In ye olde days of traditional television, when U.S. TV viewing options were limited to ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS, Nielsen’s paper diaries were sufficient for tracking viewership and providing useful audience data to advertisers.

Today, everything has changed. “The television landscape has experienced a massive amount of change over the past several years,” said David Levy, CEO of OpenAP, an advanced advertising company jointly owned by the Big Four commercial broadcast networks and focused on video, TV and cross-platform audience targeting and measurement. “Viewership has bifurcated across screens, with CTV [connected TV] and streaming growing to become as large a viewership channel as linear. Because of that, legacy measurement models fell short of accurately measuring audiences.”

To address these changes, audience measurement firms such as Nielsen, OpenAP and Samba TV are using new models to capture accurate, actionable viewing data. These models are meant to provide advertisers with information that matters as much today as it did in the past: Who is watching what, and what are the best ways to reach them with commercials?

The Hybrid Model
Because today’s viewers watch video in so many different ways, the logical way to measure them accurately is across all of their viewing platforms. This is known as the “hybrid model” of TV audience measurement.

“Hybrid measurement models leverage large-scale device-level datasets (big data) such as Return Path Data (RPD) and Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) to augment the granularity of analyses supported and the accuracy of measurement solutions,” said Sean Breedlove, OpenAP’s vice president of measurement and analytics. “Panel data sources are used to calibrate big datasets, adjusting for biases, filling known gaps in coverage and estimating person-level viewership to ensure that the resultant measurement is representative of the market.”

Nielsen is using the hybrid model today. “Changing consumer habits have led to fragmentation,” said a Nielsen spokesperson. “It’s widely agreed upon that hybrid measurement, like our Big Data + Panel measurement, is the way forward to unlock the most accurate view of what people are watching across platforms. Our Big Data + Panel measurement is based on over 45 million households and 75 million devices (from Comcast, Dish, DirecTV, Roku and Vizio) and validated by our person-level panel of over 100,000 real people and 42,000 homes.”

The Role of AI
Thanks to their ability to process and analyze massive data, AI and machine learning (ML) are playing a crucial role in enhancing the accuracy and speed of TV viewership measurement. The technologies are also adding new kinds of measurement to the mix.

For example, “Samba AI enables the TV itself to detect scenes, objects, brands, interactions and even sentiment of what’s happening onscreen without needing to send data to the cloud,” said Alyson Sprague, Samba TV’s vice president of measurement products. “The result is real-time contextual analysis that powers brand-safe advertising, AI-generated metadata and content-aware experiences, while reinforcing user privacy and ensuring a smooth and uninterrupted viewing experience,” she said.

Nielsen agrees. “AI can help the industry analyze and uncover new patterns and trends and ways of thinking about data,” the spokesperson said. “Nielsen processes petabytes of data and machine learning helps us carry out methodological research, accuracy checks and corrections at a scale never before possible. But AI models are only as good as the data that is used to train them and publishers and marketers should be diligent that the underlying data is a trusted truth set that accounts for gaps, biases and inaccuracies.”

Getting More From Audience Measurement
Modern TV audience measurement is moving beyond the traditional metrics of reach and frequency to focus on the concepts of “advanced audiences” and “outcomes.” As used by Nielsen, advanced audiences provide demographics-based insights into viewers’ purchasing history and their intent to buy specific products; their lifestyle behaviors, attitudes and interests; their economic status (which influences purchasing decisions); and their race/ethnicity identifications.

“The rise in advanced audiences is driven by the need to reach relevant audiences beyond just age and gender,” said the Nielsen spokesperson. “Our advanced audiences are cross-platform and backed by our Big Data + Panel measurement. On the outcomes front, we launched our Outcomes Marketplace, which is aimed at providing a combined view of reach, brand lift and sales lift to help better inform media strategies and show the full-funnel impact of ad campaigns.

“Our initial partner Realeyes gives clients an understanding of creative attention and emotive response to ads, and we will be announcing other major partners soon,” the spokesperson added.

Tangible Results and the Future of Measurement
Taken as a whole, the new audience measurement approaches described above are helping advertisers cope with the explosion of video viewing sources and styles, while providing them with additional options for precisely targeting ads to the most receptive consumers.

“These new approaches enable advertisers and content producers to monitor both the scale of viewership and audience resonance of their ad creatives and content on a more real-time basis, allowing them to make ad creative and media content optimization decisions more fluidly based on in-market consumer response,” Breedlove said. In the future, “TV measurement will become increasingly audience-based, rather than relying on age/gender demographics that have traditionally been leveraged for linear TV transactions.”

“What matters across the board are the outcomes brands are trying to achieve,” Samba TV’s Sprague said. This is where a flexible, innovative approach to TV audience measurement matters, because it empowers advertisers to deliver better results to their sponsors. A case in point: “In a recent study with Amazon Ads, campaigns that combined traditional TV with Amazon Ads drove a 2 times lift in awareness and a 5.4 times lift in purchase intent,” she said. “That is the kind of outcome-focused impact we are working to deliver across industries.”

LAS VEGAS—At Creative Technology, we deliver mission-critical monitoring and multi­viewing solutions for some of the world’s largest live events, from international product launches and corporate meetings to major tech conferences. Our workflows span on-premises compressed and uncompressed IP, OTT and remote production over public internet.

To keep pace with the speed and diversity of these productions, we needed a software platform that was flexible, scalable and capable of delivering high-quality, low-latency multiviewers for every team—on site or remote.

Today, the TAG Realtime Monitoring Platform from TAG Video Systems provides the scalable probing, monitoring and multiviewing backbone for our operators, engineers and directors. It’s helping us to reduce friction, accelerate deployment and gain complete confidence in every signal we manage.

TAG’s zero-friction model gives us the flexibility to scale in any direction, from a single server with dozens of sources to multiple servers handling smaller, dedicated workloads.

The Deployment
We initially deployed TAG to support our remote and virtual operations in the U.S. Since then, we’ve supported productions across Europe, Asia and South America. As the needs of each production can vary significantly, we were able to spin up and down environments without the overhead and limitations of fixed hardware—replacing traditional multiviewers with TAG’s IP-native software platform.

That flexibility made TAG an ideal fit across our use cases: Large-scale corporate, sports and entertainment events; complex workflows with tally, UMD control and data integration; and hybrid setups involving multiple networks and locations.

TAG’s orchestration layer allowed us to scale up quickly. Our network operations center (NOC) team handles layout adjustments and signal routing centrally, while field operators and directors get real-time, tailored views. Whether we’re running TAG on bare metal or in the cloud, the consistency and quality of experience are the same.

We use TAG everywhere we can—on prem or cloud, compressed or uncompressed, we just stand it up and go. It’s that flexible.

What stood out most during implementation was TAG’s simplicity and speed. We had new instances running in minutes—not days—and configuration was intuitive enough that multiple engineers across locations could operate in parallel.

We rely on TAG’s orchestration tools to manage layouts, swap sources, and deliver exact multiviews to various users without duplicate effort. Operators receive only what they need, and directors are seeing camera shading, tally indicators, and graphics timing in real time.

Our team also appreciates the operational independence TAG provides. We’re able to make multiview changes on the fly without touching routers or interrupting the production flow. “It’s not just the layout flexibility,” Sarah Wright, project engineer at Creative Technology said. “It’s the user interface, the orchestration. It’s brilliant.”

Operational Benefits
TAG has become a key part of our live production strategy. We can deploy, configure and reconfigure in minutes—giving us the ability to handle last-minute changes and multiple show formats.

Probing and multiviewing across video, audio and metadata lets us spot issues immediately and take corrective action. Layouts, tallies and source changes are handled remotely by our NOC, giving field teams what they need with zero disruption.

We can also scale up and down as required without having to worry about moving licenses around.

TAG also lets each department—engineering, operations and technical directors­—get the view they need, how they need it. This makes us more efficient, responsive and more confident. TAG just works.

We enjoy working with the team at TAG and look forward to continuing our partnership. We’re exploring even deeper integrations with our telemetry and orchestration layers. We also see the potential to add advanced features like smart recording and content matching as our workflows evolve.

At Creative Technology, we’re committed to engineering the best solutions for our clients. TAG helps us do that—with less effort, more flexibility, and total confidence in our signal chain.

More information is available at https://tagvs.com/monitoring/.

I often hear there is a shortage of top-tier sound mixers. I think I have heard that since I did my first show with ESPN back in 1983, and I would say there was possibly a shortage of television technicians at that time, particularly in audio. ESPN found me in a recording studio and was patient enough or, as Donna Shackett once said, “desperate enough to train you.”

I was told that in the early days of ESPN, the Big Three television networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, even discouraged their union technicians from working freelance for the fledgling all-sports cable network.

Is the shortage of qualified people because the education, recruitment and training process is flawed, or what?

I quickly learned there was a process for grooming audio folks. You started in the field and worked (earned) your way up the ladder into the OB truck or studio. This was the opportunity to find a mentor, because training was on the job.

There was limited technical or college curricula and it was a time when good troubleshooting skills and some electronics went a long way. Now there are schools with audio OB vans. While this may be good for the school’s recruitment, the graduates are probably a ways off from mixing an event and are now probably in debt.

More Automation, More Stress
When I hear that there is a shortage of top-tier qualified mixers, I tend to think that there is a shortage of certain qualifications. As early as May 2021, I wrote in TV Tech about computer-driven mix automation before the term AI was even used. The new-era audio supervisor/producer role is not about beautiful-sounding productions; it’s about getting on and off the air cleanly, not up-cutting announcers or playback, and making sure the director’s and producer’s headsets are working flawlessly.

The audio supervisor must not only plan for multiformat audio output for a potentially wide range of playout options—plus plan for archives—but also program the traffic over intercoms. The job can be intimidating.

When I talk to some audio assistants, I have often heard there is not enough money to move up for the stress that comes with the “hot seat.”

What Went Wrong?
The change from analog to digital technology accounted for increased productivity, but also demanded an increase in technology skills.

It did not help that the development and learning curve of almost all broadcast equipment was happening at the same time. The analog-to-digital migration seemed to develop first with intercoms. It wasn’t enough to have exponentially more channels; there were now significantly more options and possibilities—and often more headaches. The largest shows often required an intercoms specialist, but just getting a couple of channels of intercom on a basketball game with an inexperienced audio crew and a grumpy engineer in charge sometimes seemed daunting.

Digital technology is well-entrenched, and there are far fewer new devices. Operationally, the equipment has more similarities than differences, which relieves some of the audio mixer’s anxiety.

There is more demand for content than ever, which translates to more productions, producers, technicians and engineers—often doing multiple tasks.

To head off labor issues, in 2014 ESPN hired hundreds of audio technicians in a move that the network said was to “insure continued technical support” with its meteoric growth in sports production not only for ESPN, but also for ABC.

How and Where to Start
So how do you get an entry-level job in broadcasting? The press on AI would lead you to believe that it will replace entry-level positions. Just like with most television audio professionals, you start in the field or on the stage and work your way up. With more productions than ever, there is a lot of on-site setup that has to be accomplished. Besides the basics of needing to set up microphones, there are still a lot of intercoms.

For the new-era audio supervisor, managing all the audio at an event will become the norm. They will be mapping the signals, mixes and outputs, plus all communications, as well as supervising the setup crew—and maybe from a distant location.

AI has proven itself as a mixing assistant for effects and even enhanced supplementation. When I wrote about AI, “audio intelligence,” I was told by some television directors and producers that I was full of it. Maybe, maybe not. Computers (AI) are good at logical replication, such as camera rotation over a baseball diamond, but I have never seen a computer set up a microphone or headset. Come to think about it, I have never seen a producer or director pull cable or program an intercom.

If you want a job in television, learn how to properly set up microphones and program a mixing console or intercom. Those entry-level jobs are not going away or getting replaced by high-powered computers, like some production and directing jobs.

I once told a university class that if they ever saw a television truck, follow it and volunteer to unpack, pull cable or whatever you can do to make yourself useful.

NEW WINDSOR, N.Y.—PRG is a global leader in production technology, powering creativity across every corner of the live and entertainment industries. While our roots are on Broadway—and we remain deeply entrenched in theater—we now partner with the world’s biggest names in live events, concert tours, corporate experiences, television and film. Today, more than 80% of our work is in 4K or higher.

Clients come to us with an idea, and we turn it into reality. That might be the setup and rental of a couple of digital cinematography cameras for an episodic shoot, or it could be a massive production infrastructure. We’ve even delivered productions on a record-breaking scale—like season one of “Beast Games,” for which we provided more than 300 cameras.

Flyaway Systems for Scale
To support the nature of our business, we build flyaway systems that can interconnect to give us the scale we need. We include all of the video and audio processing, along with routers from Evertz or Ross Video in racks under 63 inches in height so they can fit on a plane.

We have to work within tight space constraints, but we also have to remember our ultimate goal of ensuring the highest possible quality all time. So, our systems include signal-measurement kits, and for that we rely entirely on Leader. Typically, our racks will include the LV5350 waveform monitor and the LT4670 sync generator.

That means we can easily provide complete timecode, video quality monitoring and measurement, right where the production needs it. Where there needs to be quick adjustment, users can have confidence in what they are seeing. Indeed, the Leader name is widely recognized as the one to choose for video test and measurement, so our clients feel confident knowing we use these instruments.

Our quality control starts before the kit gets to the venue. Our camera team, led by Kenny Kato, checks every camera before it goes out. Where necessary, we have built on the manufacturers’ video standards to develop our own PRG quality baselines to deliver the best possible quality and ensure consistency. A large production will have cameras in multiple formats from many manufacturers, and we ensure that they are matched as closely as is technically feasible. This reduces stress on-site and time in edit.

All the Data at a Glance
Our camera workshops use the Leader LV7600W rasterizer. This means the engineer can precisely see the measurements they want in the layout they want on a large monitor on a workbench. That includes SDI packet timing as well as waveform and vectors to ensure the perfect signal is being delivered. Being able to see all the information simultaneously is obviously a huge time-saver, and more convenient and cost-effective than buying multiple instruments from multiple vendors.

Where we are lining up high-quality cameras for episodic shoots, the LV7600W allows the engineer to fully evaluate the output against a CIE diagram. It helps me confirm whether we’re hitting Rec. 709 or BT2020. The ability to display precise code value, rather than just a waveform, speeds accuracy.

We first used Leader test and measurement equipment in 2015 when we provided the facilities for one of the world’s largest sporting events. It worked well for us, and we have seen no reason to change. Leader Instruments offer us quick and clear access to precision measurement in the form that works best for us and for our clients. They’ve proven to be reliable, efficient tools—and in our view, they’re some of the best products in the industry.

More information is available at https://leaderphabrix.com/.

In less than two weeks during late September and early October, the Federal Communications Commission acted on two proposed rulemakings that could have an enormous impact on the future of broadcast television and radio in the United States for decades to come.

On Sept. 30, the commission voted unanimously to seek public comment on whether to retain, modify or eliminate several long-standing broadcast ownership regulations in light of the dramatic shifts in the modern media landscape. The notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) will look at local television and radio rules that limit the number of stations a single entity can own in a specific market, as well as the dual-network rule that prohibits a merger between any of the top four national broadcast TV networks (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC).

TV broadcast ownership rules currently restrict one station group from owning TV stations that reach more than 39% of U.S. TV households (the so-called “UHF discount” and duopoly rules allow for higher thresholds).

Free Live Sports and Trusted Journalism
For years, these restrictions have been under fire from broadcasters, who claim they prevent them from effectively competing with high-tech companies, particularly those that have launched streaming services now bidding for lucrative professional sports rights. In addition, groups like the National Association of Broadcasters have said outdated ownership rules threaten the integrity of local journalism.

A major catalyst for the review’s current direction was a July decision by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In that ruling, the court vacated the FCC’s “Top-Four Prohibition,” which had barred a single company from owning two of the top four television stations in the same market. Crucially, the court also asserted that the statutory mandate for the quadrennial review is inherently deregulatory in nature, a legal interpretation that will heavily influence the current proceeding.

The NPRM approved does not propose specific rule changes, but instead poses a broad range of questions to the public and industry stakeholders. The commission is seeking extensive input on how the proliferation of streaming services, online video platforms and other digital media should affect its analysis of competition, localism and viewpoint diversity—the traditional pillars of its ownership regulations.

“We intend to take a fresh approach to competition by examining the broader media marketplace, rather than treating broadcast radio and television as isolated markets,” FCC Chair Brendan Carr said. “Our primary goal is to promote investment in local broadcasters who provide trusted news and information vital to the communities they serve. We will also consider whether public safety, national security and other public interest goals should be part of this review process. If we determine that any rule no longer serves the public interest, we will fulfill our statutory duty to modify or eliminate those rules.”

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez acknowledged the challenges currently facing the broadcast industry but criticized the motives behind the industry’s calls for changes.

“The commission requires locally licensed broadcasters to serve their communities of license in the public interest,” said Gomez, the only FCC Democrat. “The key principles underlying this statement remain localism, viewpoint diversity and competition. Financial gains for corporate giants is not a basis to abandon our and broadcasters’ obligations to serve the public interest.”

Is This the End for ATSC 1.0?
One week later, the commission announced it would vote on a NPRM to consider sunsetting the ATSC 1.0 broadcast standard by 2030, based on a proposal made by the NAB earlier this year. The proposal would allow TV stations in the top 55 DMAs to terminate ATSC 1.0 by February 2028, with the entire industry transitioning two years later.

Even though its draft of the NPRM, released in advance of the Oct. 28 monthly meeting, raises more questions than answers about how the agency might act on key issues related to NextGen TV, it does provide some hints on how Carr is thinking about the subject.

The draft noted that the FCC has “tentatively” concluded that stations should be allowed to choose when to stop broadcasting via the ATSC 1.0 standard and begin broadcasting exclusively in 3.0. It also has “tentatively” concluded stations should be allowed to broadcast in both 1.0 and 3.0, as many are today, but with fewer restrictions and requirements on the 1.0 version of their signal. This would free up more spectrum for advanced ATSC 3.0 services.

The NAB, Pearl TV, state broadcasting associations and larger groups like Sinclair want the FCC to set a firm date for the shutoff of ATSC 1.0. Smaller broadcasters and many LPTV stations have opposed the sunset of 1.0 broadcasts starting in February of 2028.

The draft takes a more neutral approach to many other key issues, raising a series of questions about key topics like the creation of new rules mandating ATSC 3.0 tuners in all new TVs.

More specifically, the draft NPRM seeks comment on many issues and proposals closely related to these tentative conclusions about the transition, including: the use of encryption or digital rights management (DRM) on broadcast signals; a requirement that new televisions be able to receive and display 3.0 signals; and a requirement that traditional pay TV providers carry 3.0 signals to their subscribers.

The NAB, Pearl TV and larger broadcasters have argued that 3.0 tuner mandates are necessary for a successful NextGen TV transition so that a large number of consumers can be able to access the broadcasts. Consumer electronics firms and the CTA have consistently opposed a tuner mandate, arguing it would increase the cost of TV sets and is generally unnecessary because most viewers watch video content over streaming and pay TV services, rather than over-the-air antennas.

Initial reaction from broadcasters to the draft NPRM was positive, with Pearl TV and the ATSC applauding the FCC for working to find ways to accelerate the transition to ATSC 3.0 broadcasts. It was also generally vague, given that the draft does not take a strong position on some key issues like a mandatory sunset or 3.0 tuner mandates.

“Pearl TV and the local broadcasters commend FCC Chairman Carr for launching a new proceeding on NextGen TV that signals to the consumer technology industry, broadcasters, and consumers that the final transition to next-generation broadcasting is underway and that the technology provides an unparalleled opportunity to enhance and improve television service to millions of viewers each day,” Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV, said in a statement sent to TV Tech.

The Link
Tying ownership rules to the end of ATSC 1.0 is not new; the NAB argued that the two issues were linked in the proposal it submitted to the FCC in February. “Due to the Commission’s ownership restrictions which have fragmented the industry by design, no broadcaster is in a position to shut down ATSC 1.0 by themselves while other stations in the same market remain on the older standard,” the association said.

In her statement, Gomez also acknowledged the tie, but expressed concern about how consolidation could impact broadcast technology.

“The benefits of NextGen TV to broadcasters increase if the national ownership cap is raised or eliminated,” she said. “A station group with a nationwide footprint and data about their audiences will be able to compete for national targeted advertising campaigns. They also plan to sell datacasting services using the broadcast spectrum made available by the more efficient standard to, for example, broadly and efficiently transmit technical updates to devices such as phones and cars outside traditional broadband connections.

“This may well be a great use of spectrum but we should certainly consider the policy implications of allowing this before it happens,” Gomez concluded.

The Federal Communications Commission is hoping MPEG-4 can do the heavy lifting in bringing an end to ATSC 1.0.

On Oct. 7, the commission published on its website a draft notice of proposed rulemaking that will enable TV broadcasters to make more permissive use of ATSC 3.0. The draft is an agenda item for its Oct. 28 open meeting. (Whether or not the federal government is open for business then is unclear at this writing.)

Earlier in the year, the National Association of Broadcasters petitioned the agency to set up two dates certain—February 2028 and February 2030—for the shutoff of ATSC 1.0, depending on market size. The agency’s draft NPRM sets that request aside. Rather, the FCC has tentatively concluded broadcasters “should be allowed to choose when to stop broadcasting in 1.0 and start broadcasting exclusively in 3.0.”

Since non-backward-compatible 3.0 was authorized in 2017, FCC rules have required broadcasters electing to deploy NextGen TV service to simulcast 1.0 and 3.0 as a way to preserve over-the-air TV service to viewers with 1.0 sets.

Broadcasters and the FCC itself have repeatedly asserted that it’s not in the commercial interests of stations to disenfranchise large numbers of viewers by making a flash cut to 3.0.

In the draft NPRM, the agency put it this way: “Simulcasting remains important for protecting viewers during the transition period. At this stage broadcasters have strong market incentives to continue to effectively serve their viewers. We believe we can and should rely on these incentives and allow stations themselves to decide how and when to move forward with full 3.0 service.”

Enter MPEG-4. Today, in most 3.0 markets, multiple broadcasters share one stick and RF infrastructure to transmit NextGen TV. In a few, it’s two. They also have jumped through hoops and shared facilities to remain on-air with their 1.0 signals. (All of this is necessary because they were not awarded a temporary second channel assignment for their 3.0 signals as was the case in the analog-to-digital transition.)

The draft NPRM would stand this lighthouse structure on its head. Rather than one or two 3.0 lighthouses and the remaining sticks in a market transmitting legacy DTV, broadcasters would preserve ATSC 1.0 from one or more shared lighthouses, freeing them to devote far more available broadcast bandwidth in their markets to NextGen TV and making it possible for them to begin offering more advanced 3.0 services.

The draft NPRM proposes allowing stations that elect to continue simulcasting to use MPEG-4 encoding for 1.0 multicast streams. The more efficient MPEG-4 encoding is central to a 1.0 lighthouse. A year ago, my TV Tech colleague Doug Lung wrote an editorial on this, which the commission noted in the draft NPRM.

Can MPEG-4 pull this off? The jury is out. Broadcasters have told the commission that only viewers with older sets—16 years or older—would be unable to receive the video portion of an MPEG-4 ATSC 1.0 transmission.

Anecdotally, some broadcasters that have employed MPEG-4 for digital subchannels have been flooded with calls from viewers with older sets that could not receive a picture. As Kyle Walker, vice president of technology at Weigel Broadcasting, recently told me: “Our findings indicate that approximately 20% of televisions cannot display MPEG-4. In the rare instance when one of our broadcast affiliates mistakenly changes one of our networks from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4, we hear from viewers almost immediately.”

At least for those viewers, authorizing MPEG-4 for ATSC 1.0 would essentially be the same as authorizing a 1.0 shutoff in favor of 3.0: It would require consumers with older TVs to buy a converter box or a new set.

That brings us back to the notion of broadcasters not wishing to disenfranchise existing OTA viewers. It’s not in their financial interest to reduce audience size and associated ad revenue, nor is it in the public’s interest to lose free OTA service.

No matter how bright, a light beam remains invisible until it reflects off of something else. That’s emblematic of how lighting depends on what it connects with. From the source to the subject and eventually to the eye, it’s these connections that transform light into visual experience.

Although this column’s usual focus is on equipment and technique, there’s more to lighting than this. To quote the architect Eliel Saarinen, “Always consider a thing within the next largest context.” The better we understand how lighting fits into the existing context, the better the final results will be.

Lighting directors don’t work in a void. Every project involves several specialized departments and personnel, each with its own concerns and responsible for its own turf. Success depends on building bridges of cooperation between adjacent disciplines, which makes our job more than just hanging and focusing lights. Those bridges are connections between technologies and people.

Going from the theoretical to the practical, let’s examine the neighboring fields that make essential connections with lighting:

Engineering
The wide-ranging purview of the engineering department makes it an important ally in everything lighting touches. From providing mechanical and electrical support to sensitive camera adjustments, engineers hold the other end of the brush we use in painting images with light. Here are some opportunities for engineering and lighting to connect.

Coordinate with the project’s video engineer to establish camera sensitivity and set the desired lens f-stop. Only then will you have a logical basis for your target lighting levels. (For a detailed description of this process, check out my December 2024 column, “How Bright Is My Studio?”)

High-resolution images can be unforgiving to mature faces. Video control’s adjustment of “skin detail,” use of lens filters and flattering lighting combine to help presenters (rather than just the cameras) look their best.

Video displays should match the color temperature and brightness of the studio lighting. From the camera’s perspective, skin tones that appear on video walls should plausibly match those of the foreground talent. The brightness of white areas in the displays must be no greater than a white reference at the talent position on the set to avoid blooming. This should be confirmed with a spot meter or waveform.

In the era of increasing automation and decreasing staff, directors may need to activate lighting cues from remote control panels. These control interfaces require engineering and IT support for proper integration.

Directors
“Set the shot. Light the shot. Shoot the shot.” That admonition from film production applies equally to television. You’ve got to know what the shot is before you can light it, which is where the director comes in.

Before a single light is focused, line up the shots with the director, set designer and anyone else with final approval. Use a studio camera and floor monitor to allow everyone to see the same framing. Spike-mark every talent position and camera angle with annotated tape before moving on through subsequent shots.

To avoid confusion, include the camera number and shot abbreviation on the spike marks (e.g. “Cam. 3–CU Left”). These precise positions will guide the final lighting angles.

Scenic Design
From the talent positions to the camera shots, the floor plan quite literally sets the stage where everything unfolds. When the lighting and scenic designers work together, problems can be avoided and opportunities explored before the design gets locked in, as in the following examples.

LED backlit panels may need to be kept free of spill light, while textured scenic elements may require raked light to enhance their features. Coordination on details like these helps guide the design and clarify what additional equipment might be needed.

Some talent and scenic lights need to be built into the set. This requires particularly close coordination with scenic design. A common example of this is the integration of “chin lights” to augment talent lighting at desk positions. A detailed approach for accomplishing this is discussed in my August 2023 column, “Using Chin Lights.”

On-Camera Talent
“If mama isn’t happy, nobody’s happy.” Never forget that our job is not to make
the lighting look good, but to make the talent look good. Anchors care a lot about how they look on camera, which is why they’re usually the first to notice when something’s wrong with the lighting. Acknowledging their essential role, I always meet with the main anchors and hosts in person before I light a show.

Meeting the anchors face to face provides an opportunity to look for deep-set eyes, variations of hair, facial contours, height, etc. Pro tip: Never let on that you’re scrutinizing them for imperfections you might need to mitigate with lighting while you chat about literally anything else.

Makeup and Wardrobe
Makeup and clothing looks different under different light. That’s why makeup and green-room lights should match the CCT (Correlated Color Temperature) of the studio lights. Once makeup artists and anchors can see what they look like under the correct light, they’ll resolve 99% of potential problems themselves.

Wardrobe guidelines have become looser as cameras have gotten better at handling contrasts over the years. A flash of white at the collar is no longer a problem, but an overly bright dress might force a camera adjustment that makes everything else on the set look darker. As for those intricate patterns and weaves, they still cause moiré pattern artifacts. Camera-checking new outfits in advance can avoid such problems.

The Client
Budgets, and those in charge of them, drive whatever project you’re working on. Providing cost-effective solutions that fit their needs and existing workflow will help make your contribution successful and keep your client happy.

Even if you can pull off minor miracles, it will be tough to live up to a reputation for doing so. Manage expectations by being clear about what you can reasonably do within the project’s scope and budget. And once the goals have been met and all items on the punch list have been completed, get a formal signoff of successful completion before walking out the door.

Each of these connections requires you to enter the border areas of other departments that intersect with lighting. By doing so, you’ll find that those relationships will yield better solutions through increased understanding of how lighting connects with everything.

GAINESVILLE, Fla.—WUFT-TV, a PBS member station operated by the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications, is both a vital public broadcaster and a training ground for future media professionals. We provide trusted news, educational content, PBS programming and critically important public-safety information from WUFT’s Florida Public Radio Emergency Network (FPREN), which provides hurricane and other significant safety information to the state. WUFT-TV’s service area extends from the Florida-Georgia state line to The Villages and coast to coast in North Florida.

The initial need we set out to address with Actus Digital, a LiveU company, was compliance. WUFT had relied on a memory card-based workflow for air check recording that left the station and university vulnerable, as we could not prove compliance during FCC inspections.

Proof of Compliance
When evaluating technology options, the Actus platform stood out for its comprehensive feature set—particularly its Compliance and Quality Assurance tools. The interactive multiviewer further solidified Actus as the clear choice. As an existing LiveU user station, we’re also excited about the potential for deeper integration in the future.

The Actus QA Compliance Logger has become the backbone of our compliance strategy. It reliably captures everything required to demonstrate FCC compliance, including recordings, closed captioning, CALM Act loudness monitoring and Emergency Alert System messages.

As our chief engineer, Larry Bornacelli, explained: “One of the worst things that can happen to a media property is getting fined by the FCC. Actus protects us by proving we are compliant for both TV and radio.”

Beyond compliance, Actus vastly improves our quality with effective QC monitoring. The Actus multiviewer, accessible anywhere, displays a real-time panorama of our over-the-air broadcast, HDMI set-top box returns and our radio station. It immediately identifies frozen video, missing captions, audio dropouts and other issues with visual/audible alerts on the multiviewer, while also routing notifications through Active Directory via email and SMS.

This integration means our engineers know instantly when there’s a problem and can quickly pinpoint the source of an issue, which dramatically shortens troubleshooting time. Additionally, transport stream analysis gives packet-level visibility into our broadcast, letting us assess latency, jitter and encoding errors.

The Actus system was installed in our technical center alongside our existing encoders and decoders, with Actus technical staff logging in remotely for the configuration. We were so eager that we started using it even before official training, and it quickly replaced several piecemeal systems. Integration with Active Directory simplified user management, and within days, our staff was actively using the system.

Ethan Magoc, interim director of the Innovation News Center at the College of Journalism and Communications, described the overall impact. “Actus is a professional, reliable, industry-standard system that allows our engineers to maintain the quality of our broadcast…while also enabling our students to train on the same state-of-the-art systems they will find in the market after graduation,” he said.

EAS Compliance
In addition, our Actus system plays a vital role in public safety, delivering undeniable proof that WUFT is meeting its FCC EAS obligations. Actus provides a clear timeline of events, supports post-event investigations and verifies performance with reports according to FPREN. This also applies to our BEACON 24-hour, AI-based alerting system, which allows us to deliver timely and accurate messages during hurricanes and other emergencies.

For WUFT, Actus has become an indispensable tool on many levels. It strengthens quality control, assures us of compliance and streamlines engineering operations across the broadcast chain.

Before Actus, we relied on multiple disparate systems. Now, one unified platform gives us a single point of access and confidence in our compliance and quality, across all media properties. With Actus, WUFT has the tools to meet our challenges head-on, confident we are maintaining standards, complying with regulations and continuing to lead our community as a trusted broadcaster and world-class teaching facility.

More information is available at http://actusdigital.com.

BEAVERTON, Ore.—The ATSC 3.0 Security Authority (A3SA) plays a unique and essential role in the NextGen TV ecosystem. As the organization responsible for provisioning security credentials to broadcasters and device manufacturers, A3SA ensures ATSC 3.0 transmissions originate from trusted, Federal Communications Commission-licensed broadcasters and that receivers behave correctly when processing protected content.

To support this mission, A3SA developed a conformance program that allows manufacturers to test their devices against a reference implementation of the ATSC 3.0 security layer. That program relies heavily on Triveni Digital’s GuideBuilder XM, Broadcast Gateway and StreamScope XM Analyzer deployed in a cloud-based environment.

Cloud-Based Certification
Fully cloud-based, the A3SA certification platform is designed to generate and stream ATSC 3.0-compliant signals with precise timing and configuration. Device manufacturers use these streams to validate receiver behavior against A3SA’s specifications. Timing is especially critical in security contexts, where livestreaming is often required to match the device’s internal clock.

After evaluating multiple vendors, we selected Triveni Digital for its expertise in ATSC 3.0, comprehensive product feature set and readiness to support cloud deployment. GuideBuilder XM provides metadata management and transport encoding, enabling us to generate signaling metadata and encode IP streams in compliance with ATSC 3.0 standards. Broadcast Gateway, Triveni’s robust scheduler and signal generator for STLTP transmission, ingests IP streams and outputs STLTP signals to TV 3.0 exciters, supporting multisubframe delivery and real-time bit-rate monitoring.

To ensure the accuracy of ATSC 3.0 streams, we use Triveni’s StreamScope XM Analyzer in the cloud to inspect signaling tables, credentials and timing. StreamScope XM excels at verifying the presence and correctness of critical elements like signing certificates as well as CDT, SMT and CMS signatures.

We are leveraging StreamScope XM as the final checkpoint before test streams are released for conformance testing. In effect, this solution serves as the “truth” for A3SA conformance, helping us troubleshoot issues and validate configurations with precision.

The broadcast streams generated using Triveni’s ATSC 3.0 solutions also inform how the A3SA proxy system should best respond to requests from devices and broadcast gear. This proxy system handles provisioning of keys and licenses in the field, making the accuracy of the broadcast configuration essential to the proper functioning of the entire security infrastructure.

As the primary organization deeply focused on the ATSC 3.0 security layer, A3SA continuously defines new requirements and use cases that push the boundaries of existing tools. Triveni’s team has been highly responsive and agile in delivering patches and enhancements that support our evolving needs.

This iterative process benefits both organizations. Our findings influence Triveni’s product development, while Triveni’s expertise helps us implement new features and refine our certification program. We’re at the tip of the spear—defining requirements, implementing them and completing the ecosystem using Triveni equipment. Together, we’re shaping the future of secure ATSC 3.0 broadcasting.

NextGen TV Lessons
One key takeaway from our experience is the importance of trusted, conformant streams. In broadcasting, once a signal is sent, there is limited opportunity for correction. Without a robust conformance program, device behavior in the field would be unpredictable.

Triveni’s ATSC 3.0 solutions have been essential in establishing that baseline of trust. Their technology enables A3SA to deliver reference streams that ensure consistent performance across devices, ultimately improving the viewing experience for consumers.

The collaboration between A3SA and Triveni Digital continues to evolve, driving innovation and reliability across the ATSC 3.0 ecosystem. As more NextGen TV deployments roll out, the experience gained through this partnership will benefit broadcasters, manufacturers, and viewers alike.

More information is available at www.trivenidigital.com.

As the malevolent siege against broadcasters’ interests intensifies from the far reaches of artificial intelligence misuse to relentless innovation in the multibillion-dollar piracy business, the overarching question is whether the industry can muster resistance on a scale conducive to success.

So far, there’s much to applaud on the anti-piracy side of the battle. When it comes to thwarting the destructive use of AI, though, the pace of remedial action is lagging well behind the growing threat, despite the din of alarms sounding from all corners of the marketplace and a plethora of federal and state legislative initiatives.

“The rise of large-scale content scraping by AI systems and digital platforms poses a serious threat to the sustainability of local journalism,” Alex Siciliano, senior vice president of communications at the National Association of Broadcasters, said. “These systems use broadcasters’ reporting to train or populate AI products without authorization, compensation or attribution—diverting revenue away from local stations that invest heavily in producing trusted news, sports and emergency coverage.”

Whether Washington has the will to do anything about this set of AI issues remains to be seen. The latest addition to the stack of pending Senate bills—the AI Accountability and Personal Data Protection Act, introduced in late July—awaits any sign that it will garner consideration.

On another track, the Content Origin Protection and Integrity from Edited and Deepfaked Media (COPIED) Act, which stalled in the Senate last year, has been reintroduced with full support from NAB to create barriers to use of deepfakes and unauthorized use of content to train AI models. Another of those NAB-supported efforts from 2024, the NO FAKES Act, was reintroduced this year with broad bipartisan support in the House and Senate. That measure takes a complementary approach toward, as NAB puts it, “protecting trusted broadcast journalists, local radio hosts and other on-air personalities from the unauthorized use of their voice, image or likeness.”

Obviously, moving all these different measures to passage, possibly with efforts to consolidate them at some point, will take a good deal of time. And there’s no telling what will be done to deal with the regulatory chaos stemming from state-level initiatives, which to date have produced over 1,000 bills targeting AI regulation of some kind, according to the security regulations tracker Lawfare.

‘Scary Good’ AI Apps
Meanwhile, just how far ahead of the law-making curve Big Tech support for mass acculturation to AI hyperrealism has gone is seen in the success of OpenAI’s Sora app, dubbed “scary good” in a New York Times headline for its ability to act as a TikTok-like social media engine for sharing AI-generated videos. In fact, as TV Tech reported in July, there’s even some experimentation with AI fakery on the part of station groups that want to bolster the reach of their newscasts by taking advantage of its ability to distort reality by turning monolinguistic on-air personalities into fluent multilinguists.

Such steps, taken with public notification of AI usage, are a response to pressures arising from the need to build broadcast news viewership in the digital domain. While TV news still serves vast audiences, “it doesn’t have the relevance, the scale and necessarily the best business model when it gets into the digital space,” said Michael Newman, director of transformation for Graham Media Group’s digital operations. At this point, Newman said, using AI in on-air newscasting is a bridge too far, though he acknowledged is use to support live translation in newscasts is “really cool and a great example of how AI and original reporting can be accessed by more people.”

Even though broadcasters welcome some controls—as reflected in the NAB’s support for legislation like the COPIED Act—the way forward is complicated by inevitable disputes over how to rein AI in. “We are also engaged with policymakers and industry partners to ensure any new regulations or voluntary standards maintain a balance between protecting creative rights and allowing legitimate innovation,” Siciliano said.

Inevitably, as the slow grind unfolds in Congress and at the Federal Communications Commission—which, at press time, was scheduled to vote in late October on a Biden-era notice of proposed rulemaking governing disclosure of AI usage in political ads opposed by Chair Brendan Carr as well as the NAB—it remains up to stations to set up protective procedures against AI misuse by outsiders as well as parameters defining limits on internal usage. To many in an industry where attitudes about regulation are mixed, this isn’t necessarily a reprehensible situation.

At Fox Television Stations, “the approach overall is that this is an area of growth that’s happening that we need to understand and be involved in,” said Jeff Zellmer, the group’s executive vice president of digital operations. “It’s better to find partners that help us use it well than to throw up walls.”

Added Sinclair Chief Innovation Officer Scott Ehrlich, “Moving responsibly falls to companies like ours.” As for industry-wide agreement on such things, “it’s hard to standardize when you’re dealing with a target moving as fast as AI,” he said.

Piracy Concerns, Too
Nonetheless, while the industry hasn’t formalized standards around AI usage, Ehrlich voiced hope for organizations moving the industry toward more generalized protection that encompasses piracy as well as AI. One group he cited is the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), an ad hoc group working to systematize ways to establish content provenance and address misinformation.

Indeed, it’s in this realm of tools engineered to “help broadcasters verify the origin of their content, signal to viewers that programming is genuine and trace misuse when it occurs,” as described by Siciliano, that progress on the anti-piracy front offers a hopeful counterpoint to the slog on the AI side. Broadcasters are “collaborating with technology partners to strengthen the resilience of their distribution systems and guard against unauthorized access or signal manipulation,” he noted.

At this point in time, piracy is far more damaging to bottom lines across the TV broadcasting and streaming ecosystem than AI. “Video piracy is the third largest category in organized crime behind drugs and sex trafficking,” said Robin Boldon, head of product at Friend MTS, a leading supplier of forensic fingerprinting and watermarking tools used, respectively, to find stolen content in the global stream flow and identify its sources.

A 2024 survey conducted by streaming service tracker cordcutting.com found that one in three U.S. adults admitted to pirating TV shows or movies within the past year. According to research reported by the Kearney consulting group, the U.S. ranks first in national tabulations of visits to pirate websites. Globally, the number of visits to such sites rose by 13% from 125 billion in 2019 to 141 billion in 2023, Kearney said. Parks Associates has predicted U.S.-based content suppliers will lose $113 billion to piracy in this country alone by 2027.

Big Anti-Piracy Advances
It’s clear that a new generation of advanced anti-piracy tools and services is making life harder than ever for thieves. Silent Push, operator of an advanced piracy scanning and aggregation engine, recently reported uncovering an IPTV piracy network impacting more than 20 global media brands through operations involving over 10,000 IP addresses identifying servers and computers associated with about 1,000 websites.

Friend MTS has expanded its support for fighting piracy on several fronts. In response to the recent surge in so-called CDN leeching involving injection of purloined digital rights management keys, the company launched its server-side “Distribution Watermarking” solution to identify hacked subscriptions restreamed by pirates. This complements the widely deployed FMTS client-side Subscriber Watermarking solution that disrupts a live stream within a few minutes of start time, which is essential to causing meaningful pain to viewers of illicit sports feeds.

Most recently, FMTS upgraded its piracy monitoring service with use of an AI Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) model that continuously learns and adapts to pirates’ evolving tactics. It also launched fully staffed Piracy Investigation Services, which put regional teams to work using FMTS tools in ways that combine threat intelligence, identification and enforcement in accord with local practices.

“Along with supporting traditional methods like sending notices and building the chains of evidence required by courts, we’re going many steps further with service layers offering investigations and enforcement assistance, depending on what customers want,” Friend’s Boldon said.

Shift in Attitude
Another adjustment to the current state of affairs comes from Nagravision, a longtime leader in traditional conditional access, multi-DRM protection, watermarking solutions and on-the-ground teamwork with local law enforcement and regional organizations. The company has introduced a new approach to shaping anti-piracy strategies with a business-first perspective on what customers need, said Tim Pearson, vice president of global solutions and partner marketing.

In a market characterized by the diversity of issues associated with the transition to streaming, “we’re seeing buyers coming with very purposed agendas,” Pearson noted. “They have a problem, and they want to fix it.” He said the company is putting AI to work perusing “massive amounts of analytics and insights into data platforms” to find “pattern matches that allow us to really understand consumer behavior,” such as discerning how service price deductions can produce net ROI gains by reducing reliance on pirate services.

Nagravision is also teaming with Broadpeak to strengthen the battle against CDN leeching in use cases involving live sports. With AI abetting analytics, the solution can monitor DRM license requests to detect suspicious activity patterns and speed the disruption of illicit streams, Damien Sterkers, vice president of products and solutions marketing at Broadpeak, said. “On top of the video intelligence layer, we have human services with people working 24/7 to inform content owners what’s happening,” he said.

Underlying the effectiveness of all this activity is a big shift in content owners’ attitudes about piracy. “When piracy was detected, it used to be seen as the rights holder’s problem,” Boldon said. “Now it’s understood that it’s everybody’s problem.”

A case in point is growing participation in the International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP), which has expanded to include international and U.S. content owners, broadcasters and distributors representing more than 220 television channels. IBCAP said it has instigated a surge of lawsuits running into the tens of millions of dollars against wrongdoers in the U.S. and abroad, along with real-time takedowns of illicit live sports streams, including disruptions of more than 6,000 streams reaching millions of viewers during the 2024 Indian Premier League cricket tournament.

Whether cooperation in battling the misuse of AI can get to this level remains to be seen.

Broadcasters have spent years trying to integrate different vendor technologies in their facilities. As the industry has moved closer to software, that struggle has become more pronounced. Currently, media exchange protocols need timing synchronization accuracy that’s beyond most IT hardware, while the reliance on SMPTE ST-2110 and NDI can lead to significant computer resource consumption, latency and vendor lock-in.

However, a groundbreaking initiative led by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), with key contributions from both broadcasters and vendors, could be about to revolutionize how media is exchanged.

The European Broadcasting Union’s Dynamic Media Facility (DMF) project published its first white paper in 2023, recommending the adoption of an IT-focused approach with best practices that involve developing solutions using a layered architecture and creating a unified infrastructure for media production. The idea of the Media eXchange Layer (MXL) came when Canadian broadcaster CBC began to reflect on the move to software-first cloud architecture for its facilities. CBC’s proposed approach also included a layered model in which each layer has distinct responsibilities. At the base lies the physical IT equipment, moving up to applications and user interfaces at the top. The crucial missing piece, they realized, was a software-centric approach to media exchange.

Compute Heavy
“We didn’t want to use a streaming technology like SMPTE ST 2110, for example, or NDI to exchange video, audio and timed data,” explained Félix Poulin, co-chair of the Dynamic Media Facility Group at the EBU and director, global innovation collaborations, CBC/Radio-Canada. “The idea is not to go outside of the software on one computer; we want applications to share video frames and audio chunks directly within a computer’s memory.”

The concept of exchanging memory between applications isn’t new, but most of the currently available solutions are driven by specific vendors, and some broadcasters are not keen on being tied into one vendor’s way of doing things. MXL, therefore, is a direct response to the need for interoperability, tackling each layer of the DMF reference architecture independently, with media exchange being the obvious first target.

“Using a streaming technology like ST-2110 or NDI requires a lot of computer resources,” Poulin added. “You need to packetize the image and organize it in a certain way, and then you need to serialize it and send each packet one by one. To reconstruct the video and audio, buffering happens, which takes time, so there’s latency building up in a complex system.

“But using direct memory access, like memory sharing, saves all of this work,”
he continued. “You save compute, therefore power, therefore efficiency. You solve latency, because the application will put parts of the video image in its memory as it’s working on it, and then that image is available to be picked up there. There’s no additional process.”

Early experiments have shown latencies of less than 1 millisecond for each transfer of video, a significant improvement over the 20 milliseconds per device typically expected with ST-2110.

Why Broadcasters Are Embracing MXL
For broadcasters, MXL is crucial in future-proofing their operations. CBC is currently working on a major project for its Toronto headquarters, Poulin said, aiming for a dynamic and adaptable technology platform. “If we were going to be a static, purpose-built facility like before, with studios that are a certain size and have a certain number of cameras, we would be limited if we decided two years later to do another kind of show with that facility,” he said.

The industry’s shift to software, alongside the issue of getting different vendors’ technology to talk to each other, made it clear that accelerating interoperability was paramount. MXL became the key to “unlock that vendor ‘lock-in’ problem,” Poulin said.

MXL will also help broadcasters like BBC, which has resources in multiple locations across the U.K. “Networks are so fast these days, you get hundreds of gigabits per second down inexpensive fiber,” explained Peter Brightwell, lead engineer at BBC research and development and co-chair of the DMF Group. “We have the option of being able to move our resources around the country, to wherever there is the most capacity.

“What we really want is to not just do things in different ways depending on where they are, whether they’re local, within the cloud and so on,” he added. “That’s the idea of a Dynamic Media Facility. About a year ago, we had a workshop in Geneva, then CBC hosted another one in Toronto at the beginning of this year, where we brought together several of those key vendors to challenge the industry to work together. It’s gone very well.”

Open-Source Approach
Instead of the traditional, lengthy standardization process, the EBU and its partners have opted for an open-source approach to MXL. “We decided to go with an open-source approach because usually our industry would have gone through a standardization process at this stage,” Poulin said. “We’d bring in standards bodies, write the text about the solution; eventually we get it ratified and then start to see first implementations.”

Instead, a software development kit (SDK) has been developed, and making it open source means the kit can be used by all vendors and thus become automatically interoperable. “The vendors we approached were enthusiastic and I think most of them were ready to go in that direction,” he said. “The EBU called the first meeting in November to test how far we could go, and everybody in the room said, let’s do it!”

Added Brightwell: “In an open-source project, everybody can see everything that’s happened. And like the best open-source projects, you get to influence it by doing work and actually contributing something to the community.”

But what does this mean for standards such as SMPTE-ST 2110 and NDI? Both Poulin and Brightwell said ST 2110 should continue to play an important role in the industry. “2110 is not going to go away,” Brightwell said. “It’s there at the inputs and the outputs and now the edges.”

Poulin added: “2110 was an enabler to get there. It was the move to get out of industry-specific connectivity like SDI, to go to IP connectivity. It will still be the interface of choice between compute clusters. 2110 will still be used.”

The first release of MXL code is expected towards the end of this year, very likely in the fourth quarter. “In terms of the other layers, we’ve identified a couple of immediate priorities,” Brightwell said. “One is to work on the joined-up timing model. One of the great things about working in software is you can add this sort of thing very easily, the hooks are there to put time stamps into MXL payloads, as they’re called, so that they can be used downstream.

“One of the questions we’re often asked is, if you have two separate pieces of technology, how do they find each other?” he continued. “That’s a fundamental part of what we call the control layer and that is going to be our immediate next step.”

At IBC2025, the EBU announced a partnership with the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) to create the Joint Taskforce on Dynamic Media Facilities (JT-DMF), which will bring together vendors, end users and system integrators, and aims to ensure that the next wave of live production infrastructure can benefit users and vendors alike. “There are a lot of questions surrounding orchestration,” Poulin said.
“We need to solve a number of these problems in that category. The joint task force now begins working on these different aspects by priority.”

The momentum behind MXL is undeniable. “It’s been so fast from when we started with the idea, to a number of vendors being willing to work in open source, to releasing an early version of code in June,” Poulin said.

Multivendor demonstrations at IBC showcased the progress, and work is underway to finalize a production-ready Version 1. Poulin hopes that by NAB Show in April, vendors will have solutions incorporating MXL available for purchase.

MXL represents a significant leap forward for the broadcasting industry, promising greater interoperability, efficiency and adaptability in an increasingly software-driven world.

This article originally appeared in TV Tech sister brand TVBEurope.