on the way out, through the period—persisting as legacy options in stubborn workloads.”

Zixi is attempting to stand out in a crowded market, the researcher said.

“Zixi the protocol and Zixi the platform have slightly different perspectives. The platform will delight in pointing to all the multi-protocol traffic it handles, and that it does not view SRT as a direct rival,” Rethink said. “The protocol personified, however, will stress that it is being displaced, and our projections show how Zixi import traffic is declining—with the vast majority of Zixi platform customers using more than one protocol.

“The platform would note that so long as that traffic is arriving inside the Zixi SDVP (Software-Defined Video Platform) environment, Zixi gets paid, and so it is not as torn up over the protocol choice as the Zixi protocol itself might be,” the report concluded.

Rethink was particularly harsh on NDI, noting that its use “has completely fallen off a cliff.”

“For a time, it looked like it could ride a wave of prosumer interest and expand into the tooling via a growing market of content creators entering the market from outside the traditional M&E holdings—bringing with them a decidedly different way of working, which made use of NDI,” Rethink said. “But recent price increases and license-term changes have dented that projection, and in the four years that we have been tracking NDI, the protocol has not made any dents in the likes of SRT or RIST.

"NDI still has its niche uses, in M&E, particularly in graphics workflows and is particularly well positioned as a simpler alternative to the SMPTE ST 2110 ecosystem, as well as the open standard IPMX options and the closed SDVoE alternative," Rethink said.

Rethink also noted the emergence of Media over Quic (aka MOQ), but says it’s still too soon to gauge its future impact.

“There lurks a potential new entrant on the horizon, of course. Media over QUIC (MoQ) has evolved on the distribution side of the market, rather than contribution. However, there is an increasing amount of chatter about using MoQ (using the UDP-based QUIC protocol) thanks to its low-latency capabilities. We are tracking this, but for now, there is no need to include MoQ in the contribution projections.”

The report also acknowledges the increasing influence of software-defined workflows.

“With LLM-based coding and automation, the trend of ‘software-ization’ of video workflows continues apace, further abstracting the choice of protocol from the choice of equipment at any given step in the chain,” Rethink said. “Certain encoders (the appliances) are still constrained but, increasingly, buyers have flexibility about which protocol they wish to use. Increasingly, the ‘value’ is in the interchangeability and programmability of a workflow, rather than in the economies of scale that could be achieved by committing to a single protocol and approach.”

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.—Around-the-clock news outlet Cheddar has moved to the cloud with the assistance of Playbox Neo.

Powered by Playbox Neo’s own CDN and the full Playbox Neo Suite media platform, Cheddar delivers its live and recorded feeds to 27 headends worldwide with full redundancy for uninterrupted service.

A distribution backbone of 54 connections ensures efficient signal flow between headends and end subscribers, supported by built-in failover paths for maximum reliability.

The 10-year-old Cheddar delivers finance and tech news and analysis live and on-demand across all traditional and OTT platforms. Previously, Cheddar used on-premises servers in its New York City-based master control facility for playout. When the media outlet was considering a new physical location, it wanted to install a new, temporary on-premises system with the aim of easily moving to the new venue.

Cheddar contacted Playbox Neo to customize a temporary on-prem playout system. Due to the pending move, a different workflow based on a PlayBox-designed-and-installed turnkey solution connected to its private CDN was chosen.

The cloud-based playout system delivers Cheddar's 24/7 feed as a fully SSL-secured, multi-bitrate adaptive HLS stream, with synchronized discontinuity handling across every ABR variant to ensure seamless playback on each downstream platform.

SCTE-35 ad signaling is carried end-to-end through the workflow, allowing Cheddar's distribution partners to perform downstream ad insertion and dynamic ad replacement on their own platforms. The feed is delivered in full compliance with the technical specifications required by major FAST and connected TV platforms and is backed by a redundant origin architecture with automatic failover to protect against service interruption.

It worked so well that Cheddar opted not to move to a new master control facility. Its PlayBox Neo Suite includes AirBox Neo for automated content streaming and broadcast playout as well as TitleBox Neo for graphics creation and Live Ingest.

“This system has worked like a dream for us,” said Thomas Staples, director of programming operations at Cheddar. “With simple administrative privileges, I can control all playout from the PlayBox server at the private CDN from my home in New York. The cloud charges are significantly lower than we’d pay with a hyperscaler. Also, we never spent money on a new facility because we no longer need to, not to mention the huge savings on rent. The PlayBox Neo Suite running on their own CDN has saved our network a significant amount of money—with zero limitations.”

More information is available on the company’s website.

NEW YORK—Gravity Media’s SMARThead robotic camera technology made its New York City Marathon debut Nov. 1.

Working in partnership with CP Communications, Gravity Media deployed two of the SMARThead systems on the gantries above the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge to capture more than 55,000 participants as they began the race.

While the position was relatively inaccessible, Gravity Media’s team drew on its experience of rigging the systems in hard-to-reach locations to deliver the unique, iconic shots. Equipped with Sony HDC P50 cameras and CJ45x zoom lenses, the remote heads offered pan-and-tilt functionality, enabling precise camera movements and flexibility for production teams.

Gravity Media’s SMARThead technology was designed and developed in-house. It is a versatile and compact remote head that regularly supports European international sporting events, including the London Marathon, the British Open and Wimbledon, where over 40 heads are deployed. SMARThead systems have also been used for major U.K. state events, including the coronation of King Charles III.

“Having supported coverage of some of the world’s biggest sporting and live events, we understand the importance of capturing the moments that make each event unique. SMARThead unlocks new creative possibilities for broadcasters, delivering distinctive perspectives that can bring audiences closer to the action,” said Nathan Spencer, managing director of Gravity Media USA. “Bringing this unique, proven technology to our U.S. clients is an exciting step in our U.S. growth.”

More information is available on the company’s website.

Low-power TV broadcasters told the Federal Communications Commission that while they support a transition from ATSC 1.0 to 3.0, they don’t support Sinclair’s push for a coordinated, nationwide transition that would include them.

In an Oct. 29 letter to the FCC, the Low Power Television Broadcasters Association addressed the commission's current notice of proposed rulemaking to accelerate the transition to ATSC 3.0.

Broadcasters, led by the National Association of Broadcasters, have proposed a nationwide shutdown of 1.0 (aka “sunset”) at the end of 2028 in the top 55 U.S. markets with the remaining markets sunsetting 1.0 at the end of 2030. Those dates were proposed nearly two years ago and as the commission has delayed a final decision, it’s now highly unlikely that those deadlines will hold.

There are approximately 1,760 licensed Low Power Television (LPTV) stations and 397 licensed Class A television stations in the United States. LPTVA has been a strong advocate for allowing broadcasters to transmit 5G broadcast as an alternative to ATSC 3.0, an idea that has not set well with broadcasters, particularly Sinclair Senior Vice President of Technology Mark Aitken, who says 5G can be transmitted via 3.0.

The LPTVA, which said it supports all broadcast standards, told the FCC that individual LPTV stations should decide for themselves on which standard would best serve its viewers.

"If full-power stations wish to mandate a standard for full-power television, we stand behind the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB),” LPVTA President Frank Copsidas wrote. “However, we do not believe Class A stations should be included in any such request, as they are LPTV at heart with more regulatory requirements and contour protection, but not with all the benefits of full power. LPTVBA is strongly opposed to any mandate for translators, LPTV, or Class A stations.”

“In its February 26, 2025, Petition for Rulemaking filed with the FCC in GN Docket No. 16-142 seeking a mandatory transition to ATSC 3.0, the NAB explicitly stated that it ‘does not recommend subjecting low power television stations or television translator stations to any requirement to transition to ATSC 3.0,’’ he added.

Copsidas said Sinclair’s call for a coordinated, organized nationwide transition and a sunset of ATSC 1.0 signals, “while consistent with its comments in this proceeding, must not be construed or applied in a manner that imposes a mandatory transition or sunset on LPTV, Class A, or translator stations.

Copsidas asked the FCC to allow LPTV broadcasters more flexibility in choosing their own path.

“LPTV stations will continue to serve all the broadcast television viewers left behind by ATSC 3.0, which currently comprises 85-90% of television viewers,” he said. “Maintaining ATSC 1.0 service on LPTV channels ensures that free, over-the-air local television remains universally available during and after any full-power transition.”