The data engineering and analytics company Dot Group has announced its participation as a sponsor of the AI Tech Zone networking area at IBC 2024 (Hall 14, stand 14.AIP14) during the show between Sept. 13-16, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

During IBC, the company, which is a European-based expert on IBM technologies, will showcase how AI is transforming media and entertainment through technologies like IBM watsonx, IBM's enterprise data and AI platform, which has been deployed to revolutionize digital experiences at major global sports at events.

Additionally, Dot Group will showcase AI-driven sustainability solutions, highlighting their commitment to environmental initiatives in the media industry.

As leaders in data engineering and analytics, Dot Group will demonstrate how AI-driven solutions can simplify data collection, analysis, and reporting for sustainability initiatives. 

The focus will be on helping organizations understand and reduce their carbon footprint through GreenOps and FinOps approaches. GreenOps helps organisations to achieve the lowest possible environmental impact for business operations, while FinOps helps to deliver operations at the lowest possible cost. 

Leveraging IBM's position on sustainability, Dot Group said it will showcase solutions powered by IBM Envizi and Apptio which offer practical tools for media companies to balance operational efficiency, financial optimization, and environmental stewardship.

Dot Group will also highlight IBM watsonx, an enterprise AI and data platform with assistants that leverages Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). This cutting-edge AI for business platform has already made significant impacts across the media and entertainment sector. At major sporting events like The Championships, Wimbledon, watsonx has been used to enhance the digital experience for fans, including creating stories on players and matches and generating commentary for highlights videos. In football, Sevilla FC used watsonx to optimize the player recruitment process, demonstrating its versatility beyond content creation. Across the M&E industry, watsonx is transforming customer service, employee support, business processes, HR, and recruiting by ensuring customized AI-generated responses are not only prompt but also thoroughly validated, the company said. 

The company's comprehensive suite of M&E solutions on display will also include IBM Aspera and DataSprint for high-speed, secure file transfers, crucial for today's content-heavy media landscape. As the leading European experts in this technology, Dot Group offers tailored solutions to meet specific industry needs.

Additionally, Dot Group will present IBM NS1 Connect, a managed service for authoritative DNS and traffic steering that improves application performance and network resilience, ensuring smooth user experiences crucial in media delivery. The company will also showcase robust IBM Storage solutions designed to meet the unique demands of media and entertainment businesses.

Simon Parkinson, managing director of Dot Group, said that during the IBC Show "we're showcasing how IBM's watsonx and sustainability AI solutions work to create more efficient, future-ready media operations. Our collaboration with IBM enables us to help businesses navigate AI integration and sustainability challenges, turning them into opportunities for growth. We're demonstrating how these technologies can optimise IT environments for both environmental and financial sustainability, driving long-term business success while minimising environmental impact."

Visitors to IBC2024 are invited to engage with Dot Group's team of experts at the AI Tech Zone networking area. Attendees can explore how AI and advanced data management can transform their operations, support their sustainability goals, and drive innovation in the rapidly evolving media and entertainment industry.

For more information about Dot Group's products and services, visit dotgroup.ai. 

ARMONK, N.Y. and SAN FRANCISCO—The investment firm Francisco Partners has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire The Weather Company assets from IBM. Specific terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The assets being acquired by Francisco Partners include The Weather Company's digital consumer-facing offerings, The Weather Channel mobile and cloud-based digital properties including Weather.com, Weather Underground and Storm Radar, as well as its enterprise offerings for broadcast, media, aviation, advertising technology and data solutions for other emerging industries. The Weather Company will also bring its forecasting science and technology platform to Francisco Partners.

Francisco Partners already owns a number of companies that supply technologies to broadcast industry, including Grass Valley and LiveU, that could benefit from the deal.

IBM acquired the Weather Company, excluding its cable assets which are now owned by the Allen Media, in early 2016 in a deal that the Wall Street Journal priced at more than $2 billion. 

"Amid the growing volatility of weather, The Weather Company's unique set of consumer, media, and industry-specific products provide mission critical, data-driven weather insights to individuals and businesses around the world," explained Alan Ni, partner at Francisco Partners. "We are excited to partner with the management team to grow The Weather Company's robust portfolio of technology offerings and deliver a great product experience for its customers."

The transaction is expected to close by the end of Q1 2024 and is subject to regulatory approvals, completion of local labor processes and other customary closing conditions.

The Weather Company serves an average of more than 415 million people each month through its consumer-facing digital properties, including The Weather Channel mobile app and website, Weather Underground and Storm Radar, and more than 2,000 businesses across a variety of industries through its enterprise offerings, the companies said. 

In announcing the deal, Francisco Partners said that it will supply increased investment and resources that will allow The Weather Company will look to move beyond forecasting alone and bring new tools and experiences to users to help them understand how weather impacts all aspects of their lives, starting with health and well-being. 

For businesses, The Weather Company plans to offer more actionable insights so organizations can provide greater value to their customers. With its advertising platform, The Weather Company will continue to provide quality real-time experiences for the ad and subscription media industry, while complying with all consumer privacy laws and regulations, Francisco Partners said. 

"We're proud of what The Weather Company team has accomplished with IBM, and we are confident that the best path forward is as a standalone company benefiting from Francisco Partners' expanded investment, dedication and expertise. We're excited to see the next phase of The Weather Company's journey," said Rob Thomas, senior vice president, software and chief commercial officer, IBM. "Over the last few years, we've evolved IBM to be a hybrid cloud and AI company. We regularly review our portfolio to make sure our business areas are core to that strategy, and today's news reflects our continued focus on these two transformational technologies."

As part of the deal, IBM will retain its sustainability software business, including its Environmental Intelligence Suite (EIS) to help clients curate, measure, report and operationalize ESG data to inform decision making, improve performance and meet regulatory requirements. IBM said. 

IBM intends to continue leveraging The Weather Company's weather data for EIS, which spans various climate related use cases. EIS also uses a geospatial foundational AI model powered by NASA's satellite dataset and offered as part of watsonx, IBM's AI and data platform. This model has a wide range of applications, including tracking changes in land use, monitoring natural disasters, and predicting crop yields.

Since its launch over 20 years ago, Francisco Partners has invested in over 400 technology companies, making it one of the most active and long-standing investors in the technology industry, the firm said. 

LOUISVILLE, Ky.—Climavision and The Weather Company, an IBM Business, are working together to offer television broadcasters a subscription to X-band radar, offering stations a less costly alternative to installing and integrating their own radars.

With a direct interface into The Weather Company’s Max product suite, Climavision’s service gives broadcasters the advantages of a station-owned radar, the company said. 

Climavision’s radars are located in the gaps where NEXRAD radars are not. Most NEXRAD radars reside in large urban areas, meaning many communities fall within these gaps and go underserved, it said. 

Earlier this year, Climavision installed three new radars in central North Carolina to close one of the country’s most notable gaps. The move brought unprecedented low-altitude coverage to an area that’s home to more than 3 million people, it said.

Gray TV’s WBTV was the first television station to access the new system, delivering a new level of weather to viewers in the 21st-largest television market.

 “Viewers trust us with their family’s safety during severe weather, so we owe them the best information we can possibly provide,” said Molly Kelleher, news director at WBTV. 

“Climavision’s radar-as-a-service fills in a critical gap in NEXRAD coverage near Charlotte, so we get a much more complete picture of dangerous weather—when and where it’s happening. That could make a lifesaving difference for our viewers or even our own crews in the field.” 

The Weather Company makes Climavision’s service seamless for meteorologists and for viewers. The data from Climavision’s network can be incorporated directly into a client’s Rapid Radar Service data feed, meaning it can be displayed on-air right alongside NEXRAD data. The Weather Company’s Max system can also highlight the Climavision feed to inform viewers of the added value the station is delivering, the company said.

Climavision radar data also can be integrated into other applications through an API. That means clients who use The Weather Company’s proprietary Max Mobile weather app can seamlessly integrate the Climavision feed with NEXRAD radar data for mobile users as well, it said.

The company continues to add radars. Currently, it has radars in North Carolina, Texas, Louisiana and Tennessee. It plans to have 35 online by the end of the year and ultimately will scale the network to more than 200, it said.

More information is available the websites of Climavision and The Weather Company.

ARMONK, N.Y. and LITTLETON, Colo.—Dish Network Corporation has selected IBM to help automate the United States' first greenfield cloud-native 5G network. 

The project illustrates how AI is transforming the construction of new networks and allowing operators to speed up the launch of new services. 

"This is a seminal moment for Dish and the global telecommunications industry," said Steve Canepa, managing director, IBM Global Communications Sector. "By utilizing IBM's AI-powered automation and intent-driven network orchestration software, Dish can develop and deploy network offerings, applying advanced AI with IBM Watson and orchestration capabilities to help optimize network operations and performance. As a result, Dish can accelerate time to market for new innovative services powered by a secured, automated, intelligent and agile 5G network." 

Marc Rouanne, chief network officer at Dish Wireless added that “our 5G build is unique in that we are truly creating a 'network of networks,' where each enterprise can custom-tailor a network slice or group of slices to achieve their specific business needs. IBM's orchestration solutions leverage AI, automation and machine learning to not only make these slices possible, but to ensure they adapt over time as customer use evolves. With IBM, DISH is combining the speed and latency advances of 5G with the customization and intelligence of the cloud, and the result will be a paradigm shift for small businesses, large enterprises and the broader wireless industry."

Dish's new smart network will be designed to be agile, scalable and fully virtualized and will leverage IBM's AI-powered automation and network orchestration software and services to bring broad 5G network orchestration to Dish’s business and operations platforms, the companies said.

Intent-driven orchestration, a software-powered automation process, and artificial intelligence (AI) will be utilized to drive the operations of Dish's cloud-native 5G network architecture.

Dish has engaged IBM Global Business Services to use IBM Cloud Pak for Network Automation software with Dish's 5G network architecture. The intent-based orchestration functionality designed to stitch hardware and software resources together more seamlessly and efficiently, will to help Dish make network slicing possible and accelerate the creation and delivery of new services. 

Dish also plans to use advanced network slicing to offer new use cases and industry vertical opportunities that are customized to each business and customer who leverages the private hybrid 5G network. Network slices – individual pieces of the network – will be managed by customers to set service levels for each device appropriate to their use of the network. For example, an autonomous vehicle can be supported by very low latency while an HD video camera can be allocated high bandwidth. 

To continue operations amid the ongoing pandemic, media companies of all sizes have had to quickly make the switch to remote production to cater to a fully work-from-home environment.

Production teams are being challenged to adapt to this significant disruption and work in a very agile fashion. They’re having to collaborate on projects remotely, seamlessly share content and assets, quickly roll out different services to different sites and not be as tethered to physical data centers as they once were.

This shift is driving interest in cloud-native technologies and container-based deployments. Platforms such as OpenShift and Kubernetes offer reproducible, high-availability, fault-tolerant infrastructure solutions that allow media businesses to move their workflows to or from any public or private cloud environment without having to rearchitect the infrastructure.

With production teams working remotely, the spotlight has also become more focused on high-quality IP-based streaming and cloud security. It’s now more important than ever for media companies to secure their workflows to protect their content and revenues, meaning media businesses have a lot to think about if they want to operate effectively and efficiently amid the “new normal.”

CONTAINERS TAKE HOLD

Containers are a virtualization technology that enable users to package and isolate discrete application components with the precise dependencies and configurations required to run, thereby providing a streamlined way to build, test, deploy and redeploy applications on multiple environments. This offers many benefits for media organizations. For example, containers provide the flexibility to efficiently manage new remote workflows and infrastructures consistently across all applications, such as encoding, transcoding, graphics rendering and video transport.

Most importantly, they allow businesses to very quickly scale up workflows automatically and on-demand to meet fluctuating requirements and leverage the power of the cloud to apply additional resources when needed. Although there are costs associated, the flexibility means workflows can be scaled up and down to meet spikes or dips in demand for production traffic. Containers are managed by orchestration platforms, most dominantly based on the open source Kubernetes project. 

Another area where containers and their orchestration platforms impact the media industry is availability. Media workflows are highly time sensitive, meaning the availability of services is a key concern for production teams in terms of delivering content to tight deadlines. Kubernetes offers a consistent way to ensure an ultra-high level of availability, while removing the complexity associated with traditional, vendor-specific approaches.

In the past, businesses had to engage with all their technology vendors independently when developing a strategy for high availability. This required additional resources for infrastructure management, as businesses would have to learn the nuances of each product when monitoring for availability. Evolving to a container-based model streamlines and consolidates the monitoring of critical workflow resources, thereby reducing both complexity and cost.

The key for businesses is to make sure that they don’t end up with a bespoke set of tools that’s harder and more complex to manage. This can be avoided by embracing the communities around platforms such as OpenShift. These communities often spearhead new innovations, so staying abreast of the latest trends in the community when building a container-based environment—especially one that comprises different technology vendors and providers—can help guide the process. As a result, businesses will be more likely to adopt a standard toolset that makes it easier to manage the lifecycle of the tools and service in their workflows.

THE FULL PACKAGE

These factors are prompting more and more media businesses to work with external partners to evolve their public cloud resources and workflows into container-based environments. Although the media industry has been relatively slow to adopt containers compared to other sectors, we’re seeing growing interest in Kubernetes and the consolidation of media offerings onto a single platform powered by containers.

But container technology isn’t the only innovation enhancing remote production workflows. IP-based streaming is also taking on a growing importance, particularly in the current climate where remote productions have fewer office-based IT support staff than ever before. Media businesses are operating on skeleton crews, and IP-based streaming offers a flexible and cost-efficient way of operating remote production sites without requiring a full IT staff, while also ensuring a more streamlined workflow.

And linked to this, of course, is the issue of security. As productions continue to become increasingly remote with employees working from different locations, security must be considered as a central part of any end-to-end workflow. Ensuring proper identity management is becoming increasingly important, presenting a need to integrate technologies such as intelligent authentication, credentials encryption and secure key management integration with BYOK (bring your own key) capabilities. 

BYOK enables businesses to easily and cost-efficiently rotate their encryption keys, and can be supplemented with other cloud security innovations such as forensic “watermarking-as-a-service” to counter piracy. This all can help businesses ensure security by following the principles of zero-trust environments when auditing key workflows, providing a high level of control and protecting valuable content in the most effective way possible.

Ultimately, it’s becoming clear that container-based deployments will become the dominant infrastructure solution in a remote and hybrid cloud world. These cloud-native technologies are vital to supporting agile and secure operations, giving media businesses the tools to enhance their remote production workflows and adapt to any situation that comes their way. 

James Wilson is head of Aspera Engineering and Operations, IBM.

EXTON, Pa.—IBM is joining the SCTE-ISBE Explorer Initiative Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning workgroup, becoming the first member that is not part of the cable telecommunications industry, according to SCTE-ISBE.

The Explorer Initiative was founded in March of this year as an expansion of SCTE-ISBE’s standards program. The initiative brought leaders into seven new working groups to develop standards for AI and ML, smart cities, extended spectrum and more. Explorer working groups were selected for their potential to impact telecommunications infrastructure, take advantage of the benefits of cable’s 10G platform and improve society’s ability to cope with natural disasters and health crises, like COVID-19, says SCTE-ISBE.

IBM, as the new member, will collaborate with subject matter experts from across industries to develop AI and ML standards and best practices.

“Integrating advancements in AI and machine learning with the deployment of agile, open and secure software-defined networks will help usher in new innovations, many of which will transform the way we connect,” said Steve Canepa, global industry managing director, telecommunications, media and entertainment for IBM.

For more information, visit www.scte.org.  

IBM Watson might have had the busiest summer of anyone apart from Ben Stokes and Spider-Man, providing bespoke information and technology services to both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open on an unprecedented scale. Since its doubles partnership with Wimbledon began in 1990, the company has collected a net amount of 62,814,711 data points, which are spun up into insights, highlights and analysis.

“Wimbledon described the championships as like putting on a fantastic wedding,” says Sam Seddon, Wimbledon client and program executive at IBM. “So you’ve got to manage and micromanage the detail to make it the most wonderful day and experience possible. But they’re inviting 500,000 guests, they’re streaming it to 20 million guests, they’re doing it for 13 days and they need 24/7 security.”

BREAKING INTO MEDIA

IBM Watson supplies the technology elements needed to ace this objective and to enable Wimbledon’s emerging media enterprise. “They’re starting to set up a completely integrated broadcast and digital capability,” explains Seddon, citing the increasingly disruptive role sport is playing in the media business. ”The FIFA Women’s World Cup, British Grand Prix, Tour de France—they’re all happening at the same time so there’s a huge amount of focus on getting eyeballs. So the way that they’re doing that is by essentially turning themselves into a media business and thinking and acting like a media business.” 

At the same time, social media organizations like Facebook and telco giants such as AT&T are branching  into sport broadcasting and streaming, hence Wimbledon’s attempts to smash into the broadcast arena. “What we help them with is all of the enablement layers that allow them to put on the show,” says Seddon. “To a large extent that starts with data—whether that’s photography as data or stats as data, or whether that’s video.” 

IBM Hybrid Cloud is used to disseminate that data to 200 territories around the world, distributed from IBM Watson’s on-premise Cloud to mobile phones, tablets and desktops; 49.5 million users visited the Wimbledon.com website in 2018 over the course of the two-week tournament. The site is home to digital experiences designed and built by IBM Watson, including live scores and the MyWimbledon guest experience program where members can personalize their web portal. Users can also vote on the content that’s available on the large-screen TV on Henman Hill. “So whether you’re a debenture holder, or whether you’re a hospitality user, or whether you’re a player or whether you’re a fan, you’ll all come into a single access point, Wimbledon.com,” says Seddon.

SAFETY NETS

Another major role the company plays is in security, having helped to prevent more than 200 million cyber threats during the 2018 championships. Seddon uses an example of a security event from March 2019 where QRadar identified 663 different IP addresses associated with the attack. “IBM Watson for Cyber Security is able to distill that down to just 18 IP addresses in this set of particular events, which were then deemed to be a coordinated attack.

“What that allows us to do is be a lot more focused in terms of how we’re going about analyzing and tracking the source of this and being able to then put further measures in place if needed to ensure that nothing comes through,” he continues. “Since we put this in we’re about 60 times quicker on being able to respond to cyber security events, which from Wimbledon’s point of view is something they’re really, really focused on because their whole business model is built on quality.”

AI ADVANTAGE

Perhaps the most advanced aspect of IBM Watson’s solution is its AI deployment, capable of generating a postmatch highlights package in just two minutes. During the 2018 tournament, the company analysed over 2,000 hours of video content to generate hundreds of these packages for the website and other broadcasters. “We want to create highlights packages faster than a global news organization, we want them to be high quality, we want them to be Wimbledon quality, and we want them to be exciting,” Seddon remarks. “So how do you define excitement?”

Seddon describes the three sources of data used to make this judgement: sound coming from the umpire’s chair, video of the players themselves and match data.

“By looking at those three things together we’re able to define per points, how exciting is it by: are the crowd really animated? Is it a key point in the match? Are the players gesticulating, are they excited and fist pumping?” Using these metrics, IBM Watson ranks every single point by excitement, and packages the highest scoring into highlights along with automated graphics.

The 2019 championships saw the introduction of two new AI components. The first is Watson Acoustics, a machine learning tool trained to listen for the sound of the tennis ball on the racket. “That helps us from a clipping point of view,” explains Seddon. “Once the ball hits the racket you know the point’s started, and from an editing point of view that allows us to be very tight on the clipping, which is important to Wimbledon because they have only a certain amount of rights footage themselves, because they give that out to the BBC and worldwide broadcast partners.

“The other thing that we’ve introduced is an integrity solution,” he continues. “At the end of a match the crowd will disperse, they’ll go and get a drink, top up on Pimms, whatever it is they need to do. And it doesn’t matter that we’ve got another great quarter final coming on straight after it, the crowd noise in the stadium will be very, very different in the first period of that match. So what this allows us to do is moderate that, ensure there’s complete fairness for the next people that are coming on the court, and that their highlights are as high quality as the match that’s playing out. So just because there’s not much crowd in there, it won’t have an impact on that.”

RALLYING THE DATA

IBM Watson captured approximately 4.5 million points of tennis data during the 2019 tournament. These are input by trained tennis players, whose knowledge of the game allows them to see ahead of the point. “If there are any issues around the grounds then what they can do is call through a radio comms panel, talk to the operators that are watching the game, say ‘I’ve got an issue with 592 on whatever court’—so set five, game nine, point two.' The operators can then replay said point and correct the system where necessary. 

“It’s also very valuable to the players,” adds Seddon. “They get a match report within 20 minutes of the match finishing, but they also get a video file with the match analytics embedded into that file. So they can then jump through that and look at all of their break points or their winners or whatever it may be. By the time they’ve got out the shower they’ve got access to it on a mobile phone or tablet.”

The press also make use of this data via IBM Watson’s bespoke reporting service, as Seddon explains: “We’ve got results back to 1877 and all of our statistical data back to 1990. We’ve got a screen called the ‘Did you know?’ screen in the digital teams room that’s on a rolling ‘we found a new thing’, just helping seed ideas for content and prompt ideas.”

SECOND SERVE

How much divergence is there between the solution deployed for Wimbledon and that of the U.S. Open? “They’re both different unique client requirements,” says Seddon. “Some of the digital convergence is new here, that’s very much a Wimbledon thing; the Acoustics and integrity solution are new here. But the core part obviously like scoring systems are common between the two environments—but Flushing Meadows is a very different beast altogether as a venue and as an organization. 

“It’s a year round process so we’re constantly innovating, so we actually have a slightly offset delivery program; it’s about 18 months,” continues Seddon. “We do a kind of random ideation session that if we could dream up how to fly to the moon what would we do? And then we’ll come out of that with some proof of concept we want to do, give ourselves time to test those, maybe develop some prototypes in the six-month window, and then we’ve got a nine-month window to get production ready for it,” he concludes.

LOS ANGELES—Fox Sports is applying artificial intelligence to the beautiful game of soccer for its coverage of the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, partnering with IBM to boost its statistical analysis and live-streaming capabilities.

New to its broadcast this year, Fox Sports is featuring a segment called Player Spotlight Built with IBM Watson, which uses Watson’s AI capabilities to generate stat analysis on both individual players and teams for match commentary using a natural language interface. The data is gathered from Opta, a data provider that collects and analyzes every pass, goal and penalty kick in near real time. Commentators can then access the data by entering queries into the navigation function, which will then bring up highlights, data and analytics.

Fox Sports is also utilizing the IBM Aspera livestreaming technology for the Women’s World Cup, as it did for 2018’s men’s tournament. With Aspera, editors in Los Angeles have access to HD camera feeds from France within 10 seconds of live play. New to this year’s production is a real-time auto archiving function that allows raw, high-resolution footage to be stored offsite within seconds after matches are completed. Fox Sports estimates that four to six petabytes of content will be streamed throughout the tournament.

The 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup is currently underway in France and will continue through July 7. Team USA’s next game will be on Friday, June 28, at 3 p.m. EST against France.

WASHINGTON—Is there a tech reporter at your station or network who could offer more insightful reporting with a better understanding of artificial intelligence?

If so, you might want to pass this info on to your news director or general manager. The National Press Foundation has announced an all-expense-paid fellowship for journalists selected to attend the “What’s Next In Artificial Intelligence” program, four days of training on all facets of AI.

Journalists will learn about the basics of AI, how it will impact jobs and the economy, the ethics of AI and what may be right around the corner for artificial intelligence.

The training, available to U.S.-based journalists only, will be Oct. 28-31 in Washington, D.C. The fellowship covers airfare, ground transportation hotel accommodations and most meals. The program is supported by a grant from IBM.

To apply visit the National Press Foundation website.

MOSCOW--Some technology-facing aspects of the 2018 World Cup were revealed Monday ahead of the soccer tournament's big kick off next Thursday (June 14) in Russia.

CenturyLink, which polished off its acquisition of Level 3 Communications last November said it will transmit live feeds from the tournament to top networks in the U.S. and Latin America, including Fox in the U.S., TV Azteca in Mexico, and RCN and Caracol in Columbia.

Those broadcasters, representing a subset of broadcasters in the region that will work with CenturyLink for the World Cup, will tap CenturyLink’s Vyvx Solutions to provide routes in the transmission of tournament and other World Cup content feeds from Moscow, Russia to each programmer’s master control facilities.

[Read: Telemundo Deportes Partners With Panini For World Cup AR Experience]

Fox Sports and IBM, meanwhile, said they will collaborate on an A.I. initiative across multiple Fox Sports programming for the World Cup. More specifically, Fox Sports will use IBM Watson Media’s A.I. video technology to streamline production workflows to rapidly classify, edit, and access match highlights in “near real-time,” they said.

That A.I.-facing capability will help Fox Sports curate “engaging” video clips and match highlights, the companies added. The collaboration will start with the launch of The Highlight Machine, an interactive experience developed by IBM’s iX unit that enables viewers to browse FIFA’s archive of past matches and to create custom highlights by year, team, player, and play type.

Back to CenturyLink’s involvement, the company has been working closely with local telecoms in Russia and the International Broadcast Center that puts together the source feeds for the broadcasters, Bill Wohnoutka, vice president of global internet and content delivery services for CenturyLink, explained, noting that CenturyLink will work with its broadcast partners to deliver content in multiple formats, including standard- and high-definition as well as 4K.

In addition to transmission, CenturyLink’s Vyvx platform will also handle encoding, decoding, onsite operations, monitoring, and frame-rate conversion.

Getting those logistics lined up alongside the security requirements present some of the big challenges around this year’s World Cup, as “it’s pretty complicated to get content out of Russia, Wohnoutka added.

Among the group of broadcasters working with CenturyLink for the World Cup, Fox’s networks are on tap to broadcast 64 matches live, more than the previous four tournaments combined, and the most-ever for an English-language network, Keith Goldberg, VP of global operations and transmission services for Fox, noted in the release.

“That’s more than 350 hours of total programming, and CenturyLink will play a critical role in enabling us to deliver that content to millions of viewers across the U.S.,” Goldberg added.

Update: Fox Sports also announced details for its FIFA World Cup Hub, which will provide live streams and full replays of the aforementioned 64 matches, as well as access to bonus feeds (including “team channels”), commentary, rosters, stats and highlights. Following similar work done during last season’s CONCACAF Gold Cup, Fox Sports said it will again team with LiveLike on a social VR offering that features a digital suite and three, multi-angle feeds from each match.

Fox Sports noted that its World Cup Hub will provide access to digital content across FoxSports.com and the Fox Sports App.

Fox Sports said adidas is the presenting sponsor for the Fox Sports streaming effort across digital platforms for the entire tournament. Coca-Cola is on board to sponsor the short-form 90 in 90 match highlights. Coca-Cola and adidas are co-sponsoring the Team Channels feature.

LAS VEGAS--NAB’s PILOT tech incubator has teamed up with IBM and Frankly to demonstrate a proof of concept for using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology for local broadcaster video at the 2018 NAB Show in Las Vegas. The demo will be presented in the PILOT booth (N2431FP), at Futures Park in the North Hall of the LVCC, April 9-12.

The display will demonstrate the way in which local broadcasters can use AI to enrich video assets and provide rich, contextual metadata. This data can be used to help editors quickly and more efficiently produce news packages as well as provide consumers with a more contextually relevant and highly targeted content recommendation engine.

[Read: NAB Show Conference Showcases Machine Learning And AI For Filmmaking]

"AI holds great promise for broadcasters in terms of enhancing the way content is produced, managed, delivered and consumed," said Executive Director of PILOT John Clark. "We appreciate the collaboration of PILOT members with IBM and Frankly, and we are proud to bring this demonstration to NAB Show through the development of this proof of concept."

“Local broadcasters need to unlock new opportunities for viewer engagement and monetization,” said Jason Simpson, Chief Revenue Officer at Frankly. “Leveraging AI to analyze textual, audio, and visual data within their media, local broadcasters will benefit from stronger viewer engagement, enhanced content discovery, and more advertising revenue.”

Elsewhere in Futures Park, attendees will have the opportunity to see demos of high-tech media developments in progress, prototypes, and products not yet available for sale from academic, government, and commercial research laboratories in the United States and around the world. Exhibitors will show their research and development work on a wide range of topics, including dynamic ad insertion for Next Gen TV, UHD broadcasting and virtual/augmented/mixed-reality content creation.

ARMONK, N.Y.—IBM has announced the launch of Watson Captioning, a new AI-driven subtitling service. The standalone service uses AI to learn over time and allows companies to add their own glossaries of words and phrases.

IBM said Watson Captioning has been developed for media companies, in order to allow them to create and edit captions in streamlined workflows, reducing the costs of doing the work by hand, while meeting regulatory requirements. However, IBM says it also sees uses for it in the education and enterprise IT markets.

"As we’ve seen a major shift across industries towards video content, companies are faced with new challenges towards meeting costly compliance and production needs," said David Kulczar, senior product manager of Watson Video Analytics at IBM Watson Media.

"Watson Captioning taps IBM’s machine learning technology to meet these needs. It enables media and entertainment companies to produce content that is accessible to all audiences, while empowering production teams and streamlining workflows."

IBM said it could look to AI to take content and translate it into multiple languages in the future.

This story first appeared on TVT's sister publication TVB Europe. 

WASHINGTON—IBM is ready to take flight with NAB’s Pilot program. Made up of companies, educators and broadcast advocators, Pilot works to drive the creation and implementation of new technologies and solutions for the media industry.

Pilot members help define areas of development, with a current focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning; augmented and virtual reality; platform engagement; multi-platform measurement; the connected car; and Next Gen TV. Pilot members are also associate members of NAB, allowing them to participate in NAB technology program development, conventions and networking events.

“New technologies and innovations, including cognitive computing and cloud, are advancing the media industry at a rapid race, bringing a new set of challenges and opportunities for broadcast organizations,” said Peter Guglielmino, CTO, global media & entertainment industry, IBM. “Together with Pilot, we’re providing a framework for not only driving innovation in the marketplace but also helping industry players navigate a new landscape and accelerate their own digital transformation.”

ARMONK, N.Y. & AMSTERDAM—Digital video from sources like Netflix and YouTube are directly competing with traditional broadcasting services, but what do consumers think of the new viewing opportunities? Also, what impact could cognitive computing have on the broadcasting industry? These were two of the main questions that IBC and IBM attempted to answer with the “Creating a ‘Living’ Media Partner for Your Consumers: A Cognitive Future for Media and Entertainment” study, released at IBC 2017.

The first part of the study was a survey conducted with 21,000 consumers from 42 countries about their video consumption habits. The results showed that 51 percent of those surveyed—67 percent in emerging markets—access free, over-the-internet video; 48 percent access video through regular subscription services from traditional pay-TV providers.

Watching content on mobile devices is also becoming more popular, as 55 percent of respondents said they watch streaming videos every day on mobile devices; about a quarter use mobile broadband instead of Wi-Fi for one or two hours. However, respondents said the experience could be improved; 65 percent say they experience buffering problems very often or regularly, while 62 percent have long waiting times for a video to start.

One of the possible solutions the industry is considering to help improve these experiences is cognitive technology. Using cognitive technology could interpret data that would reportedly yield audience, content and contextual insights. Ninety-two percent of the 500 surveyed media and entertainment executives believe cognitive technology will be an important part of the future of the industry.

As a result, IBC and IBM recommend organizations do three things: apply cognitive technology to achieve personalization; revamping infrastructure to meet the coming demands; and reengineering business models to profit from the new media landscape.

IBM will be offering these findings at its booth, 15.MS13, throughout IBC 2017.

LONDON—The All English Lawn Tennis Club will use IBM’s Watson to offer fans even more content around Wimbledon this year.

With the Championships beginning on Monday, the AELTC and IBM have announced plans to launch Fred (named after Fred Perry), a Watson-enabled bot, available to event attendees via a mobile app. The bot will be able to give updates on the matches and provide directions around the event, including information such as where to buy certain merchandise.

Watson will also be able to analyze the crowd’s noise to pick out key moments at this year’s tournament, detecting tennis players’ facial expressions, and tabulate social media buzz to determine what moments to add to highlight reels. Reels will be assembled within 30 minutes, compared to the 45 minutes it would take a person.

Tennis fans will also be able to access 360-degree video and augmented reality of the Wimbledon practice courts. According to IBM, all the fans have to do is “point their phones at a tennis player and can gain insight into who they are and their past performance.”

IBM will use a bespoke ‘competitive margin’ metric, which analyzes how well matched two players are to forecast how close their match will be. It will also analyse how well each player tends to do in specific situations (when down break point or serving for a set for instance) to give fans a richer experience.

Real-time data will be integrated from a number of sources including courtside statisticians, chair umpires, radar guns, ball position, player location and will also include Twitter for social comment on how the match is going.

“In an increasingly competitive sporting landscape, IBM’s technology innovations are critical to continuing our journey towards a great digital experience that ensures we connect with our fans across the globe—wherever they may be watching and from whatever device that may be,” said the press release.

“With help from IBM, we are providing new on-site features in the SmartPhone apps such as the ‘Ask Fred’ assistant, allowing fans to plan their day at The Championships and make the most of their visit. Similarly, we are working with IBM to access additional insights in order for our fans to truly understand and share the moments that matter. This year, a combination of design and data driven content and insights will provide fans with the unique Wimbledon experience they expect and more.”

This story originally appeared on TVT's sister publication TVB Europe. 

LOS ANGELES—IBM unveiled new Watson-powered cognitive services for its Cloud Video technology that are designed to transform how organizations unlock data-rich insights for video content and audiences. The new services can help deliver differentiated, personalized viewing experiences for consumers.

Accessible through the IBM Cloud, these new services analyze video data that can otherwise be difficult and time-consuming to manually process. They include: Live Event Analysis, which combines Watson APIs with IBM Cloud Video streaming video solutions to track near real-time audience reaction of live events by analyzing social media feeds; Video Scene Detection, which automatically segments videos into meaningful scenes to make it more efficient to find and deliver targeted content; and Audience Insights, which integrates IBM Cloud Video solutions with the IBM Media Insights Platform, a cognitive solution that uses Watson APIs to help identify audience preferences, including what they are watching and saying, through social media.

These services are among the latest examples of IBM applying Watson to its Cloud Video platform since the formation of its Cloud Video unit in January 2016. The IBM Cloud Video unit brings together innovations from IBM's R&D labs with the cloud video platform capabilities of Clearleap and Ustream.

HAMBURG, GERMANY—IBM asked more than 5,000 C-level executives from 70 countries which technologies they thought would be most important in the next three to five years. Guess what’s No. 1. Statista’s Felix Richter charted the results:




See more visualized data at Statista.