Artificial intelligence I in media has moved well beyond a collection of tools. Capabilities such as metadata tagging, QC automation, transcript generation, and recommendation engines now shape decisions across the content chain. As these systems grow more connected, AI increasingly acts as the operating layer that routes content, applies policy, and manages routine tasks.

The industry is shifting from narrow automation toward agentic systems that can understand context, pursue goals, and execute multi-step processes within clear editorial and policy boundaries. Routine content can flow automatically while sensitive material is held for human review. The result is faster, more consistent operations — paired with new expectations for transparency and trust.

How End-to-End AI Workflows Work Today — and Why They’re Now Essential
Broadcasters tend to begin one of two ways: solving individual pain points or linking teams and systems into continuous workflows. Both paths have reshaped operations.

Individual High‑ROI Tasks
For many organizations, the first gains come from targeted use cases. Smarter metadata tagging improves archive access, personalized recommendations and artwork help keep viewers engaged, churn prediction sharpens retention efforts, and load forecasting prepares systems for major events without guesswork. Automated compliance checks flag inappropriate content, while QC tools catch frame-level issues.

Crucially, AI now reaches upstream into pre-production, where agentic systems orchestrate automated script breakdowns, generate storyboards, and optimize complex production schedules before a single frame is shot.

Shift to Workflow Orchestration
As organizations connect individual AI tasks, the operating layer starts to take shape. Instead of siloed workflows, agentic systems act as the connective tissue between the newsroom, production, advertising, and operations. For example, AI now orchestrates contextual advertising by analyzing video frame-by-frame for hyper-targeted dynamic ad insertions (DAI). Content moves according to policy, not manual handoffs, and the system improves as teams refine rules and review outputs.

These orchestration models can even show “self‑healing” behavior, with agents monitoring traffic patterns, detecting early signs of congestion, and adjusting routes automatically. Human teams retain oversight for judgment calls and editorial nuance, guided by clear governance on when to intervene.

Some broadcasters have already taken orchestration further. Sky Italia uses an AI-driven delivery platform that routes video data dynamically across its network, ensuring buffer-free 4K streams for millions of viewers. By anticipating demand spikes, the system reduces egress and storage costs while improving viewer experience.

As distribution expands across regions, platforms, and accessibility requirements, manual versioning and monitoring cannot scale. Three domains show how AI has become foundational:

1. Real-time Monitoring and Operational Intelligence
   Operations teams oversee thousands of feeds at once, and AI helps surface issues that would otherwise go unnoticed — mis-triggered graphics, muted audio, compliance violations, subtle sync drift. In one recent global sports broadcast, AI detected graphic rendering errors on mobile devices early, prompting an automatic switch to a backup encoder before viewers notice anything. AI‑driven forecasting also helps teams scale resources for major events, reducing the need to over‑provision and improving resilience during peak demand.
   
2. Localization remains one of the most labor‑intensive parts of media operations. AI accelerates translation, subtitling, compliance edits, metadata generation, and platform specific packaging. It also preserves sync and ensures consistent output across formats and languages. With accessibility expectations rising, AI systems can automatically identify non-speech audio cues like "[rain patters]" or "[door creaks]" and support high‑volume production of Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (SDH).
   
   Dubbing has also improved significantly. Newer models preserve tone, pacing, and emotional nuance rather than merely converting dialogue. Netflix has seen completion rates for global titles increase after adopting emotionally aligned dubbing, demonstrating how performance‑aware tools can improve viewer engagement. Humans still guide cultural context and oversee less‑common languages, but AI now handles much of the repetitive work that slows production.
   
3. Sports Logic, Highlight Generation, and Resource Optimization
   Sports broadcasting shows how quickly AI is evolving. Instead of generic highlight packages, AI now identifies sport‑specific moments — a goal, three-pointer, or slapshot — and assembles clips for social distribution instantly. This logic also powers generative personalization, as seen when NBC Universal used AI orchestration to create millions of highly personalized daily Olympic recaps. These same systems forecast audience surges for major matches and adjust cloud and network resources accordingly – helping maintain stream quality while cutting infrastructure costs.

Securing AI-Native Operations: Risks and the Trust Stack
As AI becomes central to production, the risks grow too. Synthetic anchors, fabricated promos, tampered clips, and impersonations of public figures can erode credibility. Another challenge comes from contaminated or synthetic content entering production pipelines, where it becomes harder to detect and more costly to fix.

A stronger approach builds trust into each asset. A practical trust stack includes:

• Digital watermarking — durable, invisible identifiers that survive editing, compression, and screen capture.
• Provenance frameworks — cryptographically signed manifests capturing an asset’s origin and transformations. Broadcasters such as France Télévisions and ARD have begun daily use of C2PA protocols to safeguard VOD authenticity.
• Authentication — hardware-backed proof at capture that confirms material comes from a trusted source, as seen in Sony’s latest C2PA-enabled camera systems.

For this to work, trust signals must be added at ingest and persist through localization, editing, transcodes, and multi‑partner distribution. Challenges remain, including metadata stripping, uneven adoption, social-media black holes, and key-management burdens. However, without these layers, AI-native operations carry significant brand and legal risk.

A Pragmatic 12-Month Plan
Adopting AI effectively starts with a focus on viewer impact and measurable outcomes. Choose one or two high-value problems — manual bottlenecks, missed QC anomalies, dubbing throughput, churn — and link them to clear KPIs such as time-to-air reductions, versioning-throughput targets, or improvements in detection-to-resolution times.

A brief workflow audit will surface quick wins, especially where AI already functions as an informal orchestrator. From there, lightweight governance helps clarify risk ownership, documents human-override paths for agentic systems, and anticipates rising expectations for explainability. Procurement should include questions about provenance and authentication support so integrity signals travel with each asset. Finally, investing in skills helps editorial and technical teams shape and evaluate outputs rather than carry out repetitive work.

What Success Looks Like in 3–5 Years
Recent moves, like Netflix’s acquisition of Interpositive AI, prove tier-1 media companies are now embedding AI directly into their core infrastructure as an operating layer. Broadcasters that thrive won’t bolt AI onto legacy workflows; they’ll operate inside agentic, policy-driven systems that learn from outcomes, route work fluidly between humans and machines, and embed trust by default.

As these systems mature, each output improves the next, KPIs guide decisions, and consistency scales globally. The earliest deployments already show these benefits, and they will increasingly define industry expectations in the years ahead.

Standing in a gallery of the Rijksmuseum, one can’t help but admire the orchestration behind every wall of art. Each piece has been deliberately chosen and arranged to tell a story, guiding the visitor’s attention, setting a mood, and revealing meaning through contrast and connection.

Behind that choreography lies strategy. The curator doesn’t merely decide what to display; they decide what to acquire, what to withhold, and how to bring the collection to life. In many ways, today’s media organizations face a remarkably similar challenge. They, too, must curate from abundance, selecting, sequencing, and repackaging vast catalogues of content to create engagement and meaning in an age of infinite choice.

Strategic Curation: Building the Collection
Every museum begins with a vision of what it wants to represent. Decisions about which artists, eras, or styles to feature define its identity. In the same way, media organizations determine what kinds of stories they want to tell, which genres to invest in, and what tone or territory defines their brand. This is strategic curation, or the long-term view that shapes what gets commissioned, acquired, or retired. It’s a portfolio decision informed by both creativity and evidence.

The best curators, in art or in media, look beyond “doing more of what works.” They think about differentiation, the gaps in the landscape, and the opportunities to surprise. Choosing a Van Gogh for a museum next to the Van Gogh Museum, for instance, might not add much value. But acquiring a surrealist work by René Magritte could reframe the collection and intrigue visitors in new ways.

Content strategists can apply the same thinking. Research from Deloitte’s 2024 Digital Media Trends found that 57% of global audiences prioritize a variety of content when choosing a platform. A strong brand doesn’t come from sameness, it’s built by intentional contrast and discovery.

Designing the Exhibition
If strategic curation decides what’s in the vault, tactical curation determines what’s on display. Museums regularly reimagine their existing collections into new exhibitions, revealing fresh connections between familiar works. The same is true for streaming and broadcast media. With vast libraries already in hand, the low-hanging fruit is not always producing more, but revealing better.

Repurposing existing titles into themed collections, nostalgia moments, or cultural spotlights can reignite audience engagement. The challenge lies in discovery. Both curators and media planners can only find what they know to look for. Traditional catalogue search surfaces what’s already top of mind, but misses the hidden gems.

That’s where semantic discovery comes in: systems that detect relationships across themes, tones, and metadata to reveal forgotten works - the equivalent of unearthing a “Salvador Dalí in the basement.” Nielsen’s 2024 State of Play report notes that over 40% of all streaming time still goes to library content, not premieres. The opportunity isn’t only in producing the next big hit, it’s in rediscovering the masterpieces already owned.

Curating the Experience
Curation doesn’t end with selection; it extends into experience design. In a museum, the curator determines the order of exhibits, the pacing, and even the lighting, all subtle cues that shape emotion and attention. In media, this translates to the design of the viewer journey: the sequence of shows, the layout of channels, and the rhythm between ad breaks, promotions, and interstitials.

Netflix’s personalization research has shown that optimized ordering of recommendations can increase viewing engagement by up to 20% (Netflix Tech Blog). Context transforms perception. A film placed after a complementary documentary can feel newly relevant; a show introduced through the right preview image can suddenly find its audience. The same piece can tell a different story depending on what surrounds it.

Personalization and the New Gallery Map
Museums increasingly design multiple visitor routes or guided tours for children, deep-dive tracks for art historians, or sensory experiences for casual visitors. Media experiences are following suit. Personalization allows every viewer to navigate their own “exhibit,” surfacing what feels most relevant to them while maintaining a sense of coherence.

A McKinsey study on personalization in media found that personalized recommendations can lift engagement metrics by up to 40%. Yet personalization without purpose risks chaos like an algorithmic gallery with no story. The balance lies in connecting data-driven adaptability with curatorial intent: the art of guiding, not overwhelming.

The Flywheel of Curation
In both art and media, curation runs at two speeds. The strategic flywheel turns slowly, defining long-term direction, budgets, and acquisitions. Attached to it are smaller, faster cogwheels of tactical curation such as daily programming, playlist rotation, and real-time scheduling. When these gears are synchronized, the system becomes self-optimizing.

Audience data continuously feeds insights back into strategy, informing what to commission next and how to evolve the catalogue. According to Accenture’s Future of Broadcast and Streaming 2025, integrating real-time analytics into planning can reduce underperforming content investment by 15–25%. The alignment of strategic vision and tactical agility is what allows a content ecosystem to evolve dynamically, responding to audience behavior without losing its artistic compass.

The Art and Science of Meaning
Ultimately, curation, whether on a gallery wall or a streaming grid, is the act of shaping meaning from abundance. Data alone can’t decide what matters. Algorithms may reveal patterns, but it takes human imagination to turn those patterns into stories that resonate.

The future belongs to those who blend the curator’s eye with the data scientist’s lens and those who treat catalogues not as static warehouses but as living galleries that evolve with every visitor. Whether it’s a painting, a documentary, or a short-form clip, the question is always the same: How do you make someone care enough to stay for one more room, one more episode, one more story?

Over the course of my career as a media and entertainment lawyer, I was lucky enough to serve as general counsel of HBO Latin America, long considered a gold standard in content. So much so that 10 years ago, Netflix famously said that its goal is to become "HBO before HBO becomes Netflix."

The headlines around Warner Bros. Discovery’s bidding process and the latest carriage fights look familiar: more consolidation, more debt and more cost reduction through synergies. What’s changed is what matters most. In today’s media landscape, where nearly every company operates a direct-to-consumer platform, the real leverage increasingly comes from a world-class product and user experience — the critical but underexamined lens for evaluating media M&A.

YouTube: When the Gatekeeper Is the Product
YouTube may be the clearest illustration of the new power dynamics.

It has become the dominant gateway into the pay-TV ecosystem through product excellence not content ownership. YouTube TV ranks among the top U.S. pay-TV providers for linear channels, while YouTube commands the largest share of streaming viewership–exceeding any single competitor.

The recent Disney–YouTube TV standoff illustrates YouTube’s rising influence. The negotiations looked less like a blow-up and more like two companies with real leverage crafting terms well outside of the legacy playbook, reflecting streaming era dynamics that are about more than rates — encompassing data, content ingestion rights and access.

A New Framework for Media M&A
YouTube’s rise to dominance isn't an accident and it offers a powerful case study in what it means to win on product—one that is a habit-forming entry point following users seamlessly from the TV screen to their mobile devices, creating a cross-platform flywheel that most traditional media companies haven’t matched.

YouTube offers a powerful case study in what it means to win on product. The question in any media deal shouldn't only be: “What library or channels are we buying?” Instead, it should be: “Does this move us closer to a YouTube-type product experience—in leadership DNA, UX capability, and data sophistication?”

• Product DNA is a scarce asset. YouTube’s leadership has been built around product, ads and engineering. That includes CEO Neal Mohan who previously served as Chief Product Officer of YouTube and earlier ran Google’s display and video ads business. His predecessor Susan Wojcicki came from Google’s advertising and commerce side.
• Ecosystem beats library. The platform combines YouTube TV’s linear channels and professional long-form content with YouTube’s rich creator driven shorts, to establish a cross-screen, single, identity-driven product, deepening both engagement and the underlying data set.
• Data and monetization are the moat. Because of YouTube’s broad span of reach and powerful tech platform, it can stitch viewing behavior into a powerful ad serving and measurement platform that feeds directly into Google’s broader ad business.

Warner Bros. Discovery: Still a Scale Story
Now put the WBD auction process into this context.

On Dec. 5, Netflix announced that it will acquire WBD’s studio and streaming business for $82.7 billion in cash and stock. A few days later, Paramount, led by David Ellison, launched an all-cash $108 billion hostile bid to buy all of WBD.

On paper, the winning bid will likely be the one that makes the strongest case on price, synergies and regulatory approval. That’s the familiar script for media megadeals. What’s striking is how little of this auction is being framed around product. Almost no one is publicly pitching WBD as the raw material for a truly world-class, YouTube-grade experience; they’re pitching it as more content to bolt onto existing bundles and apps.

Through a YouTube lens, the more interesting question is: which owner is most likely to turn WBD into a product people love to use—not just a bigger bundle of content?

Netflix is, by design, a product-first ecosystem: one global app, one UX, one personalization and data stack in more than 190 countries. Dropping HBO and the WBD library into that environment is the clearest path on the table to a YouTube-class experience.

Paramount, by contrast, is leading with scale and IP: combining Paramount and WBD into a mega-studio plus streaming portfolio while also keeping the global networks. There is a more tech-centric, under-discussed angle—the Ellison orbit includes serious cloud and data infrastructure via Oracle and a close relationship with TikTok’s U.S. data hosting, but that only matters if it is used to build a genuinely product-led ecosystem rather than just a bigger bundle.

If the WBD bidding war and the Disney–YouTube TV standoff prove anything, it’s that platform power—controlling the screen, the UX and the data—outweighs content power. That dynamic will shape whatever megamerger comes next.

Fred Baumgartner’s op-ed ("ATSC 3.0: 'I Can't Imagine Anyone Defending Our Current Adoption Strategy") on the broadcast industry’s transition to ATSC 3.0 drew several responses, which we’re publishing here:

Thank you!!!! The article by Fred Baumgartner was 100% right on. I've been bracing to watch/experience OTA go the way of CD stores and what the music industry did to itself.

If those in control of ATSC 3.0 are paying attention, there is still time to save themselves.

Thank you!
George McLam

Wow, OMG! I find it a real relief that someone speaks the truth! I’ve been following the progress of ATSC 3.0 for years from a technical standpoint. I’ve marveled at the technical advantages that are offered by 3.0.

But at the same time I’ve also noted the commercial and political wrangling occurring in the background to see who makes the most money from this transition. Almost 100% of this is aimed at the poor or disadvantaged consumer who happens to depend on OTA TV.

I have both a technical and a business degree. I understand that money drives almost all transitions like 3.0. But there is right and wrong way to make money. Mr. Baumgartner sums up the divide that is now taking place in this industry. I’m 100% in agreement with his assessment. Rural consumers are still struggling through the move to Digital OTA TV and now they are getting ready to be hit by something that will likely drive them back to AM radio (while that lasts).

There is so much potential in ATSC 3.0 for consumers! Let’s not forget that is who 3.0 serves.

Regards,
Allen Hill

The following response was penned by Mark Aitken, senior vice president of technology for Sinclair Broadcast Group and president of ONE Media.

“I will give readers a few points to consider or ponder, reflecting on this piece. Fred’s critique is essentially that the industry has done the technical work (standards, initial rollout) but neglected the go-to‐market, consumer value, device ecosystem, and regulatory guardrails part.

My view is that, YES, we have done the technical work and are finishing and fine tuning the technology implementations (all being done on a voluntary basis). Have there been hiccups? Yes, but I would add that there are few (if any) issues of great import that have not been taken care of.

Additionally, we have not NEGLECTED the go-to-market etc. but are awaiting the regulatory clarity that is required to build up our businesses with the investments required to fulfill the mission of better TV. Sunset certainty for 1.0 is important, essential.

Fred emphasizes two unique values of over-the-air (OTA) broadcasting that NextGen should preserve, and Fred knows that we are largely in agreement:

Reliability in emergencies: OTA broadcasting “has never failed in any emergency” while internet delivery has.

Universal access & democratic value: because broadcast is freely accessible and not filtered by algorithms, it plays a unique role in an informed public sphere.

But on the last of these two (Universal access & democratic value), I am afraid Fred misses the mark. Free, unencumbered access to the 3.0 primary and related television services is important. But encryption is not an encumbrance to free over-the-air TV when properly implemented. It is there to ensure that the high value/high quality programming Fred speaks of is available on a free basis to OTA TV viewers, not as a hindrance. Because of the “ALL-IP” nature of NextGen, content protection (safeguarding piracy) is essential. To say “Encryption must go” is ensuring all the high-quality programming that Fred says SHOULD be part of the programming mix WON’T exist.

I can guarantee there will be multiple reasons for OTA viewers to step up to ATSC 3.0 NextGen Broadcast/TV. Fred has spoken of many. There are plenty of enhanced capabilities that unconnected viewers will find of great value. As Fred well knows, I have personally fought for the coming days of greatness of OTA TV for almost 30 years.

I am NOT about to give up now. I know the best days for broadcasting television are ahead because we will meet and exceed the needs and expectations of an increasingly choosy local television audience. What is being asked and expected of the FCC is simply to allow a set of playing rules that allow those best days to come.

Just giving you and your readers more to consider and think about.”

Fred replies:

The responses, especially the handful I received confidentially, gives me hope that enough of us are ready to take a clear-eyed look at where we are and begin the climb up the “slope of enlightenment.” That is Gartner’s “hype cycle’s” next step after the “trough of disillusionment.” We have all experienced “paradigm shifts” – those things that describe a profound change in a fundamental business model and perception of events – best seen in the rearview mirror.

IP OTA Broadcast can and should go way beyond linear and streaming. It is a new and unique media. More than a modest modulation and encoder improvement, NextGen can become very beneficial and profitable if it is competently exploited. Geotargeting advertising revenues alone more than justify the investment I’m asking for.

So far, we’ve promoted (hyped) what we could do, which seems limitless. Our many, often-conflicting visions of what we should do, and lack of a tangible forward-looking implementation to experience and build upon has painted us into a dark corner. I’ll address some of our options after I address Mark’s comments. I’ve admired Mark since I heard his voice from the back of the room some 30 years ago pushing COFDM over 8VSB. And David Smith who made NextGen development a priority for Sinclair. What implementation that has been accomplished points back to them.

Pause Encryption
Encryption is very divisive. At launch, abrupt, poorly communicated, and unexpected blanket encryption alienated and infuriated our first adopters, influencers and several manufacturers. Encryption fundamentally and inherently changes broadcasting into narrowcasting. That is its purpose.

In May 2024, I wrote a five-page primer on NextGen encryption’s impact as part of a series on the adoption of NextGen for The Spectrum Monitor (TSM). As hard as I tried, I could not make a case where the benefits of encryption outweighed the detriments. And frankly some of the justifications offered for OTA encryption are, I judge, absurd. Like Mark, I noted that encryption, if used, needed to be properly implemented. OTA encryption yearns for guardrails and invites regulation to counteract abuse. OTA encryption (Internet encryption is different) should be paused. Properly implemented OTA encryption can be selectively triggered later if the use case makes sense.

Go Directly to OTA TV Button
In normal times, technology adoption is a multidisciplinary process that involves many stakeholders. NextGen is an ecosystem, the largest part by far being the receivers/devices. I think it has taken us all by surprise that we now have TVs that make watching OTA TV difficult, annoying, and as I learned this last weekend, sometimes impossible.

During an Internet outage, our new “locked in the circle of death,” “smart TV” required removal from the wall, cycling power, then fighting the user interface to watch OTA football. Our $3,000 first run NextGen TV isn’t much better (see TSM April 2025). NAB has pertinent experience with a similar challenge. Some cars make OTA listening difficult and may leave out the AM half of radio altogether. Sound familiar? One wonders why AM radio “revitalization” is a thing with NAB and (outside of mentions in NAB’s FCC “sunset 1.0” petition filing) TV revitalization is not?

We must nurture receivers that support our new businesses. They need persistent memory and storage, adequate processing power, multiple tuners, supporting hooks, and a frictionless user experience, etc., that they do not now possess. These are neither expensive nor difficult items to implement. Our yet to be delivered, desirable NextGen broadcast product and our promotional support is the incentive for manufacturers to offer the products we need and our mutual customers want to buy. Think of color TV’s adoption plan.

AEA&I First Opens Many Doors
A lot of resources have been put into datacasting (see TSM August 2025), BPS, encryption… things with uncertain ROIs. Nothing has been invested in implementing Advanced Emergency Alerting and Informing, which does have a ROI. Nothing would drive 3.0 adoption, solidify the industry, make friends in so many places, open as many doors to innovation, enable so many business models, and create so much buzz as well-done AEA&I interactivity.

Many erroneously conflate AEA&I with EAS. EAS on TV has been notably superseded, become ineffective and always had a negative ROI. TV broadcasters will be able to free themselves of EAS in the NextGen. Developing demonstrable AEA&I is cheap – especially when compared to what has been spent elsewhere. Launching AEA&I would completely change the course of ATSC 3.0 adoption and the trajectory of NextGen development, not to mention how it empowers TV news. Even if you could care less about saving lives and property or social contracts, there is no magical thinking or hype in this paragraph.

Changing the Rules
I don’t have the same sense of victimization as Mark does when it comes to regulation. Mark knows well and has often effectively used the power of the STA (Special Temporary Authorization). I posit that the reason the FCC rules get in the way is that we haven’t shared any vision of an implementation nor have we asked, for example, for an unrestricted NextGen national demo “channel” in lieu of the pointless, redundant simulcasts we now have. I can’t imagine an FCC that wouldn’t support a well thought out adoption and transition plan that benefits the public… or at least grant STAs so we can show the world what NextGen can do and develop and beta-test the product.

If the adoption plan is to have a sympathetic government quickly and quietly shut down 1.0, forcing viewers to MVPDs, streaming, or yet to be productized “converters” and OTA TVs that support little more than OFDM and HEVC… the optics are not good. Recently I have been to several state broadcasters conventions and engineering seminars where NextGen isn’t even mentioned any more.

Our industry is the handful of group owners who cooperated to cover most of the nation with lighthouse stations and would most benefit. My request is that they kick in what little is necessary to productize NextGen and support a realistic and lovable adoption plan. Launching an impressive implementation of AEA&I is the equivalent of Steve Jobs flaunting the first iPhone.

Innovator’s Dilemma
Much of the industry will likely focus on sweeping up the last pennies in the parking lot of what they see as a dying business. Others have some vague fleeting, cautious sense that NextGen Broadcast might become something interesting, exciting, and profitable. I think we are ready for sessions at NAB and articles in TVT and “summits” on NextGen implementation issues replacing the hype, confusion, power plays and magical thinking.

If I were an “owner” under the pressure of constant cash flow growth, I might be more interested in cannibalizing the presumed corpse and see what non-broadcast use I can divert my assets to. Mature industries struggle and frequently fail to reinvent themselves. The leaders we admire and the investments that pay off are the ones that successfully pivot.

Ultimately, this is in the hands of the half dozen or so people who oversee today’s consolidated broadcasting. If they risk making the investment, the worst-case scenario is that they fail at empowering the few people with the right stuff to lead and make NextGen happen, and they collectively lose another few million dollars. At worst, this is a small mistake.

Personally, I think broadcasting is too important to fail. If we are not ready to implement NextGen, let us pause and not squander what we have. But I’d much rather see broadcasting become an even bigger and better piece of the media mix.

What do you think? Share us your thoughts by emailing us at tvtechnology@futurenet.com.

Cloud workflows for live video are no longer experiments; they are workhorses, constantly refined for technical and financial efficiency. File-based supply chains were first to embrace this shift, but cost, connectivity and business drivers have converged to make live cloud production and 24×7 linear workflows ready for adoption.

Yet this progress has come despite a capability gap which breaks an underlying principle, key to television’s success for the past century: the ability to choose best-of-breed solutions without compromise.

Why MXL Matters
SDI solved that problem for hardware. Standardized in the late 80s, it carried uncompressed video over a simple cable, but its real power came from ubiquity, which enabled decades of growth and innovation. Without SDI, even connecting a camera to a vision mixer could have required bespoke engineering, adding cost and delay.

In the cloud, that same effortless interoperability is missing. Every integration between vendors’ software adds friction and latency.

MXL, the Media eXchange Layer, is designed to restore that SDI-like simplicity for software. Its approach is called "shared memory" where applications write and read live media from a common buffer in a standard way. That turns complex interconnection into something instant and vendor-agnostic, just as SDI did in hardware.

Built in the Open
MXL is not being built behind closed doors. The EBU and North American Broadcasters Association (NABA), working with the Linux Foundation, have made it an open-source project with vendors and broadcasters collaborating on the SDK.

That openness means challenges such as connection setup, memory management, and signaling are solved once, in the open, rather than by each vendor alone. Broadcasters can trust it as a durable foundation, not proprietary lock-in.

At IBC, momentum was clear. Demonstrations from the EBU, BBC, Techex and others showed different vendors’ software exchanging live media seamlessly. More than proofs-of-concept, they showed a new model of interoperability taking shape.

Looking Ahead: RDMA
The first milestone for MXL is shared memory within a single server. But broadcasters do not build infrastructures on one box, and scaling MXL across servers is the next challenge. That is where RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) comes in.

RDMA, and specifically RoCEv2 (RDMA over Converged Ethernet), allows one machine to directly access another’s memory across an IP network. By bypassing the kernel and avoiding CPU overhead, it moves data at high throughput with minimal latency. RoCEv1 has long been used in hyperscale data centers; RoCEv2 adds IP and UDP layers that make it usable across routed networks. For media, that means extending MXL’s shared-memory principles across distributed compute infrastructures.

The contrast with today’s methods is sharp. Traditional data movement relies on forwarding through the kernel, with CPUs shouldering the packetization load. That is costly in compute cycles and becomes a bottleneck as throughput demands rise.

More Than Raw Transport
Raw access to memory is only half the story. MXL addresses the other half: how to represent, signal and manage media in memory so applications can use it in real time. How do systems announce intent to read or write? How long should data be held? How should it be indexed and retrieved? These questions are being answered collectively through the open-source SDK, ensuring vendors adopt the same methods rather than reinventing them.

MXL sits within the EBU’s Dynamic Media Facility (DMF) initiative which takes a multi-layer approach to enabling media organizations to move to a completely software-based infrastructure both on the ground and in the cloud. From application semantics down to networking, the ability to share and orchestrate live data efficiently between compute nodes is central to enabling software-defined broadcasting that is interoperable, scalable and flexible, without locking organizations into monolithic systems.

The past few years have seen multiple merges and splits in large, multinational organizations, while publicly funded broadcasters are under more pressure than ever to excel despite funding squeezes. To deal with organizational change at the same time as continued movement in consumer behaviour, the financial and technical flexibility that software-defined infrastructure offers is a key enabler – not to mention a differentiator for those that can embrace it first.

The Promise Ahead
At Techex, we see that MXL has the potential to become the standard for live media exchange inside data center environments, giving broadcasters and studios the same freedom of choice in software workflows that SDI guarantees in hardware. It is efficient, it is open, and it is being built collaboratively by the industry.

The first demonstrations have shown the concept works very well. The next phase, with RDMA, will extend its reach across distributed environments. Beyond that, the shared foundation being built today points to an era where media organizations can once again build infrastructures from best-of-breed components without compromise. That possibility, moving from vision to prototype, is why momentum around MXL continues to accelerate.

This article was originally published on TV Tech's sister brand, TVBEurope.

Sports broadcasters consistently deliver some of the most dynamic and technically challenging sporting events in the world. For sports where every serve, volley, and footfall carry precision and emotion, audio and video quality can make or break the at-home viewer’s connection to the game.

From capturing fast-paced gameplay and moving bodies to broadcasting electrifying moments on the big screen, all while streaming across different platforms, broadcasters have a lot on their plate. Delivering an equally immersive viewing experience to both on-site and remote viewers is more challenging than it appears.

Audiovisual solutions like audio, switchers, and cameras – including studio cameras, PTZ cameras, and camcorders – allow broadcasters to seamlessly deliver professional quality productions that bridge the in-person and remote experience.

PTZ Cameras Bring Sports to Life
Cameras are the eyes of a broadcast production. Without them, no one would be able to watch the live action unfold. Today’s cameras take this a step further, allowing viewers to not just follow along but see extremely vivid moments of emotion, physical endurance, and hard-fought wins.

Have you ever watched a ball hang in the air at the goal line, a puck ricochet off the post, or a player make a split-second move that changes the game? This is the type of content PTZ cameras were designed for. Their compact size enables them to be placed in small spaces to capture shots and angles that aren’t possible with operator-controlled cameras. PTZ cameras are also extremely durable, functioning well in challenging outdoor conditions like rain, high winds, extreme temperatures and even bright or dim lighting.

PTZ cameras are also equipped with auto tracking features that automatically follow a player or ball without an operator. This ensures smooth, consistent framing during fast action, which is crucial for sports where plays unfold quickly. PTZ cameras can also capture audio from an external microphone input or embedded audio over an IP-based network to capture unique sounds, like the crack of a bat, the swish of a net, or a coach shouting instructions from the sideline.

Bridging the Gap Between In-Venue and Living Room Experiences
After capturing vivid, behind the scenes content with advanced cameras, the content is delivered in real time on large LED screens in stadiums and small home TVs or computer screens globally. Broadcasters can slow down these clips for instant replays and slow-motion breakdowns from multiple angles.

This behind the scenes look at game play helps viewers from all locations feel engaged in what’s happening. Whether their favorite team is down a point or far surpassing the competition, it’s the little, often overlooked details that can instill excitement, nervousness, or happiness in a fan regardless of where they’re tuning in from.

Switchers are central to helping a remote audience feel like they’re watching a sporting event live from inside the venue. They also help in-venue fans experience moments they might have missed. Today’s switchers connect to cameras via high-bandwidth SDI, supporting 4K/60p video, or IP-based workflows like NDI or SMPTE 2110 for uncompressed video, audio, and data streams over a single network.

This allows an operator to switch between multiple camera feeds to deliver dynamic viewing angles of a game. Switchers also use overlays, keying, and compositing features to integrate live data feeds from scoring systems to allow viewers at home to stay informed on the latest scores and player performance metrics. These feeds can also be routed on large LED walls within a venue for a cohesive experience, regardless of where a viewer is watching.

The rise of centralized control rooms and remote production allows operators to manage events without being physically onsite. Take the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, for example. Broadcasters leveraged switchers for centralized control and operation of multiple venues from a single server.

This reduced the need for on-site staff, saving time and money without sacrificing video quality. As remote production continues to rise in popularity, we’ll see more benefits brought to sports broadcasting from faster deployment and scalability to more consistent production quality and enhanced storytelling.

Meeting Evolving Expectations of Sports Fans
Fans want to be entertained. Whether it’s a tied match or break in gameplay, broadcasters are constantly looking for ways to maintain viewers’ attention and exceed their expectations. The future of hybrid sports is dependent on cutting-edge audiovisual technology that elevates interactivity across television, streaming platforms, and social media.

The next time you’re tuning into a sporting event, consider how audiovisual technologies are blurring the lines between viewer experiences. Whether sitting in the stands or on the couch, real-time multi-angle views put fans at the heart of action to enable more personalized connections between them and the sports they love.

When asked about NextGen Broadcast (aka ATSC 3.0), I have two answers. If NextGen becomes better pictures and sound, smartly distributes emergency information and extends broadcasting to mobile, I am its biggest devotee. If NextGen places broadcast behind a paywall, diverts significant broadcast spectrum to non-broadcast use, and/or relegates over-the-air (OTA) TV to a tributary of the internet—and offers nothing of value to viewers—I am a reluctant opponent.

We dodged a bullet when the FCC didn’t agree to mandate the cessation of ATSC 1.0. This gives us time to develop NextGen into what it should be.

There are two things of very high value to society that suggests “free, unencumbered” OTA broadcasting should not only survive but be thoughtfully upgraded.

Reliable in Emergencies
First, OTA broadcast is the only means of information distribution that has never failed in any emergency. Somehow, most broadcasters stay on the air… and we only need one. On the other hand, Internet delivery, without exaggeration, has failed in every disaster. “Wireless” infrastructure is inherently fragile—the loss of a single tower or fiber blacks out everyone it serves—and the system gridlocks as manifold smartphones desperately seek escape maps and the like.

There is all manner of outstanding apps for emergencies—what is lacking is reliable distribution. NextGen can deliver many pages of detailed information (that current broadcast technology cannot) to an infinite number of people, instantly, without friction or irritation. That’s not just nice, it will save more lives and property.

Second, it is easy to make the case that broadcast serves a unique role—some say critical—in a democracy. Legacy broadcast is not algorithmically controlled, access is universal, and everyone sees and hears the same message. We are seriously threatened by TV manufacturers that make it difficult to get to OTA broadcast without Internet intervention that drives viewers from broadcast to their streaming products. The information bubbles that social media creates with ever more powerful algorithms are unsuited to broadcasting. There is great value in having one mass medium that is free of such manipulation.

Encryption Must Go
So, what should NextGen Broadcast look like? It must be free to all. Encryption must go. TVs should have a “TV” button that takes you to OTA with ease and without interruption. Grandma should be able to watch TV on her own. TVs should be quite functional without Internet dependence. TVs should block unauthorized capture of user data.

OTA TVs should automatically scan the spectrum to build an elegant and expansive electronic program guide that lists everything the antenna picks up. Manual re-scans should never be required. Devices should have storage and processing to support NextGen functionality. Misguided crap like hiding the 1.0 signals when a 3.0 is received (I can go on) needs to stop.

The Advanced Emergency Alerting and Informing function must be implemented. Our current fragmented, ancient and archaic emergency alerting systems have lots of problems and, seriously, NextGen AEI can solve them. Just as importantly, this provides basic internal functions to support further developments. No one should see “no bars” when evacuating or sit through endless tests and irrelevant alerts.

Rolling out NextGen as a poor copy of "LastGen" has achieved the public—and now regulatory—response it deserves. “Lighthouse” stations should be showing top notch demo product. The Super Bowl needs to be 4K, HDR, HFR with great sound and interactive enhancements.

The 1.0 simulcast of that main 3.0 content is a good idea for now, but it should be 480i with promos and NextGen customer education. The NextGen TV in the store should look better than the LastGen and be at least as good as high bandwidth streaming… and say, “buy me!” Stop modulating with something that emulates LastGen. Do both a robust mobile and a high data rate gorgeous interactive video. We have what we need to build what we need.

Two Ways to Go
Our UHF spectrum is an incredible gift. ATSC gave us an amazing set of tools. The same tools that will allow PBS Passport members to skip on-air fundraising and commercial stations to run hyper local advertising, also allows us to create information bubbles and division. NextGen can be an excellent advancement with real world benefits in viewer behavior. It can also become incredibly destructive and hurtful. Or we can do nothing at all and see how ridged 8-VSB, MPEG, braindead purely linear broadcast ages out. Let’s not find out how long before TV manufacturers smother or abandon OTA.

I can’t imagine anyone defending our current adoption strategy. We just learned a lesson we needed. That in no way takes away from the accomplishments of getting to a standard and lighting up most of the nation with at least one 3.0 signal. But it is time for a real adoption plan, and real product development. It’s not easy work.

The tasks of defining and socializing NextGen’s vision, the regulatory changes that need to be made both to allow NextGen to progress and provide guardrails against abuse, building functions like AEI, ad insertion, interactive, etc. and working with the device manufacturers, MVPDs, and content producers… require a “break glass” resolve we haven’t seen or needed in a while.

All industries require occasional refreshment and upgrading to meet fluid market demands that both preserve revenue and unlock new opportunities. Our special loan of increasingly scarce spectrum comes with a responsibility to both our customers and investors. Thoughtfully developing NextGen is an opportunity way better than the dark alternatives.

The media industry is firmly set on a path to an IP-connected future. Major live events are now routinely covered through remote production, with sources and data delivered over open circuits to the broadcast center rather than being managed on site. This trend will certainly continue, so it’s therefore critical that live production workflows are designed with security and resilience in mind.

IP Adoption
As with any new technology, adoption grows in phases. At first, it’s experimental, with every set-up carefully crafted. Then it moves to a proof-of-concept phase: standards emerge that help make the infrastructure more routine. Finally, it becomes routine, and engineers pull the standardized modules, both hardware and software, that they need for the job in hand, and economies of scale give it a commercial imperative.

This path can be plotted as two lines on a graph. First is the amount of technical effort needed to establish, maintain, and operate the network. This should fall as experience and technology grow, making for simple, standardized implementations.

The second may be a little less obvious. This time it is a line that rises over time. As more productions opt for IP-connected remote working, the demand for facilities and bandwidth grows. More ambitious production standards, more cameras on site, and more return feeds, make the demand for bandwidth grow even faster.

Estimates vary, but it is certain that more than 80% of internet bandwidth is taken up by video. Of course, much of this is content delivery, from TikTok to Netflix. However, what we might call professional video transfer, such as live production, is taking an increasing share.

Managing Cyber Threats
As well as leading to congestion, the growth in the use of the internet for the transport of video also attracts the attention of those with malicious intentions. Whether for political reasons or simply for financial gain, there are many people who seek to profit or make a name for themselves through cyber-crime. And while interrupting a feed from a streaming service might upset customers, if a live production feed is interrupted, this can have much bigger ramifications.

Imagine sitting in master control in the seconds before the Olympic 100 meters final, and suddenly every monitor shows a demand for large numbers of Bitcoin. Not a good situation!

The World Economic Forum now publishes an annual Global Cybersecurity Outlook. Its 2024 report found that among its surveyed organizations, minimum viable cyber resilience was down 30%. In 2025, 35% of small organizations believe that their cyber resilience is inadequate. Media enterprises, many of which are classed as SMEs, must act.

Building Secure and Scalable Live Production Workflows
Not all transport protocols meet the demands of the live production environment equally, which is why RIST (Reliable Internet Stream Transport) that aligns with emerging industry needs, is gaining traction. It’s flexible, readily established, and supports the key professional technical standards like SMPTE ST2110, as well as JPEG-XS, AV1, H.264, and many more.

Security is baked in, with streams protected with AES encryption and advanced authentication options like DTLS. The protection is so good, it’s tempting to take the view “it’s RIST so we don’t need to worry”, however, it’s important not to be complacent because this inevitably leads to security holes.

Every time a network is created, engineers need to consider security at every single point. Just because a stream leaves the source encrypted and arrives at the destination encrypted, that does not mean there is no risk on the way. It’s important to consider whether there are any points in the network where the signal needs to be decrypted?

Why? Is it for routing or distribution? How are those nodes protected? Are those devices completely secure or do they have back doors? Do they need to phone home for licenses and how do they store passwords and routing data?

RIST has a very useful routine called rist2rist, which is great for building distribution services. It takes in a stream and sends it to multiple qualified destinations. Most important, rist2rist does not need to decrypt the stream to achieve this, so you can host the node anywhere you like, including in the cloud, with a high degree of confidence.

As the pressure grows for more and more services, the need for staff also grows, as does the pressure on those operators. Human factors are well known to have huge potential to bring down even the best systems. In the old days, a broadcaster’s infrastructure was contained in a machine room, in the center of the building, protected by multiple layers of access control. You must think the same way about virtual infrastructures. Single sign-on systems must be applied rigorously, allowing access only to the parts of the system required and the times when it is needed. Giving too much freedom simply increases the chances of operator error causing disaster.

Importance of Securing Every Element of IP Production
So far, I have talked about video as the essence of IP infrastructures. It is so obviously important that it is tempting to neglect everything else that production requires. But you can’t make a live production without intercom, text and document transfers. It is important to recognize that they should be protected in the same way as video and audio.

It's easy to imagine, in the set-up phase of a production, an engineer at a remote site asking for an IP address. If the central engineer sends this in the clear, then anyone with minimal hacking skills could read it, and a bad actor could very quickly take down your whole network. It is vitally important to wrap text and intercom into the same high-resilience, end-to-end encryption.

The future for IP production is extremely positive, delivering high performance at low cost and with agile set-ups. But as it grows, we must build new working practices that adopt zero-trust architectures and tight access control. RIST is ideally placed to be the cornerstone, but for an IP future where live video is consistently delivered reliably and securely, an all-embracing approach to security is critical.

Closed captioning (CC) is a text display on video content that helps deaf and hearing-impaired audiences understand speech. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission requires TV producers to supply on-screen text of spoken words, sounds, and music on their video programs. Other countries require CC and demand accurate, synchronous, timely, complete,and properly placed closed captions similar to the U.S.

TV producers must comply with FCC regulations, so they are currently the responsible party for providing CC in their programming. According to the World Health Organization, one in 10 people struggle with hearing loss or deafness, so captions definitely help a lot of people and have a purpose.

The demand for CC is valid and inclusive to hearing-impaired people, and I even find CC helpful to understand what I’m watching when I need to keep the volume low for any reason. However, behind the scenes, adding captions isn’t magic, and it presents challenges.

Interestingly, it wasn’t the government that introduced captioning. A few networks in the 1970s began offering captions, and it piqued the interest of hearing-impaired advocacy groups. By the mid-1990s, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed, initiating mandates on video content creators to provide captions and threatening penalties for non-compliance.

In tandem, the FCC also required TV manufacturers to install CC display technology for viewers to toggle captions on or off. Since then, broadcasters have endured the task of making sure captions reach viewers.

Generating Closed Captions
Several options exist for generating captions. Even to this day, typists listen in and transcribe speech in real time during live programs or recordings. Captioning service providers like Aberdeen, VITAC, 3Play and Rev charge producers by the hour for their typists. The captioner dials in over a phone line or an IP connection and types away. Hardware and software embed the captions within the video signal, and the entire video system post CC embedding must handle passing captions down the line and out the door during transmission.

Some broadcast equipment vendors, like ENCO, Audimus and AI Media, offer CC solutions in the form of automated captioning hardware that utilizes voice encoders or AI voice recognition software.

One of my roles as a broadcast professional is serving as the liaison between the CC service provider and my company. A lot of pressure to produce accurate and consistent captions came from upper management because CC is a government-regulated requirement.

Vice presidents and legal teams feared the FCC would crack down on any failure to comply. Interruptions did occur when using a live typist due to poor connection, hardware failures, the typist’s skill level, latency drift and other oddities. Ensuring compliance with FCC regulations caused a lot of stress and was costly in both infrastructure for video systems that pass CC and the bills incurred using typists.

We researched automated captioning technology despite knowing they weren’t as accurate as typists. Eventually, we acquired automated ENCO enCaption devices, which proved to provide consistency during testing. The dependability of on-site hardware that provides seamless and consistent captioning meant more than sticking with a typist. CC from a typist appears on screen much better than automated systems, but I can honestly say that caption management became a stressor of the past since we implemented voice recognition hardware.

Now, with so much AI technology and automated captioners on the market, it begs the question as to whether or not broadcasters and content providers should still be responsible for producing captions in the first place. Automated captioning still costs money to acquire and maintain, as well as the fact that most vendors only license so many hours per unit. If the burden of providing captions to audiences fell elsewhere, it would be welcomed by most production houses.

Voice Recognition Technology Disruption
Newer technology always disrupts the market. Industries endure creative destruction all the time, which is what occurs when innovation disrupts the market and causes some businesses to rise and others to fall. Voice recognition software is currently disrupting the marketplace and influencing consumer behavior.

Thanks to AI and tech developers, voice recognition technology has come a long way and grosses billions in revenue while showing promising growth. The digital era, with streaming and web viewing, enables viewers to see captions easily thanks to AI-assist bots. In fact, TV manufacturers already install voice encoders in remotes for viewers to control their TV. Installing hardware in TVs that auto-captions what people watch seems like a logical next step for applying voice recognition tech.

The disruption has nudged many to adopt the tech, and it’s pushing the industry into new territory. Global Growth Insights reported that nearly 40% of content creators use AI or automated captioning devices, and that number is trending to increase. Video consumption and production both show signs of rising, and thanks to more affordable ways of obtaining equipment and delivering video, many small-time producers can join the industry.

Smaller content creators may get discouraged as they experience the challenges and costs of complying with FCC regulations. Arguably, AI software and automated captioners may offer more affordable means to generate captions, but if the FCC changed its rules to require TV manufacturers to install voice recognition hardware rather than the content creator, then the headache and costs placed on producers would vanish.

Should the Responsibility Shift?
It’s time for broadcasters to recognize the disruption and advocate for change and settle into a new norm. Groups like the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), and large media companies influence what rules and requirements the FCC crafts.

The FCC then relies on congressional oversight to approve regulations. Broadcasters could galvanize behind the idea to shift responsibility to TV and mobile device manufacturers. Due to voice recognition advancements and market disruption, NAB and other groups could influence the FCC and Congressional leadership to change the rules to loosen or remove the requirement.

The disruption might cause a revenue hit to CC service providers. But maybe not. Companies that manufacture voice encoders could start partnering with TV and mobile device manufacturers to supply them with audio encoders. It may even expand their revenue streams because instead of selling just a few encoders to a few hundred production houses, they could expand by selling millions of devices for every TV that needs one installed.

Additionally, captioning typists could shift into roles assisting automated caption developers to improve their recognition software. Instead of charging to type, they could charge to consult. Because of the multitude of experiences that human typists have, typists could improve AI models’ ability to decipher and transcribe speech and audio.

Conclusion
Closed captioning really offers a great experience for hearing-impaired viewers and should remain a staple of video consumption. However, the responsible party for providing captions may need to shift, along with the FCC regulations. Rather than video content producers, TV and mobile device manufacturers could begin installing voice recognition hardware.

CC embedding and visibility would occur downstream of production. Thanks to advancements in technology, market adjustments can happen, and government agencies may need to modify their regulations to better align with market conditions. In that new scenario, broadcasters would save money and remove the legal requirements from their shoulders, enabling them to focus primarily on producing content.

What do you think? We welcome your feedback. Email us at tvtechnology@futurenet.com

We all agree that content isn’t valuable unless it’s accessible and that access today (and for the foreseeable future) depends almost entirely on metadata. And while AI tools have made headlines for sensational visual generation, the real opportunity lies in applying AI at the point of ingest, where metadata can be structured, system-ready, and immediately usable across production, editorial and asset management systems.

For organizations managing mixed environments that include OGs like Avid to newcomers like iconik and Mimir, the challenge is consistent: how to generate actionable metadata once, and make it usable everywhere.

The answer requires more than transcription. It requires engineering metadata pipelines that are system-aware, and automation-ready.

The Metadata Challenge at Ingest
Ingest workflows today must accommodate a wide range of formats and signal types, from SDI and SRT to ST 2110 and file-based delivery. These inputs often arrive without standardized metadata, or worse, with metadata that is incompatible with the production environment it’s entering.

When your production, editorial or asset management system can’t interpret this metadata, assets become invisible. They might be present on shared storage or in a database, but they are effectively inaccessible to your colleagues who rely on search, tags, and categorization to do their work.

This isn’t just a usability issue; It is a systemic bottleneck—one that leads to duplicating efforts, unnecessary storage bloat, and unused assets. The manual update of metadata can be a drag on the creative process, and the big downside, loss of monetization opportunities around unused assets.

The Real World is a Mix of Logos
Consider a media operation where the editorial team builds long-form stories in Avid Media Composer, the digital publishing team uses iconik for clipping and social content, and leadership is planning a move to a cloud-native MAM like Mimir. Without metadata interoperability, these systems operate as isolated silos.

Engineers in this environment face several challenges:

• How do you normalize metadata formats across systems with different schemas?
• How do you automate tagging without exposing sensitive data to external AI services?

How do you build a metadata layer that can persist across platform migrations?

Solving these problems starts at ingest. When metadata is created during ingest using a controlled, customizable AI engine, it becomes possible to prepopulate editorial and asset management systems with structured, validated, and consistent metadata.

Privacy Please
Security and privacy is paramount for every professional media company. They want on-premise, media-specific AI engines that can generate multiple types of text-based metadata such as:

• Transcripts for full-text indexing and search
• Sub-clip summaries for segment-level context
• File-level summaries for cataloging and archive tagging
• Sentiment tags for editorial filtering

Keyword Extraction for Named Entities and Events
Because the AI runs entirely within the local infrastructure, there is no need for cloud access, no exposure of sensitive content, and no unpredictable usage-based costs. The output can be formatted to match the ingest requirements of your system without risk of your data being scanned or used to train public data sets.

The result is an ingest workflow that not only delivers transcoded media, but a complete metadata envelope with zero risk that is ready for immediate use across platforms.

Building a System-Aware Metadata Pipeline
The critical engineering task is not just metadata creation. It’s metadata alignment. AI-generated metadata must be:

• Standards-compliant to ensure compatibility across ingest and editorial systems
• Contextually aware so that summaries and tags reflect the intended use of the asset
• Mapped to system-specific schemas, including AAF for Avid or JSON/XML for cloud-based asset managers
• Linked via persistent identifiers to ensure traceability across edits and platform migrations

When this is done correctly, it unlocks a number of efficiencies. Editorial teams can search by phrase or keyword without transcribing manually. Digital teams can find content aligned to tone, event, or subject matter. Engineers can integrate new platforms without retrofitting metadata after migration.

Most importantly, content becomes discoverable and usable immediately upon ingest rather than sitting dormant on storage until it’s manually processed (or not).

Engineering for Discoverability
From an engineering standpoint, this is about shifting metadata from a post-processing task to an ingest-native function. When AI is embedded directly into the ingest workflow, metadata generation becomes deterministic, repeatable, and secure. The pipeline delivers not just media assets, but indexed, searchable, and categorized content across the production stack.

This is not just a smart automation play. It is a foundational shift in how media workflows are engineered for speed, scale, and cross-platform utility. In a landscape where discoverability drives reuse, speed to air, and monetization, metadata is no longer optional infrastructure. It is core to system design.

In today’s digital-first media landscape, broadcasters are under pressure to deliver premium viewing experiences while maximizing ad revenue. Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) has emerged as one of the most powerful tools for delivering both.

The real value of DAI isn’t just inserting ads. It’s scaling that capability across every viewer, device, and platform without compromising quality. Every unmonetized stream, unsupported device, or timed-out ad call is revenue left on the table. For broadcasters, scalability isn't just a technical goal; it’s a commercial imperative. The more effectively they can reach, measure, and monetize their entire audience, the more complete their revenue capture will be.

Here is an explanation of the five most effective ways to elevate DAI.

1) Elevate Viewer ExperienceAdd value with addressability

In digital advertising, relevance is key. But addressability is not just about ad targeting; it's also about enabling accurate, real-time measurement. That’s what advertisers want, and they’ll be more likely to spend on CTV if they get it.

Provide a seamless viewer experience

Ad transitions must be smooth without jarring audiovisual changes. Best practices include transcoding creatives in advance, accurately placing SCTE-35 markers, and co-locating content and ads on the same CDN.

2) Maximize DAI ReachSupport multiple streaming protocols

Broadcasters need as much of their audience as possible to be on a DAI-enabled stream. Supporting server-side ad insertion (SSAI) on HLS and MPEG-DASH protocols is a good start, especially where DRM is required.

Monetize legacy devices

Legacy devices, like pre-2020 smart TVs, often lack SSAI support. Broadcasters should support all devices to monetize their whole audience.

3) Unlock New Advertising InventoryMaximize ad opportunities in live events

Live events offer a unique opportunity for mass-reach monetization. Contingency ad-pods open up new inventory, without disturbing the ad pod for the next planned break.

Apply advanced advertising to pop-up channels

One-off live events often generate smaller audiences and become overlooked for DAI. Orchestration software allows monetization of multiple pop-ups without needing additional infrastructure.

Open up historic ad breaks

Around 12% of Yospace’s live sessions enter rewind mode. Resolving historic breaks with DAI opens significant previously untapped ad inventory. Server-guided ad insertion (SGAI) requires less server power than SSAI, making this more practical.

Support spot replacement

Multi-Avail Breaks allow broadcasters to replace ads within a break, increasing potential monetization across distribution partners.

Embrace new formats

Ad formats like pause-ads or L-shaped banners generate incremental revenue. These require client-side development, which will become easier to implement with SGAI.

4) Scale Monetization for Large AudiencesApply prefetch to live streams

Prefetch is critical for live events, like the Euro 2024 soccer semi-final, where a last-minute goal caused a sudden spike in mobile viewing right before an ad break. Prefetch ensured broadcasters could scale quickly, avoiding timeouts and revenue loss.

Support the adtech

Close adtech integration is equally important. Broad support for VAST (2.0 to 4.2) and multiple ad servers ensures flexibility and performance across all demand sources.

5) Apply Accurate, Transparent MeasurementMeasure ad views, not just ads stitched

To deliver the most accurate, trusted measurement, SSAI should be paired with client-side tracking to provide the granular level of reporting advertisers expect.

Standardize your approach

The soon-to-be-ratified Common Media Client Data (CMCDv2) standard will provide accurate data for IAB-compliant ad measurement where using client-side SDKs is impractical, or where the content owner does not control the end-user’s device.

Real-time monitoring adds value

Another advantage of real-time ad performance data is that it can be surfaced in a live dashboard to help analyze and adjust campaigns on the fly, improving ad performance. DirecTV achieved its highest-ever technical fill rate using this approach.

The Bottom Line on DAI: Scale, Trust, and Monetization
Simply enabling ad stitching with DAI isn’t enough; the real value comes from doing it reliably, at scale, and with the insight advertisers require to justify premium spending.

Scalability is where the stakes rise. Every limitation - whether in device coverage, playback environment, latency, or measurement - directly impacts revenue. DAI should no longer be treated as a bolt-on feature. It must be at the core of streaming infrastructure, integrated deeply across workflows, platforms, and partnerships. Only then can broadcasters ensure that ad revenue is not left on the table.

Winning the streaming wars will hinge on a number of factors, but the quality of the subscriber experience delivered by content providers is rapidly becoming one of the most important. Streaming platforms continuously measure a wide variety of quantitative metrics allowing them to better understand, and improve, subscriber quality of experience (QoE).

For consumers with multiple streaming options, QoE is a significant factor in their decisions to subscribe to—and stick with—streaming platforms. However, delivering sterling QoE to subscribers depends on partnerships with third-party content delivery networks (CDNs) over which content providers have limited control.

CDNs are strategic partners to streaming platforms; they perform the vital role of delivering a valuable and expensive product (video entertainment) to end viewers. The challenge is that the CDN industry is going through a period of rapid change and turmoil. Established players have exited the space, and prevailing economics make it difficult for remaining participants to innovate in ways that materially benefit streaming platforms.

Content providers are embracing live streaming, especially tier-one sports, as a way to reduce customer churn and expand their subscriber bases. But the increased prevalence of large-scale, live streaming requires CDNs with a laser focus on video quality and an approach designed to drive sustained economic value. Such partnerships can be game-changers for streaming platforms looking to attract new subscribers and keep the ones they have.

The Content Delivery Requirements of Streaming Platforms
As content providers continue to scale and adopt more bandwidth-intensive content, such as 4K video and immersive live events, the role of the CDN must evolve. The right partner can ensure that video quality remains high while keeping costs in check. When evaluating CDN partners, streaming executives should consider the following:

Purpose-Built for Video: Not all CDNs are optimized for video streaming. Many legacy CDNs were designed primarily for general web content delivery and have struggled to keep pace with the demands of high-quality, low-latency video at scale. Streaming platforms should seek out CDNs engineered specifically for video delivery, with architectures that prioritize optimization of common QoE metrics such as time-to-first-frame (TTFF), while maximizing delivered bit rate and minimizing rebuffer events.

Deep Network Visibility and Last-Mile Optimization: One of the biggest challenges for streaming platforms is the unpredictability of last-mile network conditions. CDNs that have deeper integration with internet service providers (ISPs) and maintain real-time visibility into network congestion can make smarter delivery decisions, reducing buffering and improving playback stability. Additionally, CDNs that extend their footprint into last-mile ISP networks can pre-position content closer to end users, further enhancing QoE. This is especially crucial for live events, where sudden spikes in viewership can strain traditional CDN architectures.

Scalability to Handle Traffic Surges: Live sports and major content releases generate massive, unpredictable spikes in traffic. Traditional CDN infrastructure can struggle to scale up rapidly enough to handle these peaks, leading to degraded video quality. Content providers should look for CDN partners that offer dynamic, on-demand scaling, allowing capacity to expand in real-time to meet surges in demand while efficiently scaling down during off-peak hours.

Flexible and Cost-Effective Delivery Models: The economics of content delivery are under pressure, challenging streaming platforms to simultaneously achieve quality and cost-efficiency. CDNs that provide flexible pricing models, such as capacity reservations and pre-positioned content, can help streaming platforms optimize their spending.

Now that streaming has become the go-to way people watch video—including a growing percentage of live sports and major events—the pressure to deliver seamless, high-quality experiences has never been higher.

Content providers that get it right will keep viewers watching and subscribers sticking around. The key isn’t just speed—it’s having the right delivery strategy in place to scale smartly, control costs, and ensure a great experience every time.

As CTV continues its ascent, advertisers are becoming increasingly frustrated by opaque practices around content metadata. Agencies and tech providers want to know exactly where their ads appear, but many publishers remain hesitant, citing privacy regulations such as the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) as justification for withholding detailed content information.

This standoff has led advertisers to pursue unconventional—and potentially risky—methods of gaining insight into content environments, raising serious questions about the future of transparency in CTV advertising.

Where's the Money Going?
Transparency is becoming central to performance marketing on CTV. As advertisers shift greater shares of their budgets toward streaming, they demand clarity on where and how their dollars are being spent. Yet, publishers often offer limited metadata—usually restricted to broad genre-level or network-level reporting.

Advertisers are left guessing whether their content is appearing next to premium, brand-safe shows, or lesser-quality inventory relegated to "performance CTV," a euphemism often reserved for remnant inventory with lower engagement and effectiveness.

The lack of transparency is reminiscent of the early days of digital display advertising, where publishers similarly guarded inventory data closely. But digital display evolved, driven by demands for openness from advertisers, ultimately moving toward a more programmatic, transparent ecosystem. CTV is now at a similar crossroads.

CTV publishers frequently argue they're protecting user privacy by withholding detailed content-level metadata, invoking the VPPA, which prohibits disclosure of personally identifiable viewing data. While privacy concerns are valid, advertisers question whether VPPA concerns are being overstated or used as a convenient shield against transparency.

After all, advertisers aren't seeking individual user data—they simply want granular content-level metadata. This metadata doesn't compromise viewer privacy when provided in aggregate; instead, it supports better ad placement, brand alignment, and performance.

Advertiser Desperation
In response to publisher reticence, agencies and technology providers have started experimenting with indirect methods to uncover content metadata. One tactic involves combining users’ location data with electronic program guides from virtual MVPDs to infer which shows viewers might be watching.

This workaround underscores advertiser desperation, but it's a risky, unsustainable practice. If advertisers begin routinely exploiting indirect techniques to unearth data publishers refuse to share, trust will erode on all sides, fueling tension and potentially triggering stricter regulatory scrutiny.

Publishers must recognize that limited transparency actively undermines trust in CTV. Transparency ultimately benefits publishers too, attracting larger ad budgets and deeper investments from brands eager for reliability and consistency. Moreover, refusing to share content metadata won't stop advertisers from pursuing alternatives. Instead, publishers should find balanced ways to disclose greater granularity.

Netflix and Hulu offer instructive examples. Initially wary of transparency, both platforms have incrementally embraced more programmatic ad-buying practices, gradually offering richer metadata and increased advertiser control. Their approach demonstrates that transparency need not conflict with viewer privacy or business interests—it can enhance both.

Looking forward, publishers must decide: hold firm, risking advertiser backlash and fragmented practices, or open up metadata more fully, creating a robust, transparent, and sustainable CTV ecosystem. Agencies, brands, and technology providers have shown they're willing to push boundaries in pursuit of transparency. Rather than forcing their hand, publishers have the opportunity to step up proactively, balancing legitimate privacy concerns with meaningful transparency.

The future of CTV relies heavily on trust, precision targeting, and performance metrics - all impossible without clear, detailed, and accessible metadata. It's time for publishers to give some ground, before advertisers force the issue in ways that benefit no one.

Say hello to HBO Max—again. This summer, Warner Bros. Discovery—HBO’s parent company—is changing the name of its popular streaming service from “Max” to “HBO Max,” after using just “Max” since 2023.

How will the move affect Warner Bros. Discovery? Does it even matter?

The short answer: Yes, branding matters immensely in a landscape as crowded as streaming, where the likes of Amazon Prime Video and Netflix are all too eager to poach HBO’s customers. For its part, HBO has long tinkered with its brand, and not just to grab headlines.

But Warner Bros. Discovery needs to tread carefully in this case. Market research is critical.

According to new research from Outward Intelligence, consumers have been responding positively to HBO and Max’s evolving strategy. Viewers continue to strongly associate both HBO Max and Max with high-quality original content (29 percent for HBO Max, 24 percent for Max) not to mention a wide selection of shows and movies (33 percent for HBO Max, 34 percent for Max). Over the last two years, Max’s platform has largely delivered what audiences have come to expect from the HBO legacy—award-winning programming, variety, and quality that stands out in a saturated marketplace.

In some ways, the standalone Max has even broadened HBO’s appeal. More viewers cite ease of use and navigation on Max (25 percent) compared to HBO Max (18 percent), reflecting successful platform upgrades and an improved user experience. A greater share of consumers also claim the “subscription is worth the price” (21 percent for Max versus 17 percent for HBO Max), signaling growing perceived brand value. Viewers see accessibility and affordability.

The 2023 rebrand was a win for HBO. The company successfully tweaked around the edges and nailed the margins, improving the user experience in response to consumer preferences.

Now, HBO needs to avoid a brand setback. On the bright side, HBO’s approval rating did not take a hit over the last two years; it remained stable. Fifty-eight percent of consumers have a somewhat or very favorable opinion of HBO Max, and the same is true for Max. Neutral and unfavorable ratings remain virtually unchanged.

The key for HBO Max is not undermining the user experience, whether it is the platform’s ease of use and navigation or the quality of its content. Not only is content king, and difficult to ace, but even the most high-quality content needs to be supplemented by routine technological improvements and enhancements that strengthen the point of delivery.

Maintaining brand loyalty is increasingly difficult in today’s day and age. Subscription cycling is par for the course. Most Americans believe there are too many streaming options, and cancellation is a quick way to cut costs in an inflationary economy. Gen Z consumers—an ever-growing segment of the market—are also more likely than older generations to cancel monthly streaming subscriptions, with price increases cited as the main reason.

Competing against other streaming companies, HBO is no stranger to customer churn. Out of all the streamers, Max has seen the highest percentage of users who have paused and restarted their subscriptions to the service, accounting for nearly one-third of customers. Retaining HBO’s core brand strength can help stabilize subscription cycles, keeping customers loyal month after month.

Fortunately for HBO, the foundation is strong. Loyalty has been built over decades—from The Wire and The Sopranos to Game of Thrones and The White Lotus. As Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav recently put it, the HBO moniker “represents the highest quality in media” to millions of Americans.

But HBO also represents something more—a brand willing to tweak and tinker based on customer feedback. The “Max” era was a success story because HBO never lost sight of its target audience.

For the second coming of “HBO Max” to be successful, market research remains indispensable. Just like hit shows earn and re-earn trust with each new season, Warner Bros. Discovery must up the stakes with HBO’s offerings—to the max.

As mobile-first consumption reshapes the media landscape, broadcasters must transform their workflows to meet the demands of a digital-native audience. Those who innovate today will define the future of news tomorrow.

The news industry is experiencing a profound transformation as mobile-first content consumption takes center stage. Audiences increasingly rely on their smartphones for real-time updates, pushing broadcasters to rethink traditional workflows that were once designed exclusively for linear television. This shift is not merely a change in platform; it's a redefinition of how news is created, distributed, and experienced.

The Rise of Mobile-First News Consumption
Mobile-first consumption has been accelerating for years, and recent data underscores its dominance. In the last quarter of 2024, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 62.5% of global website traffic. In the United States, mobile accounted for 65.8% of all digital ad spending in 2024, highlighting the clear shift toward mobile platforms. For news organizations, this represents both a challenge and an opportunity.

Major networks are making significant investments to stay competitive. For example, CNN invested $70 million into its digital transformation, prioritizing mobile-friendly, on-demand content. This trend is driven by a younger, mobile-first generation of news consumers who expect instant access to personalized, bite-sized content.

Meeting these expectations requires more than just repurposing linear TV content; it demands rethinking the entire content lifecycle—an overhaul that prioritizes speed, platform optimization, and audience engagement.

Overcoming Challenges with Legacy Workflows
Adapting to mobile-first news consumption is not a simple task. Traditional broadcast workflows are heavily optimized for large-screen, scheduled programming. In contrast, mobile consumption demands content that is easily reformatted, quickly distributed, and personalized for individual viewing habits.

The challenge lies in transforming legacy workflows that are often siloed and rigid. In the past, content was produced for a single format and distributed to a single platform. Today, audiences expect content to be available across multiple platforms in a variety of formats, including vertical video optimized for smartphones. For broadcasters to remain relevant in this rapidly changing, mobile-first era, they must adapt to efficiently reformatting and delivering content in real-time.

One significant barrier to this adaptation is the segmentation of content across different departments and platforms that exist within news production organizations. Traditional newsrooms often maintain very separate teams and process for linear broadcasting from digital production, resulting in duplicated efforts and slower distribution speeds.

To truly embrace mobile-first strategies, news organizations must break down these silos, enabling seamless content flow from creation to distribution. This approach not only accelerates time-to-market but also enhances audience reach by ensuring the efficient optimization of content for every screen. Broadcasters which fail to transform risk losing their competitive edge, especially as younger audiences continue to embrace mobile-first habits.​

The Role of AI in Modernizing News Workflows
Artificial intelligence is emerging as a critical tool in modernizing news workflows. Through automation, AI enables broadcasters to optimize content for various platforms without the need for manual intervention. This capability is crucial for keeping up with the pace of mobile consumption.

One key area where AI is driving innovation is in content personalization. Machine learning algorithms can analyze audience behavior and preferences to deliver targeted news updates, ensuring that stories are relevant and engaging. Furthermore, AI-driven automation can reformat content dynamically—whether it's vertical video for mobile or curated feeds for personalized viewing experiences.

For example, AI can identify trending topics and automatically curate video snippets from existing longer-form video, optimized for mobile consumption. This reduces the time required for manual editing and accelerates the speed at which breaking news reaches audiences anytime on any device. In an era where immediacy is critical, this capability is redefining what it means to be first with the story.

AI is also instrumental in multilingual distribution, automatically translating and reformatting content for different regions and demographics. This enables global reach with localized precision, ensuring that audiences receive news in their preferred language and format almost instantaneously.

The Shift Toward Vertical Video
One of the most significant transformations in mobile-first news consumption is the rise of vertical video. Traditionally, news content was produced in landscape format, optimized for television screens. However, as mobile devices have become the primary medium for news consumption, vertical video is rapidly emerging as the preferred format.

Vertical video is not just a change in aspect ratio; it represents a shift in audience behavior. Mobile users expect to engage with news content seamlessly as they scroll through social media feeds and news apps. This expectation is pushing broadcasters to rethink content strategies, ensuring stories are not only mobile-optimized but also immersive and interactive.

Leading news organizations are experimenting with mobile-first video formats, creating live streams, interactive news updates, and social-first clips designed for vertical consumption. This evolution marks a departure from traditional broadcast storytelling, moving toward dynamic, real-time engagement with audiences.

The demand for instant, mobile-optimized news is only expected to grow, and vertical video stands at the forefront of that shift. For newsrooms willing to adapt, this format offers unprecedented opportunities to engage viewers directly where they are - on their mobile screens.

Embracing the Mobile-First Era
The mobile-first era is not merely a trend; it is a redefinition of how news is consumed, shared, and trusted. Broadcasters that can seamlessly adapt to these new demands— producing vertical video, personalizing content, and optimizing distribution – will not just remain competitive; they will lead the next wave of media evolution. The path forward requires more than adaptation; it demands innovation, foresight, and a willingness to break from traditional molds.

In this mobile-centric landscape, those who prioritize mobile platform-native storytelling and agile content strategies will set the standard for the future of news. The question is no longer whether mobile-first consumption will dominate, it's about who will lead the revolution. For forward-thinking newsrooms, the opportunity to define the next era of media is here, and the time to act is now.

For decades, TV advertisers have navigated a difficult trade-off between reach and precision, brand-building and performance, storytelling and targeting. Connected TV helped narrow that gap by preserving the visual and emotional power of the big screen while introducing data-driven precision. But even CTV has become overly focused on short-term gains, chasing quick conversions at the expense of long-term brand health.

As free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) continues its rise in viewership, it is time to ask a critical question. Are advertisers spending too much time focused on the small percentage of consumers who are shopping now and overlooking the much larger audience of those who could be ready to buy in the near future?

The Problem With Chasing Only In-Market Shoppers
Performance marketing can be effective when used in balance. But when nearly 70% of media budgets are allocated to converting people who are already ready to buy, marketers risk creating three major inefficiencies.

First, it inflates costs. Competing for the same small pool of in-market consumers drives up media pricing, especially in programmatic environments. Second, it creates missed opportunities. Only about five percent of consumers are actively shopping at any given time.

That leaves 95% of potential buyers unaddressed. Third, it creates a false sense of efficiency. Spending big to convert consumers who would likely have converted anyway often means missing the chance to invest in brand-building strategies that boost future performance.

The opportunity with future-ready buyers
The better strategy is to reach future-ready buyers. These are consumers who may not be actively shopping today but are open to a product or category and could enter the market soon.

Consider someone who already owns an electric vehicle. They may not be researching their next car yet, but when their lease ends in six months, they will be. Reaching that person early helps establish preference before the shopping journey even begins. This kind of brand priming leads to better recall, higher engagement and stronger performance when it matters most.

Why FAST Is the Right Channel at the Right Time
FAST platforms have become a vital piece of the modern TV ecosystem. Their rise is driven not just by affordability, but also by how well they support long-term advertising goals.

Viewers on FAST are choosing to watch free, premium content in exchange for ads. This creates a more relaxed and receptive viewing environment. Unlike many digital formats, FAST platforms deliver that content on a big screen, often in high-quality, brand-safe environments.

And with advanced targeting capabilities, FAST allows marketers to go beyond basic demographics to reach viewers based on behavior, interests and lifestyle signals.

All of these factors make FAST an ideal place to engage future-ready buyers. Marketers can combine the scale of traditional TV with the targeting of digital, creating campaigns that influence brand preference over time.

The Importance of Smart Data and Privacy
Targeting future-ready buyers requires more than intuition. Marketers need access to high-quality data to identify the right segments. This includes insights into lifestyle, purchase intent, psychographics and other signals that indicate openness to a category. Done right, this avoids wasted impressions and ensures budgets are used efficiently.

At the same time, advertisers must prioritize privacy and compliance. Consumers are increasingly aware of how their data is used, and regulations continue to evolve. Brands that align with trusted data providers and privacy-forward platforms are more likely to build lasting relationships with both customers and regulators.

Building a More Sustainable Advertising Strategy
The future of TV advertising will not be defined by performance vs. brand-building; the most effective marketers will find ways to blend the two. They will recognize that even lower-funnel conversions are influenced by what happens long before a consumer is ready to act.

FAST platforms offer a path to achieving this balance. They allow advertisers to reach people at all stages of the buying journey, including those who are not yet in-market but could be soon. By focusing more on future-ready buyers, advertisers can create momentum that drives results not just today, but into the months and quarters ahead.

In a media environment where budgets are scrutinized and attention is scarce, investing in long-term brand health is no longer optional. It is essential. And FAST is proving to be one of the smartest ways to do it.

If Winston Churchill was leading the broadcast industry into battle against the Tech Giants, he might say something like this—

Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues in the service of truth, trust, and community—

We are not gathered here today as we once were, in times of ease or complacency.
We stand here, as broadcasters, in a time of great peril and greater promise.
A time when the very nature of communication is being redrawn by forces larger than any one of us.

And make no mistake—we are at war.

Not with rifles or rockets. But with rules rewritten, with platforms unbound by the public trust, with titanic technology firms whose appetites are insatiable and whose ambitions are global.

They do not play by the rules we obey.
They are not bound by the obligations we uphold.
They are not required to serve the public good, to be present in times of crisis, to stand sentry over the last mile of American democracy.

We are.

And yet, they take what was once our sustenance.
The advertising revenues that sustained local journalism, local storytelling, local accountability—these now line the coffers of trillion-dollar giants, indifferent to our towns, our cities, our people.

But we are not defeated.
We are not relics.
We are not obsolete.

Because we possess something they do not: spectrum—earned, defended, and held in public trust. Presence—in every market, in every community, in every storm.
And now, a new weapon in our arsenal: ATSC 3.0.

With it, we are no longer confined to the past. We become what we must become: a converged, IP-based force for communication, delivering data, entertainment, emergency information, education, and innovation.

We call it B2X—Broadcast to Everything.
And with it, the line between broadcast and broadband disappears.
Not to surrender our identity, but to expand our reach, to embed ourselves in the fabric of modern digital life.

This is not just a technology.
It is not just a standard.
It is our future. It is our fight.

I offer no easy path, no guaranteed reward.

I offer what our industry has always given to the American people: Blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

Blood, for the battles we’ve already fought to preserve free speech and local service.
Toil, for the years we’ve labored to build an industry that touches every home.
Tears, for the voices lost, the newspapers shuttered, the newsrooms emptied.
And sweat, for the hard days ahead as we rise again.

And let us not forget our solemn duty—to inform in times of emergency. When wires fall and networks fail, we remain.But imagine the strength we’d wield if our signal reached not just the television set or the dashboard radio, but every mobile phone, every connected device—a lifeline in every pocket, every hand. ATSC 3.0 and B2X make this possible—not someday, but now.

But I also offer this—Victory.

Victory through reinvention.
Victory through innovation.
Victory through unshakable localism and unstoppable national scale.
Victory through ATSC 3.0 and B2X—through coexistence, convergence, and alignment with the world as it is, and as it will become.

Without victory, there is no survival.

But with it—there is more than survival.
There is a future.
There is relevance.
There is greatness.

Let the world know: we are not done. We are not going quietly.
We will adapt. We will rise. And yes—we will win.

Authored by Mark A. Aitken
A Broadcast Industry Veteran and Champion for Spectrum’s Highest Calling

There’s always an urge to declare a single theme from any of the Media & Entertainment industry’s major trade shows—and the 2025 NAB Show is no exception.

The need to simplify the multiple trends that broadcasters and media companies are facing today is understandable, but in truth the world—and our industry—is way more complicated than a simple summary. Even if—according to some analysts—Artificial Intelligence was that simple summation of the key theme at NAB this year.

In reality, many threads/themes/topics were discussed among the multiple conference sessions and by the 55,000 attendees this year.

For me though, the constant “hum” underlying many of the discussions was about a critical challenge that all broadcasters and media companies face at the moment – the need to radically change their content supply chain (or value chain).

This need has been discussed within the industry for a while now, but at a relatively hidden level–but it came much more into the open at the show.

What is 'Less with Less?'
If you need to simplify this challenge, it’s best summed up by Phil Wiser, CTO of Paramount Global who was the first person I heard (well before NAB) that used the phrase “doing less with less”.

By that he means that many broadcasters are having to look at not how they do each step along the content supply chain (from production to distribution), but rather why they are doing each step—and decide whether each and every step is needed.

That’s radically different from the concept of “doing more with less”, which many in the industry are still parroting, even at NAB. Doing more with less is about efficiency and productivity, or or - at an overly simplified level—it's about churning more content through the supply chain for less cost per asset.

Doing less with less is a very different concept.

It’s not a unique concept of course. Back in the day when broadcasters (pioneered by Discovery) started moving part of their existing supply chain into the cloud, the most enlightened of them tried to avoid a simple “lift and shift” approach, and instead took a hard look at what they could simplify and/or do differently as they broke monolithic workflows into a series of microservices. Ideally, to transform the content supply chain.

But–as no-one says publicly–much of this transformational change was, well, not transformational, and there has been relatively little radical change of the existing supply chain steps.

The Imperative for Change in the Supply Chain
In a way that didn’t matter, as the prime reason to move into the cloud was to gain flexibility/agility, to make services easier to spin up and down, and to move from a capex to an opex model.

The situation today, however, is different.

Today, as one CXO put it at the NAB Show, there is an existential threat to the business models of many M&E companies. The Covid slowdown has been followed by the Ukraine war and now global recession risk sparked by evolving tariff policies and multiple other geopolitical externalities that are too long to list.

Those externalities are forcing M&E companies to take a long, hard look at what they do—and in a much more fundamental way than when the move to cloud came along.

If the previous 3-5 years have been about doing “more with less”—with efficiency being the principle goal in an attempt to take investment out of the media management and distribution parts of the value chain and put it into producing differentiating content—then today while that’s still vital, it’s no longer enough.

Instead, the next five years will be about going much farther and much deeper into becoming more efficient (the second less in “less with less”)—but critically with a laser-sharp focus on what not to do anymore–either by eliminating steps completely in the content supply chain or by doing some steps in a significantly different/simpler way.

At the 2025 NAB Show, if you looked hard enough, there was growing evidence that this is the approach of many more M&E companies. Here are some quotes from major companies, as heard in various conference sessions:

“In this tricky market we need to be ruthless on what viewers really want from us and where they are happy to have more of a basic level of service.”

“How can we stop overbuilding applications?”

“We need to take things out that we do now in the value chain.”

“We need to get rid of all the customized processes in the supply chain. They are hairballs.”

Practical Examples
So, this is not–for example–about using AI for automated subtitling (which is quicker and cheaper, and now more accurate, than using people, other than perhaps for content using heavy dialects/accents or some languages), but instead about whether we need to provide subtitles at all.

Yes, that’s heresy (and illegal!) in countries where regulation requires subtitles to be provided–but if it was not a legal requirement, should broadcasters keep providing this service? It’s a real debate that I heard one broadcaster talking about at NAB.

Clearly if subtitling was not provided, then this would affect a significant proportion of viewers who need subtitles because of hearing issues, or who just like to have subtitles on anyway. Cutting out this step clearly impacts the viewer experience, but it’s a trade-off that some broadcasters may need to make in the future in order to provide a so-called more “basic level of service,” as per the quote from a senior broadcast executive above.

Another (less impactful) example is the increasing tendency for broadcasters to abridge or completely cut the end credits of a broadcast program. Though creatives will be (and are!) horrified by this trend, why not just cut out the end credits from all programmes, as they add little to zero value for the viewer, and take up valuable broadcast time? Some streaming platforms already offer AI-powered mechanisms allowing users to skip intros and credits… so why have them in the first place?

Another area that one broadcaster is looking at is QC, where the argument is that QC is not a binary yes/no choice; it may be possible to reduce or adjust QC checks in areas such as video file quality to exclude checking for errors that do not significantly impact quality. That does not mean we end up with everything looking like the infamous first CGI versions of the 2019 movie "Cats," but rather that we stop trying to get absolute perfection in the video quality we need.

All of these examples come with obvious trade-offs, but as one executive said, “Do the downsides really matter? Do we really need 100% in everything we do?” Absolutely not, but…

Achieving 'Less with Less' Through Smart Automation
…the key to “doing less” is to ensure that abridged or reduced steps cut out what is not needed without compromising on core steps that need to be more efficient. And by the same token it also implies to not remove what is indeed essential, especially if it can be accommodated more efficiently through automation.

A good example is scheduling. Automated scheduling—done properly—can deliver a scheduling process that is 80% quicker than standard scheduling—but without losing the critical value-adding components of scheduling (like interstitials, promotions, bumpers, secondary events) that more basic, playlist-type automated scheduling solutions skip.

Taking the use case of scheduling further, this is about giving actual choice to media companies. They may want full-service scheduling for some of their channels, or pragmatic automated scheduling that delivers much faster scheduling while still preserving the key value-adding steps of full-service for other channels.

By the way, this smart, pragmatic automation goes hand-in-hand with standardised workflows, as opposed to endless customizations that are impossible and costly to maintain, and hamper content supply chain velocity going forward.

Content is Expensive, So Let’s Maximize its Lifetime Value…
Another practical example of smart automation is around the critical need for media companies to sweat their content assets more efficiently, or what is called “Content Value Management.” Fundamental to this is the maximization of both internal and external discoverability of content assets.

The big win here is to enable content curators within a media operation to elegantly discover similar content and curate their content bundles with powerful AI tools akin to what consumers are being offered by way of personalization and recommendation, to discover the right content in a much smarter way.

“Smart discovery” is about embedding smart content discovery within automated processes along the content supply chain; for example, within automated scheduling. In this way, advanced content recommendation can generate a ‘Smart Content Pool’ matching the channel’s editorial direction and target audience.

This content pool allows users to spectacularly accelerate FAST and linear channel creation. In this way, users can create engaging schedules in just a few clicks without having to compromise on any of the criteria that define a premium broadcast channel, and automates multiple schedules from a single catalog to maximize rights exploitation across platforms during defined rights windows.

In fact, this transcends “less with less” and is actually rather “more with less”

In summary, doing “less with less” is already happening, and whether we like it or not, it is a term that the M&E industry will hear more of over the next few years. Let’s just be smart in how we approach this and centre the first “less” about doing the right things and the second “less” about efficiency.

For nearly a century, over-the-air television has served as a cornerstone of public service, delivering essential news, cultural programming, and emergency information to millions. However, today's evolving media landscape presents challenges to this legacy infrastructure, as it increasingly diverges from modern consumption habits and technological capabilities.

Traditional broadcasting operates on a fixed, high-power model that consumes identical spectrum and energy resources regardless of actual viewership. This established system faces structural limitations in an era that increasingly prioritizes personalization, interactivity, and spectrum flexibility.

Audience preferences have shifted toward streaming platforms offering convenience, customization, and on-demand access—features that traditional broadcasting has difficulty providing. This represents a substantive change in how viewers wish to engage with content.

The geographic coverage that defined broadcasting's initial value now reveals certain constraints: households receive identical linear feeds regardless of individual interests or schedules. In the context of digital personalization, this standardized approach affects traditional television's relevance and impact.

To maintain its essential role, broadcasting requires evolution—not by departing from its foundational principles of universal service and public interest, but by adapting them to a flexible, intelligent, digital-first framework.

The Public Airwaves
The electromagnetic spectrum is a finite public asset, with broadcasters operating under a social contract to use it responsibly. When Congress established the Federal Communications Commission in 1934, it codified the principle that airwaves belong to the public, with licenses granted to serve the "public interest, convenience, and necessity."

In 2025, this obligation encompasses equitable information access, resilient crisis infrastructure, educational opportunities, and digital inclusion. The current broadcast model presents challenges in optimizing these goals. Fulfilling its mandate requires broadcasting to become more adaptive and collaborative—capable of integration with digital networks, supporting national connectivity initiatives, and maintaining operations during emergencies.

A Different New Media
Smartcasting integrates over-the-air transmission with broadband connectivity, reconfiguring traditional broadcasting as a dynamic system responsive to both audience needs and infrastructure requirements.

Three key innovations define Smartcasting:
1. Dual-Mode Content Delivery
Rather than positioning broadcasting and streaming as separate approaches, Smartcasting integrates them into a unified system. Content is distributed via the most appropriate channel—over-the-air or broadband—based on real-time demand, device capabilities, and network conditions.

Major events such as national emergencies, elections, or popular sports represent appropriate applications for traditional broadcasting, which delivers content to many viewers simultaneously without placing excessive demands on internet infrastructure. Specialized programming and targeted services utilize broadband, conserving spectrum while enabling personalized experiences.

This integrated approach makes delivery methods transparent to users. Whether content arrives via antenna or IP stream, viewers interact through a consistent interface. Smartcasting adapts television into a platform that selects efficient delivery paths based on viewing context.

2. Intelligent Spectrum Management
Smartcasting replaces static broadcasting with a data-informed approach. Using analytics, AI algorithms, and audience measurement, it adjusts power levels, channel usage, and delivery modes throughout the day.

Standard broadcast power ensures appropriate reach during peak hours. During off-peak periods, the system can modify transmission parameters, shift programming to broadband, or temporarily repurpose spectrum for community services such as rural internet access.

Live, critical content receives priority, while pre-recorded and time-shifted programming adapts to audience behavior and spectrum availability. This approach enhances efficiency while supporting broader digital infrastructure objectives, including 5G deployment and rural broadband expansion.

3. Datacasting to the Edge
Smartcasting employs datacasting to decouple content delivery from real-time viewing. During overnight hours when demand is reduced, it can transmit 80% content libraries to compatible devices.

This locally cached content becomes available on-demand without requiring real-time transmission or increasing demand on broadband networks. This approach presents significant opportunities: a substantial percentage of non-live programming could be delivered overnight, allowing daytime spectrum allocation for internet backhaul, telehealth, or distance learning applications.

Public Resilience and Equity

Smartcasting's technological innovations address several digital challenges:
Repurposing TV Spectrum for People
In underserved areas, broadband deployment faces economic and technical barriers. Smartcasting offers an alternative approach by repurposing broadcast spectrum for broadband services during non-peak hours. Combined with overnight datacasting for non-live content, broadcasters can contribute to national connectivity objectives.

By utilizing existing infrastructure to deliver both television and internet services, Smartcasting helps address digital divide issues—supporting education, telehealth, job training, and civic participation in communities with limited connectivity options.

Crisis Connectivity
During emergencies, electrical grids and cellular networks may become unavailable. Traditional television receivers require power to function. Smartcasting enhances community resilience by broadcasting alerts to battery-powered mobile devices.

Using spectrum-repurposed communication, broadcasters can reach mobile audiences during power and connectivity disruptions. This ensures that important updates, evacuation orders, and emergency instructions remain accessible through commonly available devices.

By extending emergency broadcasts beyond stationary television receivers, Smartcasting provides an additional communication channel—operating independently of the power grid while complementing existing alert systems.

Cultural and Educational Access
As media platforms increasingly implement subscription models, Smartcasting ensures educational and cultural programming remains accessible. Using compression technologies and overnight datacasting, broadcasters can deliver 4K and even 8K content to viewers without requiring broadband access, significant financial resources, or subscription fees.

This approach to universal access fulfills public broadcasting's established mission while adapting it for contemporary digital contexts.

Efficiency and Sustainability
Traditional high-power transmission requires substantial energy resources. Smartcasting reduces consumption through dynamic power scaling, adaptive delivery, and datacasting—decreasing broadcasters' environmental impact while reducing operational costs without compromising service quality.

Technology Integration
Smartcasting implementation requires integration of several technologies. Distribution systems evaluate viewer behavior, device capabilities, and network performance to determine appropriate content delivery pathways, ensuring reliability and responsiveness.

Supporting this model is edge caching and datacasting infrastructure that preloads content during off-peak hours, reducing congestion while ensuring access to important programming such as public health messages and educational materials.

The NextGen TV standard (ATSC 3.0) provides the technical foundation for hybrid broadcast-broadband functionality, with IP-based compatibility that integrates television into the broader digital ecosystem. These technologies have been deployed in pilot markets, demonstrating their feasibility and scalability.

Implementing Smartcasting requires coordination among stakeholders, targeted investment, and appropriate regulatory frameworks to realize its potential benefits.

Industry Collaboration
Developing Smartcasting requires participation from broadcasters, device manufacturers, regulators, and public-interest organizations.

Broadcasters must adapt operations and invest in infrastructure supporting dual delivery across airwaves and broadband. This requires adoption of new technical capabilities and reconsideration of their role as content providers within a converged digital environment.

Device manufacturers can help ensure consumer hardware—televisions, smartphones, tablets, and set-top boxes—supports Smartcasting with appropriate technical capabilities, particularly in areas with limited connectivity.

Regulators have the complex task to review licensing models to accommodate flexible, hybrid spectrum use. Updated frameworks should promote efficiency, enable spectrum-sharing, and address the needs of underserved communities, while maintaining transparency, accountability, and appropriate oversight.

Public-interest organizations serve as important advocates to ensure Smartcasting supports inclusion, accessibility, and equity goals. These groups can provide input, monitor implementation, and collaborate on applications serving diverse public needs.

Smartcasting's effectiveness depends on technology implementation and a coordinated approach to broadcasting as a public resource that connects innovation with established public service principles.

Conclusion: Serving Society at Scale
Smartcasting represents an evolution of television broadcasting that builds upon the digital transition. By connecting over-the-air infrastructure with broadband, digital intelligence, and spectrum management, it adapts television to function as a flexible, inclusive, and resilient public platform.

This approach extends beyond technical modifications—it represents a systematic adaptation recognizing that media must respond to both consumer preferences and broader societal requirements: information access, emergency communication, environmental responsibility, and cultural preservation.

In our changing media landscape, Smartcasting reinforces the principle that public airwaves should serve the public interest. As audience expectations, industry capabilities, and technology continue to develop, Smartcasting offers a framework for the future—one where television maintains relevance, resilience, and accessibility, aligned with the requirements of our digital society.

With accelerating technological changes and heightened viewer expectations, broadcast organizations face a pivotal decision: whether to prioritize scale or precision in selecting a systems integrator. Boutique integrators, with their targeted expertise and client-first ethos, have emerged as a strategic choice for projects demanding adaptability, innovation, and accountability.

A boutique integrator is a highly specialized partner that prioritizes selective, meaningful engagements over volume. These firms avoid the "one-size-fits-all" playbook, instead assembling teams of highly skilled in-house employees with deep, granular expertise in niche areas — whether it be in live sports production workflows, broadcast truck design, or legacy system modernization. Their model thrives on collaboration, reputational integrity, and solutions calibrated to each client’s unique operational DNA.

Boutique integrators deliver outsized value through specialization, responsiveness, and client-first principles. These traits ultimately enhance broadcasters' ability to adapt quickly to changing market demands while ensuring high-quality, customized solutions.

1. Cutting Through Complexity With Specialized Teams
Boutique integrators operate on a simple premise: mastery matters. Projects are led by professionals who have honed their skills within specific technical domains. For instance, these professionals understand not only the infrastructure challenges of large venues but also the logistical hurdles of live event timelines — from camera placement to real-time signal routing under pressure.

This specialization extends beyond technical proficiency. Teams develop an intimate familiarity with the unspoken demands of their niche, balancing budget constraints or meeting exacting standards. By aligning personnel to projects that match their expertise, boutique firms mitigate risk and accelerate execution.

The result is tailored problem-solving. Rather than forcing prepackaged systems, boutique integrators invest in understanding organizational goals. Such solutions emerge from dialogue, not templated proposals, ensuring they align precisely with client goals. This agnostic approach means boutique integrators aren't tied to pushing specific products, allowing for truly customized solutions.

2. Agility Rooted in Direct Relationships
Smaller organizational structures inherently foster agility. Without layers of bureaucracy, boutique integrators adapt swiftly to shifting priorities — whether recalibrating timelines or accommodating last-minute technical requests. In environments where last-second changes are routine, this flexibility ensures projects stay on track without compromising quality.

Direct access to decision-makers amplifies this responsiveness. Clients often have direct contact information for project team members, allowing for quick response times and immediate support. This transparency builds trust and accountability, as teams understand their work directly impacts the firm's reputation — its most important asset.

3. Reputation as the Ultimate Metric
Boutique integrators operate in a world where every project is a referendum on their credibility. Without the cushion of a large sales team, their growth hinges on client satisfaction. This dynamic creates a culture where excellence is nonnegotiable.

Reputation is cultivated through consistency and a focus on quality over revenue chasing. This philosophy contrasts sharply with larger integrators, where projects may be deprioritized based on revenue potential. Boutique integrators are passionate about delivering high-quality work, understanding that their reputation is their primary means of securing future business.

The emphasis on reputation also fosters long-term partnerships. Clients return because they value the reliability and pride of craftsmanship embedded in every deliverable. In short, clients get far more than just a vendor — they get a team that treats the client’s success as their own success.

4. Pioneering Innovation Through Shared Knowledge
Innovation at boutique integrators is a collaborative endeavor. Teams regularly share insights across projects, creating a feedback loop that accelerates learning. This often takes the form of regular team meetings where project insights are shared and collaborative problem-solving occurs across different projects.

This collective knowledge also fuels early adoption of emerging technologies. Boutique integrators often partner with manufacturers for beta testing of new products and systems. Clients benefit from access to cutting-edge solutions that are vetted through rigorous internal discussions and real-world application, balancing innovation with stability.

5. Growth Without Compromise
Scaling as a boutique integrator is an exercise in discipline. Growth is intentional, measured, and aligned with the firm’s core competencies. It's a common misconception that boutique integrators lack the resources to handle large, prestigious projects. In reality, their focused approach and efficient use of resources often allow them to tackle big jobs more effectively than larger integrators.

Rather than chasing revenue at all costs, these firms say “no” to projects outside their wheelhouse, preserving their ability to deliver exceptional results. This selectivity ensures teams aren’t stretched thin. By avoiding overcommitment, boutique integrators maintain the focus required for complex builds, ensuring timelines and budgets remain intact.

Client-Centric Evolution in a Dynamic Industry
The broadcast industry’s future belongs to organizations that balance innovation with executional discipline. Boutique integrators exemplify this balance, offering surgical expertise alongside operational flexibility. Their model — built on specialization, accountability, and relentless attention to quality — transforms technical challenges into opportunities for innovation.

For broadcasters navigating an era of disruption, boutique partnerships provide more than just technical solutions; they offer a strategic alliance with a team invested in the broadcaster’s long-term success rather than a mere transactional relationship. In choosing a boutique integrator, clients are gaining a partner whose reputation is inextricably tied to their own.

In 2023, the value of sports rights in the U.S. surged by over 20%, reaffirming what we already know: live sport continues to be the crown jewel of premium content. But while the rights themselves are rising in value, the expectations around how sports are delivered have evolved even faster. According to an Emarketer forecast report, digital viewing surpassed traditional pay TV live sports viewing in 2023 and is expected to grow by over 20% between 2024 and 2027.

As streaming becomes the norm, today’s fans—especially digital natives - aren’t satisfied with simply watching a game. They want to experience it: instantly, interactively, securely, and on the device of their choice. As a result, the playbook for success in sports broadcasting and streaming has fundamentally changed. It’s no longer about just owning the content, it’s about owning the experience.

Low Latency and Short-Form Viewing Live Hand in HandIn a world where Gen Z and Millennials flip between full games and highlight clips in quick succession, delivering live sports at broadcast-level latency isn’t optional—it’s essential. In addition, the growth in sports betting means delays in stream delivery have the potential to impact revenue opportunities and fan trust.

With 71% of Gen Z and Millennial fans consuming sports highlights weekly (and within minutes of the live event), streamers must not only match and exceed the speed of broadcast TV but must also accelerate the turnaround for short-form content. Even small delays can gradually erode engagement, limit betting opportunities, or make it harder to stay relevant in fast-moving social conversations.

The industry is aggressively exploring new approaches, and protocols like WebRTC and Low-Latency HLS (LL-HLS) are increasingly being supported in various platforms to reduce latency. WebRTC supports sub-second peer-to-peer delivery ideal for fan interactivity, while LL-HLS brings scalable, mainstream HTTP workflows closer to real-time with chunked CMAF delivery. In parallel, AI applications enable sophisticated and automated highlight detection from live streams to facilitate rapid short form content creation and deployment to multiple social platforms.

From Passive to Personalized: Multicamera Synchronized Streaming
Fans now expect more than a director’s cut—they want options: alternative angles, replays, and multi-cam views they can control. But delivering on that promise requires more than just switching feeds. It demands precise synchronization across all sources, extended beyond the broadcast booth and into the streaming environment. Video alignment mechanisms traditionally used in broadcast production, such as those enabled by SMPTE 2110 and 2059, provide frame-accurate synchronization, but OTT workflows will need to adopt lightweight, stream-compatible timing strategies to match this level of precision.

This evolution is being driven by demand: 55% of sports fans say they want access to multiple camera angles, and 33% consider that capability a key enhancement for sports highlights. Platforms are beginning to respond—Sky Sports’ F1 Race Control is a leading example, allowing viewers to toggle between live driver cams, onboard feeds, and race telemetry in real time, all aligned with the main broadcast.

As interactive viewing becomes table stakes, broadcasters and streamers must develop timing models that scale across devices and networks, ensuring fans don’t just watch the action, they control how they experience it.

Adaptive, AI-Enhanced Encoding Improves the Experience
Sports fans today watch games on an array of devices, from high-definition TVs to smartphones and tablets, and with varying network conditions. Delivering a consistent, high-quality viewing experience across these platforms requires a more intelligent approach to encoding, one that dynamically adjusts based on content complexity and bandwidth availability.

AI-powered adaptive encoding tackles this challenge by analyzing footage in real time and applying pre- and post-processing models to improve picture quality with increasing bandwidth requirements. This approach not only enhances streaming efficiency but also ensures mobile users on constrained connections receive an uninterrupted experience. With 75% of video now being consumed on mobile, AI-driven encoding can also optimize content for vertical viewing formats, catering to the rise of mobile-first sports consumption.

Tackling the Ongoing Threat of Piracy
With live sports rights commanding billions, piracy remains a clear and present danger. According to the 2024 HBR article—“Pro Sports Has a Piracy Problem"—sports rights owners are losing $28 billion in revenue each year. Beyond the loss of revenue, unauthorized streams degrade the fan experience and brand integrity.

That’s why forensic watermarking is gaining traction as a proactive anti-piracy tool. By embedding invisible, traceable identifiers into streams, down to the individual session, content owners and rights holders can identify the source of leaks and take swift action. When paired with geo-fencing, tokenized delivery, and robust DRM, it becomes part of a layered defense strategy that protects not just content, but trust.

From Live to Always-On: Hybrid Workflows Are the New Playbook
Today’s sports broadcasting isn’t just about the live event, it’s about serving fans across live, on-demand, and 24/7 adjacent content. Traditional fixed infrastructure can’t keep up with the scale and flexibility this demands.

That’s why cloud-hybrid workflows are becoming the norm. By combining on-prem production with cloud-based elasticity, broadcasters can support REMI, automate highlight creation, and deliver content globally with greater speed and efficiency. With over 60% of broadcasters now using cloud in live and adjacent workflows, the future is clear: agility wins.

Serving the Fluid Fan
As outlined in reports like The Age of the Fluid Fan by Sports Innovation Lab, today’s sports consumers are not locked into one team, one screen, or one format. They are open to change, empowered to choose, and continuously evolving.

They expect to:

• Pick camera angles in real time
• View live stats overlays or watch from an athlete’s POV
• Join live chat, place in-game bets, or co-watch with friends
• Watch vertical or AR-native streams on mobile
• Discover highlights through social media, not just TV recaps.

This is not a future state, it’s happening now. And the technology to meet these expectations already exists. What’s needed is integration, interoperability, and a mindset shift—from content distribution to experience orchestration.

The Final Whistle
As we move deeper into an IP-based, data-driven, fan-centric era, sports broadcasters must adapt or risk losing relevance. That means embracing low-latency protocols, AI-enhanced encoding, scalable hybrid workflows, and proactive content protection.

The future of sports broadcasting isn’t about bigger rights, it’s about better delivery. And those who can master that will not only stay in the game - they’ll own it.

In the not-so-distant past, sports fans turned to their TVs for a one-size-fits-all experience: games aired on regional networks, and everyone relied on the same broadcasters for coverage.

Today, that model is unraveling. Consumers are increasingly cutting the cord in favor of Connected TV (CTV) and streaming services, leading to rapid shifts in advertising spend and new direct-to-consumer subscription and pay-per-view offerings.

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming is emerging as a vital strategy for sports organizations to engage audiences, monetize content, and expand their reach. For many organizations and brands, this shift isn’t just an opportunity to engage this new type of sports fan—it’s a necessity.

Adapting to the Evolving Media Landscape
Sports have long been considered the final frontier sustaining paid cable television, particularly in the United States, where traditional broadcasters secured exclusive rights through large licensing deals keeping fans tethered to cable.

However, the landscape is shifting. A key turning point came when Diamond Sports Group signed a multi-year agreement allowing Prime Video users to stream Diamond’s 16 FanDuel regional sports networks. We’ve also seen the evolution of Fubo, a multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) that is now offering standalone subscriptions to popular DTC streaming services like FanDuel, NBA League Pass, and more without requiring a full MVPD customer.

With streaming platforms now competing for sports rights, leagues, teams, and even individual games can now appear across multiple platforms like linear TV, streaming services, or their own DTC channels. Rather than being limited to a single broadcaster, rights holders can now strategically mix exclusive and non-exclusive deals, expanding their reach while maintaining control over their content.

For years fans have been constrained to a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to sports but in the wake of streaming, fans can now have a customized and seamless viewing experience, all from the platform(s) of their choosing. Now more than ever, organizations are delivering seamless viewing experiences that allow fans to subscribe to the content they love while also creating new opportunities for brands to engage them.

Meeting Fans Where They Are
The streaming industry is racing to keep up with the evolving sports landscape, but we’re already further along than many realize. This isn’t the first cycle of investment—it’s the next phase of refinement and optimization. The foundations have been laid, and now it’s about building smarter, more sustainable models that align with shifting consumer behaviors and the growing demand for flexible, data-driven sports streaming experiences.

The ability to deliver personalized, automated ad experiences across these platforms will be a game-changer for monetization and audience engagement. Many teams are launching their own OTT streaming apps to deliver live games, replays, and exclusive content straight to fans’ screens.

For example, last year the NBA struck an 11-year agreement with The Walt Disney Company that will net them roughly $76 billion dollars. Through this agreement, the NBA app will be leveraged as a universal access point to direct fans to the platform of their choosing (Disney, NBCU, or Amazon) to watch their favorite games.

As digital viewership climbs, the cost of game rights continues to soar. Major streaming platforms and tech giants are vying for digital sports rights, fueled by the power of sports to captivate audiences across all demographics on a massive scale.

For premium leagues like the NBA, digital streaming rights opportunities have opened up the competition for coveted network ad dollars, providing new revenue and highly engaged audiences. This also opens up opportunities for brands to leverage contextual targeting, aligning their content with trending athletes, and ensuring their ads reach engaged fans at the perfect time.

This hybrid approach will allow the NBA to balance traditional revenue streams with digital innovation, meeting fans where they are by maximizing accessibility and engagement. The rewards are substantial: by taking control of their platforms and owning the relationship with fans, organizations can sell their sponsorships directly, maintain control over valuable data, and connect with fans in deeper, more personalized ways driving higher engagement and offering tailored advertising and content experiences.

Engagement Lasts Beyond The Season
The always-on nature of sports (there is at least one broadcast-worthy sporting event every day) and the lengthy seasons provide ample opportunities to attract new subscribers – drawing them in with their favorite teams and then hooking them with other offerings when the games end. Female athletes and sports fans are also reshaping the media landscape, breaking long-held stereotypes, and redefining how sports are covered and consumed.

Deloitte predicted that 2024 revenue from women's sports would surpass 1 billion dollars for the first time. We’ve seen streamers start to follow this revenue stream – Peacock partnered with podcaster Alex Cooper for live Olympic coverage, and Netflix (whose subscriber base is 51% female) live-streamed the Christmas NFL games featuring a halftime show from Beyoncé. Netflix has also become home to shows like Quarterback and Receiver which have been praised for a real-life look into NFL players' lives both on and off the field.

With DTC and owned streaming platforms, teams have greater opportunities to offer fans exclusive behind-the-scenes content of their favorite athletes, providing a deeper, more personal look into their lives. There’s significant potential, especially during the off-season, to expand on these connections by highlighting team personalities in more engaging and creative ways, fostering stronger bonds with fans.

However, this begs the question of how this could impact Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) rights in sports. We could begin to see more negotiations centered around the individual rights of athletes. With sponsorships now commanding premium placements, brands are increasingly looking to align with athletes, teams, or leagues that have high visibility and direct fan engagement, making NIL deals a key factor in securing lucrative sponsorships. As a result, athletes’ NIL rights could become a major bargaining chip in the negotiation process, influencing the distribution and monetization of digital sports content in unprecedented ways.

A new era of sports fans is here and the growth opportunities are unlimited. It’s clear that sports streaming has become a cornerstone of the modern entertainment landscape that’s here to stay. Sports is no longer about the calendar of events, but building and engaging a community on and off the field, year-round, and the broadcasters that take an audience-first approach and cater to this direct-to-consumer shift will be primed for long-term success, and the brand dollars will surely follow.

The media industry stands on the precipice of a technological revolution. Over the past year, we’ve seen how Artificial Intelligence (AI) has gone beyond the hype to become a transformative force, reshaping the creation, distribution, and consumption of content.

For media companies, the need to integrate AI into their systems is no longer a choice but a necessity. Below, I outline my top five reasons why this integration needs to begin today.

Practical Strategies for Media Efficiency
AI offers media companies unprecedented opportunities to enhance operational efficiency. From automating repetitive tasks, such as content tagging and video clipping, to streamlining the production of personalized or localized content, the potential for increasing output with fewer resources is immense.

Looking ahead, AI could contribute a $15.7 trillion boost to the global economy, according to PwC, with media and entertainment seeing major cost reductions. Similarly, McKinsey predicts AI could automate 60-70% of tasks, impacting the media industry significantly.

By standardizing metadata tagging with AI-driven computer vision, film and TV studios can implement unified arrangements when onboarding assets from third-party production companies. This vastly improves media searchability, saving marketers time and money while increasing the quality and creativity of their promotional material.

Emotion significantly impacts humans’ ability to retain information. By applying sentiment analysis to ad-supported content, AI introduces a new dimension for targeting. This additional telemetry enhances brand safety for advertisers and drives higher CPMs for publishers.

However, it is by no means a straightforward process. To fully leverage this potential, companies need to commit to a multifaceted approach, including process redesign, employee education, and consistent iterative improvement. These efforts require time and energy. By integrating AI in a scalable way now, even in narrow use cases, companies will be able to get ahead and gain valuable insights. Early adopters will gain a competitive advantage in operational efficiency as AI tools become increasingly advanced.

Keeping Up with a Rapidly Evolving Landscape
The media landscape is evolving at a breakneck pace, driven by technological advancements and changing consumer behaviors. AI is at the forefront of this evolution, with capabilities ranging from content personalization to real-time analytics. Companies that delay adopting AI risk being left behind as competitors leverage these tools to deliver more engaging and personalized experiences to their audiences at a faster speed.

In 2024, there were over 3,000 operational AI startups, each attracting significant venture capital funding. Understanding the myriad of products, their benefits, and capabilities is a daunting task. The rapid pace of AI development means that the longer companies wait, the more they will need to catch up. As AI algorithms evolve, the gap between early adopters and stragglers will widen, making it increasingly difficult to compete. Starting today allows media companies to stay ahead of AI advancements and remain relevant in an ever-changing industry.

Cultivating an AI-Ready Media Workforce

One of the biggest challenges media companies face when integrating AI is the human element. Employees need to become familiar with AI tools and understand how to leverage them effectively. This shift in mindset and skillset doesn’t happen overnight. It requires time, training, and a cultural shift within the organization.

The Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium predicts that more than 90% of ICT jobs will undergo high or moderate transformation by AI. This shift will require reshaping the workforce to incorporate AI, emphasizing the need for immediate action in upskilling employees. By starting the integration process now, companies can gradually improve their workforce, aligning employee expectations with AI’s new capabilities.

This proactive approach will reduce resistance to change and ensure a smoother transition as AI becomes more deeply embedded in daily operations. Additionally, involving staff early on in the AI integration process can foster innovation and encourage the development of new ideas on how AI can enhance media products and services.

The Necessity of Deep AI Integration for Media
The AI market is already flooded with a wide array of tools, each promising to solve different problems or enhance specific aspects of media production and distribution. However, this abundance of tools can also lead to fragmentation, inconsistency, and the use of unsanctioned, private tools by employees, which can pose security risks.

Deeply integrating AI into existing IT infrastructure is crucial for fully realizing AI’s benefits and overcoming the significant challenges associated with scaling AI beyond pilot projects. Without deep integration, organizations may struggle with complexities that prevent widespread AI adoption. BCG reports that only 11% of businesses have successfully integrated AI into multiple areas of their operations.

Deep integration also ensures that AI systems are designed with regulatory and security requirements in mind from the beginning, reducing risks and enhancing compliance through robust monitoring and control mechanisms. This comprehensive approach is essential for managing the complexities of AI deployment and ensuring long-term success.

Building a Future-Proof Strategy to Stay Ahead of the Curve
Finally, integrating AI today is not just about meeting current needs, it’s about future-proofing the business. As AI continues to evolve, the media industry will see the emergence of new use cases, from AI-generated content to advanced predictive analytics that can shape editorial strategies. Companies that have already embedded AI into their core systems will be better positioned to experiment with and adopt these emerging technologies.

For example, in the US, more than 20% of people speak a different language at home other than English (US Census). While catering to diverse, less common languages presents an economic challenge for today’s media companies, AI is changing the landscape.

Media outlets can now use AI in certain cases to generate localized content for these populations at a fraction of traditional costs, effectively reaching an additional 70 million people in the US. Companies that adopt this technology early will gain a significant advantage by having the ability to instantly utilize this technology across their entire content portfolio.

A future-proof AI strategy involves continuous learning and adaptation. Media companies must remain agile, regularly reassessing their AI tools and strategies to ensure they leverage the latest advancements and meet the evolving needs of their audience. This ongoing process will help media companies stay ahead of the curve and maintain their competitive advantage in an increasingly AI-driven world.

AI’s Essential Role in Future Success
The integration of AI is not just a technological upgrade for media companies, it’s a strategic imperative. Considering the opportunities for cost savings, the demands of a rapidly evolving landscape, the importance of a prepared workforce, and the abundance of AI tools available today all point to one clear conclusion: the time to deeply embed AI into media systems is now. By acting today, media companies can position themselves for long-term success in a future where AI will play a central role in every aspect of the industry.

By embedding AI deeply into their operations, media companies not only optimize current processes but also lay the foundation for future innovations. The sooner they start, the greater their chances of thriving in the AI-driven future of media.

In a recent Google search on the status of the broadcast TV market, the first five results tell a bleak story:

• FCC's Simington: Broadcast Industry Heading Toward 'Catastrophic Decline'(communicationsdaily.com);
• Study: Total U.S. TV Station Revenue To Decline in 2025 (tvtechnology.com); 
• The Broadcast Golden Goose is Dying (jackmyers.com); 
• Cable and broadcast TV viewing falls below 50% for the first time (cnn.com); and 
• Broadcast TV Is Dying. Trump Is Threatening It Anyway (wired.com).

Of course, this reality has been foreseen for years, and nothing will change as long as the FCC clings to its Depression Era regulation of broadcasting.

The Evolution of Competition in Local Broadcast Television Advertising and the Implications for Antitrust and Competition Policy, a 2020 NERA Study, explained that digital advertising delivered over broadband networks constituted a direct substitute for local broadcast TV advertising. Making this imbalance worse, none of local TV’s Bid Tech competitors—Google, X, Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Tic Tok, etc.—are subject to the FCC's ownership and regulatory restrictions.

Simply put, the FCC should eliminate its artificial broadcast ownership restrictions and allow the development and production of new content more efficiently by reducing redundancy and streamlining broadcast operations.

Removing its ownership limits would allow serious cost savings and open economies of scale so broadcasters could actually compete against Big Tech. It would also increase the means to distribute content across a broader range of platforms, maximize audience reach and consequently increase advertising and content revenue.

Finally, it will provide stability against market volatility, allowing licensees to better weather economic challenges and downturns, and open the market wider for technological investments.

The FCC should also unleash its regulatory hold on the advanced television format ATSC 3.0. The FCC has historically aided new technology that expanded public availability and service, but not so ATSC 3.0. It did it for FM radio and UHF television by insuring they were available on all new tuners manufactured.

When the analog-to-digital conversion arose, the FCC not only adopted a mandatory conversion requirement, it set-up a reimbursement program to help the television industry cover the cost. It should do likewise for ATSC 3.0.

For the young ATSC 3.0 technology, however, the FCC has not acted to enhance it, and instead continues to over-regulate and seriously limit the benefits of ATSC 3.0. Those benefits include two-way interactivity, multi-screen applications, 4K (and potentially 8K) resolution, immersive (Dolby AC-4) audio, mobile reception, integration with existing 5G cellular networks, datacasting (ATSC 3.0 uses Internet Protocol (IP) for signal delivery, so it can also broadcast IP-based data), and much more.

“What will TV look like in three years?” This was the question asked by CNBC of industry leaders in February 2023. In response, Peter Chernin, CEO of The North Road Company, said: “It will continue to be in decline. It will be crappier. Budgets will get cut. More scripted programming will migrate away to streaming. There will be more repeats. But it will continue to exist.” If you call that living.

It’s beyond time for the FCC to finally deregulate the struggling television industry, remove its broadcast ownership limits, and free ATSC 3.0 technology to allow a wider field of competition for broadcasters. Otherwise, the findings in the Tech Oversight Project from 2022, which concluded Big Tech was the killer of the newspaper industry, will be repeated, only this time it will be the television industry.

For several years FCC Commissioner, and now chairman, Brendan Carr has aligned himself with the deregulatory policies of President Donald Trump. Indeed, then Commissioner Carr was the author of a chapter of the Heritage Foundation “Project 2025” where he detailed areas where the FCC needs to “change course” and “bring new urgency to achieving four main goals: Reining in Big Tech; Promoting national security; Unleashing economic prosperity; and Ensuring FCC accountability and good governance.”

Under Chairman Carr’s leadership, the FCC recently released a Public Notice entitled “IN RE: DELETE, DELETE, DELETE,” which is “seeking public input on identifying FCC Rules for the purpose of alleviating unnecessary regulatory burdens.” This notice brings the recent executive orders and DOGE efforts to reduce government regulation home to the communications industries.

The notice invites comment on “deregulatory initiatives” the commission can take to eliminate or modify its rules. It encourages commenters to consider the policy factors, set forth below, while also inviting “more general comment on rules that should be considered for elimination on other grounds.”

Carr has emphasized that the agency seeks to identify regulations that hinder innovation, create entry barriers, or impose costs that outweigh their benefits. It also seeks to identify rules that are no longer relevant due to technological and marketplace developments, disproportionately affect small businesses, or have been ineffective in achieving their intended objectives, including those that hinder innovation, create entry barriers or impose costs that outweigh their benefits.

More specifically, commenters are asked to consider these policy factors:

• Cost-Benefit Analysis: Whether certain regulations impose excessive costs compared to their benefits, and whether “if eliminated or modified, could result in greater benefits relative to the associated costs of the new regulatory framework.” 
• Implementation Experience: Has experience with a rule shown it is unnecessary or inappropriate. For example, has the rule failed to achieve its intended objective, created unintended burdens, or led to frequent waivers or exemptions.
• Market and Technological Changes: Identify “what existing FCC Rules are unnecessary or inappropriate” due to advancements in technology and shifts in the telecommunications marketplace.
• Regulations as Barriers to Entry: Do any FCC regulations pose barriers to competitive entry, including whether they disproportionately burden or disadvantage small businesses and American-owned businesses.
• Regulatory Overlap and Redundancy: Have new federal or state regulations, industry standards, best practices, or other self-regulatory efforts made existing FCC Rules unnecessary.
• Legal and Constitutional Considerations: Do statutory changes, constitutional determinations, or other changes in the legal landscape since a rule was enacted mandate review its repeal. (e.g. the Loper Bright decision, where the Supreme Court overturned the previous legal principal known as the Chevron Doctrine granting deference to “expert agency” decisions)
• Other Considerations: The FCC seeks comment on “any other considerations relevant to [its] identification of existing rules that are unnecessary or inappropriate.” This includes rules that no longer have any operative effect, have outlived their intended purpose, or could be better enforced through case-by-case decisions rather than rigid regulations.

The question on everyone’s mind: what does this mean for broadcasters? While the notice itself does not provide a lot of insight into specific rules that the FCC is looking to eliminate, Chairman Carr’s prior statements and works do shed some light on what broadcasters might be able to expect from this proceeding.

For example, in his Project 2025 chapter at page 855, Carr wrote that FCC programs would benefit from a fresh look at eliminating outdated regulations that are doing more harm than good, stating that the FCC should eliminate many of the “heavy-handed FCC regulations that were adopted in an era where every agency operated in a silo” including “many of the FCC’s media ownership rules, which have the effect of restricting investment.”

A look at several of Carr’s dissents as a commissioner also provides insight into the areas where he is likely to move for regulatory reform.

• In a dissenting statement to an FCC NPRM on political programming and online public file requirements, Carr noted that, “The FCC can continue down the path of keeping legacy regulations on the books that are plainly doing more harm than good . . . [or] we can modernize our rules, we can eliminate the restraints on broadcasters that no longer make sense in today’s media marketplace, and we can unleash broadcasters to compete on [a] level playing field with their Big Tech competitors. Carr statement. (June 10, 2024).
• 2018 Quadrennial Review Order – Carr noted that the FCC must enact significant reforms to promote investment in trusted local news and information, as well as to promote competition and increase access to the local news and information that is so vital yet is too often out of reach for those in rural and other underserved communities. Carr statement. (Dec. 26, 2023).

Based on these and other general policy aims articulated by the Chairman, it seems likely the FCC may take a hard look at the following:

Multiple Ownership
Everyone seems to agree that it is time for a fresh look at the FCC’s Multiple Ownership Rules, §73.3555.

As recently outlined by NAB President Curtis LeGeyt, FCC Rules have treated radio and television broadcasting as isolated media of news and information that have no competition for their audiences or financial support. This is consistent with the standard applied by the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice which uses a calculation known as the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) to measure market concentration and competitiveness.

The DOJ has traditionally found broadcast advertising to be a highly concentrated market, in part because it fails to consider competition arising from other forms of media, including digital media. So, its conclusion is always skewed against broadcast advertising being a competitive marketplace. However, nearly all recent studies conclude that the dissipation of broadcast advertising market concentration is directly tied to the growth of digital media.

As LeGeyt has stated, new competitors like Netflix, YouTube and Spotify do not face the same regulatory burdens, public interest obligations or ownership limits and can reach similarly large, if not larger, audiences than the heavily regulated broadcast industry. Many analysts believe that broadcasters must be allowed to scale up to compete and to continue to provide essential journalism, local news and public safety services.

A new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and prepared by PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) has found that internet ad revenues have surpassed those of broadcast television. The PEW Research Center reports that digital advertising revenue across all digital entities (beyond just news) continues to grow, with technology companies playing a large role in the flow of both news and revenue.

Indeed, this is not a new topic. The FCC ownership rules have been a major topic in the last two quadrennial review proceedings. In both proceedings, the FCC has sought comment on whether its broadcasting multiple ownership regulations remain “necessary in the public interest as the result of competition,” specifically seeking comment on three rules: the Local Radio Ownership Rule, the Local Television Ownership Rule and the Dual Network Rule.

Given the broad recognition that both radio and television are faced with strong competitive pressures from personal use digital technologies not imagined when the multiple ownership rules were adopted we can expect this to be a high priority and highly visible Delete, Delete, Delete topic.

FCC EEO Rules
The FCC’s equal employment opportunity rules emphasize broad outreach and recruitment. Previous EEO rules attempted to assess a station’s specific hiring process and the proportion of minorities and women in station staff, but those approaches were invalidated as unconstitutional.

The commission’s present method couples a ban on discrimination with specific outreach, record-keeping and reporting requirements. Its premise is that employment opportunities will result from filling full-time jobs only after soliciting candidates from the full community with a plan for broad outreach. The commission’s EEO rules prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin or gender.

With only two recognized exceptions, broadcasters must recruit for nearly all full-time vacancies and promote outreach with supplemental activities. The rules also require annual random EEO audits of five percent of all licensees. Over time, however, many broadcasters report difficulty in recruiting, despite exceptional efforts, and that many recruitment sources are no longer responsive. Given the increasing difficulty to attract new hires, alongside the administration’s policies on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, it seems likely that the commission’s EEO rules will be a prime target for review.

In particular, we may see changes to the commission’s stance on form 395-B. Under the prior administration, the FCC voted to reinstate the form 395-B which had been suspended for more than two decades and added a new “non-binary” gender category. There is an ongoing challenge to the form in the 5th Circuit, where the FCC has now asserted that “non-binary” will not appear on the form but has otherwise defended the use of the form.

This is a slight departure from the DOJ’s position, which is claiming the form now conflicts with President Trump’s executive order defining gender as male or female only. There are also petitions pending at the FCC seeking reconsideration of the decision reinstating Form 395-B and in oral argument, the 5th Circuit judges asked FCC counsel whether the FCC might be reconsidering and reversing the reinstatement of the form.

These are but a few of the FCC Rules that might be considered in the “Delete, Delete, Delete” Initiative. Given the scope of the DOGE efforts to reduce government regulation, we can expect many more. Interested parties should prepare to participate in this proceeding, whether to defend existing regulations or to propose changes.

The “Delete, Delete, Delete” Initiative is GN Docket No. 25-133. Comments are due April 11, 2025 and reply comments are due April 28, 2025.

This column is provided for general information purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal advice pertaining to any specific factual situation. Legal decisions should be made only after proper consultation with a legal professional of your choosing.

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

The media industry is navigating a storm of disruption. Broadcasters are grappling with challenges stemming from relentless market shifts, mergers, acquisitions, and tighter budgets. To remain competitive amidst these pressures, efficient playout consolidation and management have transitioned from a nice-to-have to an absolute necessity.

In this context, automation emerges as the key to navigating a rapidly evolving market, driving operational excellence in an industry where efficiency, consistency, and adaptability are paramount.

The Need for Consolidation and Automation
Historically, playout and media orchestration relied heavily on manual workflows that were time-intensive and prone to error. Today, such methods are no longer sustainable. Increased channel variety, fragmented audiences, and the demand for lightning-fast delivery across platforms like OTT and FAST channels require streamlined operations. At the same time, broadcasters face immense cost pressures, forcing them to reassess their traditional, resource-heavy approaches.

Automation is fundamentally redefining this landscape. By consolidating processes and automating key functions, broadcasters can manage their operations far more efficiently. Tasks that once demanded human oversight—content ingestion, quality control, compliance checks, and distribution—can now be executed within seamless, repeatable workflows. This consolidation not only simplifies operations but also reduces redundancy, eliminates silos between departments, and provides a central, unified system to manage complex playout functions.

Simplifying Complexity
Modern media orchestration is incredibly intricate. From managing incoming content to preparing it for multiple platforms and ensuring flawless delivery, each step adds layers of complexity. Automation cuts through this chaos by standardizing and optimizing every stage of the process.

For example, automated systems can format content to suit diverse platform specifications without manual intervention. This ensures a faster turnaround and higher accuracy while reducing the operational burden. Broadcasters no longer need to spend valuable time troubleshooting inconsistencies or duplicating efforts. With automation, their teams are free to focus on innovation, storytelling, and long-term strategy rather than tedious logistics.

Driving Efficiency and Cost Savings
Efficiency lies at the heart of automation. Whether it’s dynamic scaling in a cloud-native playout system or automated quality control checks, automation ensures broadcasters only expend resources when and where they’re needed. Dynamic scaling, in particular, allows operations to flexibly adapt to fluctuating workloads. For live broadcasts, compute resources can ramp up instantly, while non-peak operations can scale back to conserve power and cut costs.

This optimization runs parallel to significant savings in capital and operational expenditures. Gone are the days of huge upfront investments in costly infrastructure. By automating processes and adopting cloud-native models, broadcasters can reduce their reliance on physical equipment and ongoing maintenance. Pay-as-you-go systems further enhance flexibility, allowing broadcasters to allocate budgets strategically rather than locking them into fixed, oversized installations.

Reducing On-Air Risks with Automation
The stakes in broadcasting are high. A single on-air incident—from a technical glitch to a scheduling error—can damage audience trust and undermine relationships with advertisers. Alarmingly, human error has long been the leading cause of such disruptions. Here, automation plays a pivotal role in boosting reliability and minimizing risks.

With automated fail-safes in place, systems can instantly detect and resolve potential issues. Should a primary stream face a problem, automated workflows can shift to a backup stream without delay, ensuring seamless broadcasting. Similarly, scheduling conflicts and compliance oversights are virtually eliminated by rule-based automation. This consistency instills confidence, not only within operations teams but also among viewers and clients relying on uninterrupted, high-quality delivery.

Navigating a Disrupted Market
Broadcasters today face constant disruption, from mergers creating operational sprawl to tighter budgets demanding more output with fewer resources. Automation offers a critical solution, enabling organizations to streamline workflows, scale efficiently, and adapt to shifting market conditions. Whether integrating new assets, launching pop-up channels, or scaling down during off-peak periods, automation provides the flexibility and reliability needed to thrive.

Beyond cutting costs, it positions broadcasters for long-term success by maximizing efficiency and allowing them to focus on delivering high-quality content in an ever-changing media landscape.

Back in the early 1980s when I started my career, I worked for a publisher who was fond of telling potential advertisers that it didn’t make sense to carpet the same room twice.

His point: all things being equal, buying ads in two or more magazines targeting the same audience was wasteful. In many ways, his argument was logical.

But that’s not always the case. Often, multiple layers actually come in handy. Just ask anyone who works outside for a living, a skydiver or even an astronaut. In certain situations, having multiple, redundant layers can mean the difference between pain and comfort or even life and death.

Or ask Dan Gitro, an amateur radio operator in Mooresville, North Carolina. For his article “How old tech is being used to remotely help in wake of Helene,” QCNews.com reporter Stewart Pittman asked Gitro why ham radio is important in today’s modern world of communications.

“The key difference is technology fails, and we have seen that in this situation,” Pittman quotes Gitro as saying about the role of amateur radio.

Gitro and fellow ham radio operators stepped up in a big way in the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, relaying vital information and messages to loved ones from family members in areas stripped of cell service.

Even as Elon Musk was preparing to step into the breach with Starlink service to help, ham radio operators were on the air doing all they could to assist.

Why bring this up to readers in the television industry? Besides the fact that many TV engineers are amateur radio operators themselves, the real reason speaks to the importance of layers in communications.

Reading about the ham radio operators, I couldn’t help but think back to the FCC panel put together in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack, which among other things took down the broadcast tower atop the North Tower.

One key point of the panel was that the presence of multiple layers of mass communication in New York City—TV and radio broadcasters on other towers, cable TV and satellite TV—ensured local residents could continue to receive news and emergency information despite the loss of the broadcast tower.

I also couldn’t help but think about the DTV tuner mandate that originally excluded smaller sets, but later was revised after Hurricane Katrina when a post-hurricane investigation by the FCC revealed just how important portable TV sets were in helping the public stay informed following the disaster.

So here we are again. While cellular crews work to restore service in hard-hit areas, amateur radio operators—some transmitting and others receiving and relaying vital information—stepped up with “old tech” to make a difference.

I wonder what other “old tech” in new clothing might one day help millions upon millions of people with mobile phones receive life-saving information in an emergency—even when the cell networks go down.

During the last U.S. general election in 2020, remote production was starting to gain momentum in sports broadcasting but had yet to become prominent in other TV segments. Cloud-based production was still in its early stages.

Fast forward to today, and the technology has advanced rapidly. What was once considered groundbreaking has now become standard practice, and this election cycle will see cloud-based production utilized on an unprecedented scale. The impact of these technological advancements means that coverage of this year’s election cycle – including numerous federal, state, and local elections across the country – will be more extensive, inclusive, and thorough than ever before.

Remote Production and Connectivity
Election coverage is distinct from other live media due to the often-remote nature of interviews and productions. Establishing connectivity from diverse locations – such as politicians attending a factory opening in Michigan, an agricultural farm in Iowa, or a local debate in California – is crucial. Broadcasters and operators are increasingly leveraging bonded cellular and cloud-based production technologies to capture and deliver these feeds where needed.

The flexibility of these technologies ensures that no location is too remote. This connectivity enables real-time broadcasting from virtually any part of the United States, ensuring that every voice is heard and every perspective is covered. This marks a significant improvement from past election cycles, where logistical challenges often limited extensive coverage to more accessible areas.

Additionally, cloud-based production offers unmatched scalability and flexibility. Production teams can quickly adapt to the fast-paced nature of election coverage, responding in real-time to breaking news, unexpected events, or changing circumstances. This allows broadcasters to provide continuous, up-to-the-minute coverage without the constraints of physical infrastructure.

The ability to rapidly deploy resources and integrate various media formats – from live video feeds to social media updates – creates a richer, more interactive viewer experience. This enhances the depth and breadth of election coverage and increases audience engagement and participation, making the entire process more dynamic and inclusive.

Empowering Smaller Media and Citizen Journalists
A key aspect of this year’s election cycle will be the involvement of smaller media outlets, citizen journalists, and social media influencers in reporting, commentating, and influencing voters – especially younger generations. Political parties are increasingly recognizing the power of these platforms, with dedicated teams working to promote positive messages about their candidates on TikTok and Instagram.

The cloud enables smaller media entities and influencers to rapidly produce and generate election content, even using a phone as a camera feeding signals to a cloud-based production platform. This approach significantly reduces production costs, making it affordable to create high-quality productions. Smaller news operations and citizen journalists can produce broadcast-quality content for less than $100 per hour.

This shift fundamentally changes the economics of election coverage. Voters can view, share, and engage with a broader spectrum of political voices and commentators than ever before. The democratization of production technology ensures that not only major players but also smaller, independent voices can participate in and shape the election narrative.

The Impact of Cloud-Based Production on Election Coverage
Whether it’s a national election, a state referendum, a local council race, or a political debate, cloud-based production services offer the versatility and efficiency needed to meet diverse broadcasting requirements. Cloud video services provide an end-to-end solution that includes remote IP video production, clipping and editing, and transmission. These services enable broadcasters to produce and deliver broadcast-quality live programming to and from anywhere in the world, including near-real-time social media highlights.

For production, cloud-based platforms handle all aspects of the workflow, from editing and graphics creation to communications and talk-back. This cloud-based production-as-a-service model gives content producers the flexibility to use their crew or rely on external providers to supply experienced operators who can deliver high-quality programming.

As more viewers follow election events via social media, cloud platforms offer clipping and editing tools to create and post event highlights as they happen. For instance, during a national election night, social media teams can clip and edit key moments from candidate speeches, exit poll announcements, and voter reactions in real time, ensuring that the most engaging content reaches the audience immediately.

The cloud’s transmission capability provides IP delivery of feeds from any location to multiple destinations via the internet, ensuring high-quality transmission that can support HD and UHD broadcasts. For events in remote locations with limited internet access, cloud-based transmission can be supported with bonded cellular services for either the primary feed or as a backup, leveraging 5G where available.

The comprehensive range of capabilities and flexibility offered by cloud-based production platforms give political event producers unmatched agility. They offer broadcast-quality production, highlight creation, and delivery not only for live national and regional elections but also for streaming political debates, town hall meetings, and press briefings. This technology complements existing remote production and delivery services, allowing content producers to choose the level of service they need to effectively cover the political landscape.

Cloud-based production is revolutionizing election coverage, providing the tools necessary for comprehensive, high-quality broadcasts that can engage audiences across multiple platforms. As technological innovation continues to accelerate, the role of cloud production in election coverage will become even more integral.

A New Era for Election Broadcasting
The rapid evolution of production technology has made this year’s election cycle coverage more expansive and inclusive than ever before. With the rise of cloud-based production, even the most remote locations can be brought into the conversation, and a diverse array of voices can be heard. Smaller media outlets and citizen journalists now have the tools to produce high-quality content at a fraction of the cost, ensuring a broader spectrum of political discourse.

Looking ahead, the role of innovative platforms will be crucial in shaping the future of broadcasting. By democratizing access to high-quality production tools, these technologies are not only enhancing election coverage but also paving the way for a more inclusive and representative media landscape. The future of election broadcasting is here, and it promises to be bigger and better than ever before.

Throughout the 20th century, knowledge has continually expanded, stemming from the evolution of eras such as the industrial revolution, the space program, the atomic-bomb and nuclear energy and, of course, computers. In some cases, it may appear to the masses that artificial intelligence is about as common as a latte or peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. Yet the initial developments of AI date at least as far back as the 1950s steadily gaining ground and acceptance through the 1970s.

It wasn’t until the late 1970s and early 1980s that computer science began to emerge from a data-driven industry using large “main-frame” computational systems into platforms for everyday uses at a personal level. While the Mac and early PCs (beginning in the 1980s) were game changers, they were certainly limited on compute power and not designed to “learn” or render complex tasks with modeling or predictive capabilities.

Computers of that time relied on programming based essentially on an “if/then” language structure with simplified core languages aimed at solving repetitive problems driven by human interactions and coordination.

Trial and Error
As sufficient human resources and computer solutions began to develop and create “expert systems” (circa 1990s–2000s) the computer world rapidly moved into a new era—one built around “knowledge” and driven by language models with basic abilities to train itself using repetitive and predictive models not unlike those that infants or toddlers use to hear, absorb, repeat, say and “tune” their mind and physical stature to communicate, to learn physical principles (such as walking), coordination and more.

If you’ve ever observed a two-year old learn how to maneuver around a slick pool edge surface, make their way to the steps into a pool and gradually ease themselves into the water in a fashion that uses mental observation (aka “memory senses”), trial and error, and repetitive steps (slow walking or crawling) while a parent also observes the child’s actions to mitigate accidents or errors—you’ll quickly see, figuratively, what occurs in a set of computers or servers built to use software to train itself over time to create in part what will become a large language model (LLM) by applying its programming repetitively that eventually finds a way (i.e., to model) the original programming into a formidable model that reaches the desired goal.

Without Explicit Programming
Machine learning is just that kind of process and is the basis of AI, whereby computers can learn without being explicitly programmed. This generalization of ML has classifications that are utilized to differing degrees as diagrammed in the figure on Machine Learning Tasks (Fig. 1). Fundamentally, machine learning involves feeding data into coding algorithms that can then be trained (through repetition with large sums of data) to identify patterns and make predictions, which then form new data sets from which to better predict the appropriate outcome or solution.

A variety of applications such as image and speech recognition, natural language processing and recommendation platforms make up a new library of systems. The value relationship gained in this training process can be developed by (T) defining a task; (P) establishing a performance figure or criteria (i.e., how well did it do or how far off were the results); and (E) finding a resulting data set, the experience, given the data set it was provided for such an analysis.

Machine learning is a continual process whereby trials create results that get closer and closer to the “right solution” through reinforcement. Computers/servers learn which data set is then classified as “more right” or “less right” (i.e., more or less correct); and then stores those results that then modify the learning algorithm(s) until the practice gets as close to “fully right” as possible without “overshooting” the answer and risking a data overload or a false (hallucinogenic) outcome.

One downfall in ML is that the system may go “too far” (i.e., it has too many iterations), which then generates an exaggerated or wrong output and produces a “false-positive” that gets further from the proper or needed solution. Then one questions, “just how far does the generative process go before it is stopped?” When the system gets to the “regression” point—a case where the outputs are continuous rather than individual or discrete—then a categorizing sensing algorithm would necessitate supervisory termination or a resteering of the operation to a more dimensioned (contained) level, which restricts the continued processing.

So, in addition to the learning algorithm, there are sets of management algorithms that must be applied throughout the learning process to mitigate these so called “hallucination” possibilities. Remember the toddler in the pool, this manager may be the parent in this case, the individual who stops the child from being hurt or risking a task (T) that could be catastrophic in nature.

ML can (and is) used in many everyday solutions including email filtering, telephone SPAM filtering, anomaly detection in financial institutions, social media facial recognition, customer data analysis (purchase history, demographics) and trends, price adjustments (such as with non-incognito searching), and emerging advanced solutions including self-driving cars and medical diagnostics. The “balancing” apparatus must weigh multiple solutions, alternatives and decision points, which in turn keep a runaway situation from occurring, resulting in an unnatural or impossible situation or solution.

Industry Challenges-Bias & Fairness
Besides the rapidly developing capabilities, there are as many challenges in this evolving AI industry as there are opportunities. Data Bias and Fairness (e.g., in social media) is highly dependent on the data it has available for training. Bias can obviously lean toward and potentially lend to discriminatory solutions.

Privacy protection as well as security breaches head the users into areas that result in illegal or illegitimate practices. Given the ease in spinning up huge data server systems in the cloud, the possibility of running tens of thousands of iterations on passwords or account numbers means the risk to the customer (as in credit card fraud) can grow exponentially to the number of credit card holders. Banks and credit services use very complex AI models to protect their customers.

This in turn opens the door to another level of AI—that is risk, fraud protection analysis and monitoring. It’s a huge cost to the credit card companies, but one that must be spent in order to protect their integrity.

Another concern is in automation and the potential for job displacement. It is inevitable that some people will be displaced by automated AI solutions. In turn, these new dimensions are opening up new job opportunities across new sectors of the workforce, such as data analysis, machine learning management, data visualization, cloud tool development, laboratory assistants or managers who test and hone these algorithms.

There continue to be many misconceptions related to these new words and their actions. Buzzwords such as "machine learning," "deep learning" and "artificial intelligence" have many people thinking these are all the same thing whenever they hear the phrase “AI.” Regulations are being developed internationally and within our own legislatures that directly relate the “AI word” to machine learning or vice versa.

Most of these early “rules” are done in a pacifistic way, likely because the legislative authors have little actual knowledge or background in this area. Obviously, we risk going in the negative direction by reacting improperly or too rapidly—but things will surely happen that will need to be corrected further downstream. Doing nothing can be as risky as doing too much.

Easily Defined and Managed
As for the media and entertainment industry, efforts are well underway to put dimension on the topics of AI, ML and such. As with any of the previous standards developed, user inputs and user requirements become the foundation for the path towards a standardization process. We start with definitions that are crafted to applications, then refine the definitions that reinforce repeatable and useful applications. Through generous feedback and group participation, committee efforts put brackets around the fragments of the structures to the point that the systems can be managed easily, effectively and consistently.

For example, industry might use AI or ML to assemble, test or refine structures, which will in turn allow others to learn the proper and appropriate uses of this relatively new technology. Guidance is important, as such, SMPTE, through the development of Engineering Report (ER) 1010:2023 “Artificial Intelligence and Media,” is moving forward on this development and has a usable structure from which newbies and experienced personnel can gain value from.

Even the news media has interest in its future in AI. In their book “Artificial Intelligence in News Media: Current Perceptions and Future Outlook,” Mathias-Felipe de-Lima-Santos and Wilson Ceron state that “news media has been greatly disrupted by the potential of technologically driven approaches in the creation, production and distribution of news products and services.” l

Much like Darwin’s natural selection, the world of lighting occasionally introduces new variations to existing tools and practices. One such evolutionary step has updated the humble reflector.

Using lighting modifiers, like reflectors, is as old as photography itself. Everything from bedsheets to scraps of aluminum foil have been used to redirect light. Reflected light remains an extremely useful tool.

In the era of slow film stocks and insensitive video cameras, using reflectors was all about getting an exposure on shadowed faces. On-camera talent probably felt like they were being assaulted, rather than illuminated, by light. But today our imaging tools are more sensitive, and lighting techniques have been refined.

Reflected, Rather Than Direct
As with many advances in the industry, necessity, along with frustration, are often the mothers of invention. This desire for better tools has inspired an innovation in reflective lighting.

Award-winning Austrian Cinematographer Christian Berger AAC, and his gaffer, Jakob Ballinger, wanted a less-confining method of lighting; one that was efficient and permitted more freedom of movement for the actors within a scene. Out of this desire grew a method of lighting that used reflected, rather than the usual direct lighting. This was the genesis for new reflective lighting tools. Gaffer Jakob Ballinger went on to refine the resulting reflectors and bring them to market as the founder and CEO of The Lightbridge.

There are now several manufacturers (including Dedolights Lightstream, Godox LiteFlow, and others) that have emulated the kits offered by The Lightbridge.

Reflective lighting kits typically consist of an assortment of reflector sizes with varying degrees of diffusion. The reflectors have specialized mounting hardware that can be fitted onto standard light stands and grip equipment.

The current reflector sizes range from 7 cm X 7 cm (2.75 inches), best suited for tabletop work, up to 100 cm X 100 cm (39.37 inches), which is roughly the same size as legacy reflectors. Levels of diffusion range from a mirror-like reflection to a “super white” in five graduated steps. Reflectors can be used alone or in combination for the desired effect.

Reflective lighting systems provide several real advantages over more conventional direct lighting methods in some situations, but the technique does takes some getting used to.

Anyone around large windows has witnessed the natural flow of light throughout a room. Light bounces off the floor, ceiling, walls and objects in a way that suffuses the space with light well-beyond the area near the window itself. That’s the nature of actual sunlight.

Sunlight and sky light originate from a great distance away, so that the light that reaches us is relatively unaffected by the inverse-square law. The result is that the exposure remains consistent over a large area. That imparts an even brightness that close-in lights can’t match.

Inverse-Square Law
Without delving too deeply into the inverse-square law (which states that the intensity of light is inversely proportional to the square of the distance), brightness changes dramatically when you move towards or away from a nearby light source. Reflectors make the inverse-square law work to our advantage by increasing the throw distance from light to subject, thereby reducing unwanted changes in exposure.

Light rays become more parallel the farther away the light source is. The more parallel the light beams are, the less impact the inverse-square law has on changing the exposure over distances. That makes reflected lighting behave more like natural light, allowing it to spread throughout a space with a more consistent intensity. And in doing so, the production lighting looks and acts more like natural light.

That ability to nudge the inverse-square law is a major advantage when working in small spaces, where conventional lights have to be relatively close. Therein lies the advantage provided by these reflectors.

Smaller Footprint
The process of lighting with reflectors is more additive than subtractive, compared to direct lighting. In practice, you tap into the beam of light with a reflector to diffuse and redirect the light where desired. The reflected beam of light, even when diffused, holds a relatively tight pattern. That, in turn, reduces the number of flags needed to contain the spill light. The result is that using reflected light results in a smaller footprint of equipment because there’s less spill to “clean up” with flags.

Although any focusing lighting fixtures can be brought into play with these reflectors, parallel beam fixtures are particularly well-suited to the purpose. Among them are The Orbiter Beam by Arri, Dedolight’s Parallel Beam Intensifier, Mole-Richardson’s Molebeam, PANI’s Panibeam and Godox’s BeamLight. All of these have extremely narrow (roughly 5°) beams of light.

While parallel beam fixtures are often quite large, using them in conjunction with reflectors actually takes up less space than conventional lights. The large lights can be set up out of the way (even outside of the rooms), while their beams are focused on the slim reflectors that actually light the scene.

The reflectors themselves have a small footprint, so they can fit into spaces that wouldn’t accommodate a conventional fixture. Because light levels remain more consistent throughout a broader area, less time is spent adjusting the lighting to compensate for movement within the set.

Reflected lighting systems provide a useful solution that works in places where direct lighting can come up short. This approach may not lend itself to large TV studio sets or “man on the street” news pops, but for maximum flexibility in locations where you want a low equipment profile, this is a great tool to have in your kit.

In the right hands, using reflectors imparts a quality of light that doesn’t appear so obviously lit by artificial means. It’s almost like a magic trick, enabled by finagling the inverse-square law with a look that appears to arise naturally.

As with any new technique, working with reflectors may feel a bit odd at first—but the natural quality and consistency of usable exposure provided by this style of lighting make it worth exploring.

Bruce Aleksander invites comments from those interested in lighting at TVLightingguy@hotmail.com.

I was getting my dopamine rush the other day scrolling through some YouTube Shorts when the narrator clearly pronounced the word “boundaries” as “boun-dairies,” with the first syllable sounding like the word for a person, place or thing but beginning with “b” and the second sounding like the place where milk cows work.

It’s a pretty safe bet the narration was AI-generated with a text-to-speech algorithm. But calling attention to the mispronunciation isn’t intended as a gotcha aimed at the technology or the creator of the content. Rather, it’s a sign of just how good this technology has become. If it were not for the exception my ear registered in the form of “dairies,” I would not have thought twice about the authenticity of the voice.

YouTube itself has begun requiring content creators “to disclose content that is meaningfully altered or synthetically generated when it seems realistic.” It seems in this instance the synthetic voice made no meaningful difference to the content, so no harm, no foul and no warning label.

But what about television content, especially TV news? While many uses of AI promise great things in news, such as enriching metadata thereby making digitally stored content searchable on an unprecedented level, those that could directly touch viewers warrant careful consideration before committing to them.

AI-based closed captioning for live content like news—something that directly touches viewers—has steadily improved over the years and is successfully deployed by stations ranging from the smallest groups to the largest.

Then there is Channel 1, which has demonstrated AI-generated anchors and reporters in a 22-minute promotional video and plans a streaming newscast this year. BBC’s Chris Stokel-Walker’s Jan. 26, 2024, article, “TV channels are using AI-generated presenters to read the news. The question is, will we trust them?” is an excellent summation.

Indeed, will we trust them? At this point, the question is open, but I suspect many local news directors will resist using AI anchors and reports for the same reason many elected to step back from virtual news sets. Sure, there was concern about what to do if the engine driving the virtual set failed and left talent in front of a green screen.

But what was of more concern was building a newscast of what was supposed to be the real thing—in other words, the reality of what is happening in their local markets to the best of their ability—in a computer-generated, i.e., “fake,” environment. That idea simply rubbed many news managers wrong.

I suspect the same news cultural bias—at least in many local U.S. newsrooms—will be a major obstacle to AI-generated anchors and reporters. The uncanny valley is real, and all it will take are a few “boun-dairies”-type missteps—whether audio or video—to unleash the bull in the news china shop.

ATSC 3.0, (aka "NextGen TV") offers immersive experiences, enhanced accessibility, and societal benefits. However, a clear and well-defined sunset date for ATSC 1.0 simulcasting is crucial to truly unlock this potential.

At the 2024 NextGen Broadcast Conference, NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt opened the discussion, with FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr’s support for a related proceeding. Industry leaders and attendees applauded, highlighting a widespread consensus for moving forward.

Why Sunsetting ATSC 1.0 is Essential?
Simulcasting is a double-edged sword. While it allows viewers with older TVs to continue watching, it utilizes valuable spectrum inefficiently. The uncertainty surrounding ATSC 1.0's future discourages investment in NextGen TV content and technology. The presence of both signals can confuse consumers about NextGen TV's benefits, discouraging them from seeking compatible devices. 

A clear sunset date provides a concrete timeline for content creators to develop high-quality content that maximizes the new standard's capabilities. 

Viewers can expect a visual feast with enhanced resolution and High Dynamic Range (HDR) for a more realistic experience. Immersive sound like Dolby Atmos further elevates the experience.

Broadcasters benefit from NextGen TV's ability to deliver high-quality content. It allows media organizations to reach a wider audience with the potential for seamless mobile reception, freeing viewers from the living room.

The societal impact of NextGen TV extends beyond entertainment. This technology can be utilized for emergency broadcasting, delivering critical information during disasters with greater clarity and reliability. Moreover, NextGen TV can revolutionize local paper delivery through data casting, enabling true convergence of mass media.

Certainty Fuels Progress
With a defined sunset date, media networks have a needed time to develop workflows for high quality programming that leverages NextGen TV's interactive capabilities and immersive features. 

Tech Developers can Develop user-friendly interfaces and integrate NextGen TV with smart home technologies for a seamless experience. 

Broadcasters can invest in infrastructure upgrades with certainty, offer compelling programming that showcases the technology's strengths.

With readily available high-quality content, affordable devices, and accessible broadcast services, consumers can experience the real benefits of NextGen TV.

The Inevitable ATSC 1.0 Sunset
The transition from ATSC 1.0 to 3.0 can be understood through the lens of Marshall McLuhan's Tetrad law of Media Effects. This theory proposes four key processes that occur when a new media form emerges:

Enhancement: The new media introduces advanced capabilities, surpassing the limitations of the older form. In this case, NextGen TV (ATSC 3.0) significantly enhances the home theater experience with superior picture quality, immersive sound like Dolby Atmos, and interactive features entirely absent in ATSC 1.0.

Obsolescence: As the new media flourishes, the older form becomes obsolete. ATSC 1.0, with its limitations, simply can't compete with the advanced design of NextGen TV.

Retrieval: Interestingly, the tetrad suggests that new media can sometimes "retrieve" elements from older forms. Here's where the story gets interesting. Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a technology used in NextGen TV for efficient data transmission. Back in the early days of ATSC 1.0 development, a proposal was made to use a similar technology called COFDM, but it wasn't chosen. Decades later, with advancements, OFDM makes a comeback as part of the next generation standard. This retrieval highlights McLuhan's tetrad by showcasing how new media can revisit elements from older forms, but with significant improvements.

Reversal: The final stage of the tetrad warns of the dangers associated with clinging to outdated technology. Persevering with ATSC 1.0 hinders progress. Broadcasters might be forced to maintain inefficient technologies. On the other hand, if ATSC 3.0 is pushed too hard, viewers could lose access to certain channels if "must-carry" regulations don't cover NextGen TV. This fragmentation would be a step backward.

The 2028 Los Angeles Olympics
With the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics on the horizon, the demand for high-quality viewing experiences is high. Viewers expect to witness the pinnacle of athletic achievement in visual details.

By establishing a clear roadmap with a defined sunset date for ATSC 1.0, broadcasters can ensure the 2028 Games become a landmark event, not just for athletic achievements, but also for ushering in a new era of richer experiences, enhanced public safety, and a more innovative and informative broadcast landscape, such as broadcast positioning system.

Conclusion
By establishing a clear sunset date for ATSC 1.0 and working collaboratively, stakeholders can unlock the true potential of NextGen TV. This will pave the way for a future filled with richer experiences, more relevant content, and exciting new possibilities in entertainment, information delivery, and public safety.

It’s amazing what can happen in just a few years. Not too long ago, ATSC 3.0 proponents and skeptics would go round and round arguing for and against NextGen TV.

But since LG Electronics, Samsung and Sony blazed the 3.0 consumer trail at CES 2020 with their introduction of the first NextGen TVs, the naysayers have had progressively weaker arguments as broadcasters and CE makers alike achieved a succession of milestones on the way to a successor TV standard. Without question, there have been some setbacks along the way, but the direction and momentum are clear.

Perhaps the last bastion for skeptics was datacasting. ATSC 1.0 supported datacasting, but it never lived up to its commercial potential. “Why should it be any different with 3.0?” they would ask.

But as the saying goes, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating,” and with several important datacasting developments at the 2024 NAB Show, reported in last month’s column, it seems 3.0 proponents and skeptics alike are about to get a big spoonful and determine for themselves whether delivery of IP packets via broadcast for third-parties eager to find affordable alternatives to unicast wireless networks is a viable 3.0 business.

Presuming initial rollouts are successful, it’s likely more broadcasters will wish to jump on board, making some of their bandwidth available for datacasting to capture their own slices of the pie.

The problem at the moment is the lighthouse model used for the voluntary transition to NextGen TV leaves only a fraction of the bandwidth potentially available in markets in play for resale to data customers. 

In most markets, broadcasters share single sticks and 6MHz channel assignments to deliver over-the-air NextGen TV. They’ve reshuffled the deck on the remaining towers and assignments to maintain their DTV main channels and digital sub-channels.

The hope is that over time, consumers will replace their existing legacy DTV sets with NextGen TVs, making it possible to reshuffle available TV spectrum periodically, devoting more spectrum to 3.0 service and less to 1.0. Eventually, local broadcasters would end up sharing a tower and 6MHz channel assignment in their markets to maintain legacy DTV service—a nightlight—until consumers replaced the last dribs and drabs of ATSC 1.0 sets in their homes.

The problem is what to do about the Diginets. They require bandwidth. While it’s true broadcasters are only obligated to maintain their primary channel, it’s unimaginable that they would be willing to forego Diginet revenue by shutting them off simply on the hope of 3.0. Not only would station revenue suffer, but it’s highly likely many viewers would be miffed—some to the point of complaining to their representatives and the commission.

However, I can only wonder if 3.0 datacasting revenue potential will prove to be so great that someday broadcasters themselves elect to pay for ATSC 3.0-to-1.0 converters for dwindling DTV viewers. That way broadcasters can complete the transition, maintain their OTA main channels and Diginets for first-gen DTV viewers and maximize the earning potential of their channel assignments by allocating a substantial portion of available bandwidth to meet the datacasting demands of a new group of clients.

Collaboration hasn’t always been a familiar currency in broadcast and pro-AV technology. The inherent competitiveness of such a forward-looking business has frequently meant that vendors and service providers have felt obliged to seek commercial advantage over common ground. But the challenges of moving successfully into the networked media era were so substantial that it’s arguable a sea-change was always destined to occur.

In fact, there are abundant examples of effective collaboration from the last decade or so as IP-based infrastructures have become more prevalent. An important contributory factor here is that broadcast and pro-AV have gradually converged, with an increasing crossover between the technologies and solutions being employed. 

But there are also plenty of industry-changing developments that would not have been possible without meaningful partnership. The AES67 audio interoperability standard and SMPTE ST 2110 media transport standards suite are two prominent examples, and the same applies to AMWA (Advanced Media Workflow Association) and its Networked Media Open Specifications (NMOS).

An initiative that both synthesises existing specifications and standards, and expands upon them with extra features and functionality, NMOS draws on work from other well-established technology organisations, namely: the aforementioned SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers), EBU (European Broadcasting Union), AES (Audio Engineering Society) and VSF (Video Services Forum).

In this article we’ll speak to a leading broadcaster and two prominent vendors to find out why they opted to collaborate so openly and contribute their thoughts and ideas to a set of specifications with the potential to benefit not just them, but the industry as a whole.

‘Building a Community’
Like all of the organizations featured here, the BBC has been involved in the development of NMOS since the project’s early days. Peter Brightwell is Lead Engineer at BBC Research and Development, heading up the corporation’s applied research on infrastructure for live video, as well as being a frequent contributor to industry work on interoperability and the transition to hybrid and cloud-based production. He has very good reason to recall the date of the first workshop of the AMWA Networked Media Incubator that went on to inform so many of the developments subsequently encompassed by NMOS.

“It was on Jan. 11 2016, the day after David Bowie died,” he says, although fortunately this sad event did not prove to be portentous for the incubator’s prospects. “In many ways, it was still early days for IP networked media—this was prior to the publication of ST 2110—although within BBC R&D we had already done quite a lot of work, including a show demo at the Commonwealth Games in 2014.”

Nonetheless, it was clear that a collegiate approach to something as monumental as the transition from SDI to IP was always going to be on the cards. Moreover, as time has gone by and the structures underpinning the various working and review groups have solidified, it’s a process that has become increasingly invaluable. "As much as anything else, it's about building a community and getting that cross-fertilisation of ideas. Having different groups coming together, sharing ideas, and realising that the way one group has done something could be useful over here, and so on,” suggests Brightwell.

Presently, there is what Brightwell terms a “two-phase approach” to specification activity. Phase one involves a “fairly light-touch, informal approach to get ideas about what we might want to do next. Using the incubator structure, we schedule informal calls for people who want to work together on a particular problem. They can then discuss the issue and ultimately put together a proposal for an actual specification activity. Once that is in place it can move into the second phase, which is formal agile specification activity incorporating more formal oversight.” As might be expected, regular calls between participants are deemed essential to maintaining progress in both phases.

Whilst a great deal of work is done remotely, physical workshops provide a welcome opportunity to brainstorm in person and strengthen relationships, and Brightwell estimates there have been a dozen of them—in locations as various as London, Montreal and Wuppertal—over the past eight years.

These gatherings can be especially useful in fine-tuning the agenda for a new specification “to focus on the areas that will be most beneficial to the people who are actively engaged. It also provides a space not just for discussion, but for people to demonstrate new ideas and features, so it’s really important on several levels.”

‘A Very Effective Mechanism’
The agility of the NMOS specification structure is also a recurring motif for Jed Deame, who is the founder and CEO of Nextera Video, a leading supplier of IP cores for video-over-IP. 

“We’re a leading provider of NMOS software, and we’ve been doing this for seven or eight years—from before the stage where any of the specs had been ratified,” he explains, adding that the company also provides a full OEM solution for adding ST 2110 to new or existing products. “Our mission in life is essentially to help manufacturers add 2110 and NMOS to their products quickly and easily, enabling them to accelerate development and time to market of their own solutions.”

It was in the late 2010s that Deame first began to take an interest in the NMOS project, having encountered difficulties in moving video packets between 2110 devices. 

“The amount of typing you had to do—answering questions like ‘what’s your port?’ and ‘what’s your video format?’—was immense, which also meant the level of frustration was pretty significant,” he recalls. “But then somebody said that once we have NMOS, all of this typing will go away and it’s going to be a ‘one-button-click’ operation. And that’s really the beauty of NMOS: it brings the simplicity and familiarity of cross-point routing to the IP world, whilst also taking it a step further with the addition of the NMOS registry, which provides plug and play discovery of all devices on the network.”

But it was once he started to attend NMOS ‘interop sessions’ and gain an awareness of the streamlined documentation and publication processes that the full value of the project became apparent. 

“It was all structured intentionally so there was a very agile mechanism for developing the specs,” observes Deame. “Each part was published to the web as soon as it had been discussed and received some initial approval. It wasn’t the longer, six-month-type cycle where you send everything out and wait for feedback from the industry.”

By contrast, the NMOS approach made "for a very iterative process. For example, with IS-04, which is the Discovery and Registration Specification, we were able to get a reference code to multiple vendors, have them review it, and then very quickly and efficiently put a basic set of specifications in place.” 

Deame is sure this phased approach also makes it easier for manufacturers to feel more positive about implementation: “When we eventually publish the final versions, as opposed to the drafts, it isn’t a case of ‘good luck, this should now work.’ Instead, it is more like ‘this has been fully interop tested by multiple vendors and is good to go.’ So that created a lot of confidence for manufacturers to adopt NMOS and build products against the specs because they knew they had already been thoroughly tested.”

Meanwhile, the Nextera commercial NMOS solution continues to evolve; currently, the company’s R&D team is working to add IS-11, which ensures Stream Compatibility Management by reporting supported AV formats to the controller, and IS-13, which facilitates easy identification of nodes and devices through Annotation & Labelling. 

Explaining the benefit of the Nextera solution over open-source code, Deame notes: “While it may be appealing to have a ‘free’ solution, it does require manufacturers to dedicate significant engineering resources to fully understand the code so they can integrate it with their products and maintain and evolve it without being dependent on the open-source developers outside of their control. The Nextera solution is turn-key, particularly when pre-integrated with our ST 2110 and/or IPMX FPGA IP Cores. There is no code to integrate; it works out of the box. We also provide direct, prioritised 24/7 support in case issues arise in development or in the field to ensure customer satisfaction.”

All of which serves to reconfirm Deame’s assertion that his company’s mission is to help manufacturers quickly and easily add NMOS to their own products—thereby freeing them up to “focus their internal resources on their own unique differentiators”.

‘A Community-Driven Forum’
Sony’s association with AMWA long precedes the development of NMOS, stretching back to the early 2010s and the publication of the AS-11 family of specifications devised to help media organizations migrate from linear to file-based workflows. But it was the arrival of IP as a serious force in the industry that led to the company having notable input to the NMOS specs.

Peter Sykes is Strategic Technology Development Manager at Sony Europe. “With the growing interest in the use of IP within live broadcast and media infrastructures from the mid-2010s onwards, Sony started to actively contribute to the development of the NMOS specifications (initially IS-04, IS-05 and IS-06) and hosted an AMWA NMOS interoperability workshop at its Basingstoke facility,” he says. “This was followed by Sony becoming a Principal member of AMWA in 2017.”

Sykes implies that AMWA’s worldwide membership drawn from media companies and their suppliers has provided a foundation for the for the “collaborative spirit” that has propelled NMOS to its current status.

“There are many cases that could be highlighted, but a specific example of the fostering of more open collaboration was the establishment of the AMWA User Group consisting of broadcasters and systems integrators,” he says. “The User Group meets regularly and feeds information into the technical workgroups to identify areas that need changes or additions to make their workflows work better for them. Recently, the User Group asked for better labelling of resources in NMOS and this was addressed by the working groups, including through the publication of BCP-002-02 to ensure manufacturers use IS-04 tags in a consistent way to define manufacturer, product name, serial number, etc, of a media node.”

Another example of partnership, and one in which Sony played a leading role, was the development of the NMOS controller specification and test suite.

“These improved the guidance and testing available to help ensure that controllers are compliant with the NMOS specifications, which in turn helped to ensure better interoperability between solutions from different vendors," Sykes said. "The activity group included several end-users and vendors working collaboratively, and led to a new test badge for controllers at JT-NM Tested events.”

With media technology continuing to evolve at a remarkable rate, the impulse to collaborate in order to successfully address common challenges will remain undimmed. Citing the recent accelerated adoption of cloud, IP, remote and distributed production, Sykes says that technology leaders “face the often-difficult task of evolving and adapting their technical infrastructures to allow real-world business and production requirements to be met. [Therefore] an open, collaborative approach as identified is required, and this is where the NMOS project is set to continue to play a major role.”

Like the other contributors to this article, Sykes believes that effective collaboration and a forward-looking ethos will ensure the NMOS project remains relevant: “Identifying new areas where NMOS can be applied, continuing to gather and address workflow requirements from end-users, and continuing to communicate the benefits and widespread adoption of NMOS are all key to success.”

At first glance, the rise of ad-supported streaming video could feel like a return to familiar TV models. Traditional broadcast television was always supported by advertisements. Netflix’s bold emergence in 2007 seemed to signal that the internet would be different. For OTT television viewers, a monthly subscription meant premium content with no advertisements.

The media landscape today looks different than it did then. In 2023, Netflix, along with top streamers Hulu, Max, and Disney+, began offering a cheaper subscription tier for viewers who didn’t mind watching a few ads, a model that Peacock launched with years ago. 

At the same time, ad-supported services like Freevee and Tubi began rising in popularity and critical reception, while free advertising-based streaming television (FAST) channels caught on by adopting a cable-like set schedule. Today, as sports streaming breaks new viewership records and social media video apps like TikTok continue to define culture, it’s clear that internet video means watching ads.

Behind the scenes, video service providers know that streaming ads are an entirely different process than they were on cable, with personalized ads being selected and triggered in the moment. It’s a new technical challenge to navigate. As the popularity of ad-supported streaming video rises, so do the expectations of audiences for a perfect viewing experience. When ad insertion can directly lead to streaming issues, that’s easier said than done.

How Ads Are Inserted into Streaming Video
Streaming ads are generally “dynamically inserted” into the content they’re accompanying, instead of being packaged together in advance like on cable TV. The ads come from a different origin server than the rest of the content, which is pulled from its source to a video player that inserts the ads in real time.

The most common way to achieve dynamic ad insertion (DAI) involves using SCTE-35 ad cues. These cues are added at appropriate spots in the content. When the video player reaches a cue, it triggers an “ad pod,” or a group of ads playing in a row. The cue contains information on how long the pod will last and how many ads should fill it. 

With that information, the video player pulls the required ads to fill the pod all from different sources, often personalized to the preferences or general location of the viewer. DAI is complex, and the level of required technological interaction leads to errors more often than it ideally should.

The Errors Involved with DAI
Streaming ad issues happen frequently. Anyone who has watched ad-supported video is familiar with them. Common errors include ads starting early, late, or not playing in full before they are cut off; significant buffering before or during the ads; a single ad being repeated multiple times in an ad pod; and ads playing with an entirely different audio or picture quality than the content itself.

The most severe ad issues involve slates, which commonly appear on FAST channels. Since FAST runs on a set schedule with frequent ad breaks, slates often fill the regularly scheduled intervals. Slates can include countdown timers to the content continuing, or a static image promising a return to the programming. 

With DAI, these slates can appear entirely blank — convincing the viewer that the slate has crashed — or, even worse, crash the stream immediately. Witbe’s independent research has observed that up to 30% of all FAST viewing sessions are affected by an ad insertion error.

The Path Forward for Video Service Providers
The impact that ad insertion errors have on streaming video is significant. So, how can they be fixed? The answer is important to video service providers, who depend on revenue from third-party advertisers. 

If viewers are unable to watch the ads due to streaming errors, providers are unable to sell those ad impressions (i.e., views) — and often, those viewers don’t return in the future. On the other hand, if advertisers experience their ads not being properly aired, they can withhold payment or quit working with a provider.

Of course, there is no single mistake that leads to ad insertion issues. The errors that reach viewers could have been introduced at several different stops in the video delivery pathway. However, there is a single way to discover the issues affecting viewers at home: ad monitoring.

How to Monitor Streaming Ad Performance
It’s a common mantra in internet delivery: verification is key. Streaming performance cannot be improved until it is reliably verified. The same is true for ad performance. Since the ads are dynamically inserted, the errors they cause are often dynamic too: they might not appear the same way across different types of devices. 

Accordingly, service providers interested in ad monitoring should do it on the same real devices and networks that their viewers use. Witbe has observed several ad errors that are only visible through real device monitoring, including ones caused by the interaction with other services on the same device.

Scaling up testing across all the combinations of device models and operating systems their service runs on can only be achieved through automation. Automated testing can evaluate ad performance by specific criteria, including the duration of the ads played; the video and audio quality of the ads; the total amount of buffering involved; the appearance of any slates, particularly blank ones or black screens; and any time the stream crashes, among others. 

Once providers have this data, they can use it to resolve the errors themselves, as well as share successful results and video recordings with advertisers when necessary.

The Benefits of Real Device Ad Monitoring
Dynamically inserted ads are essential for providers, but they currently pose a direct threat to the mission of delivering superior streaming quality. The only way to truly verify and resolve ad errors is by monitoring them on real devices and networks. 

When reliable ad monitoring leads to consistently delivering a strong ad-supported video performance, providers build positive brand awareness and increase their ability to secure ad revenue. When dealing with DAI, real device monitoring is a must.

In the face of a highly competitive industry and ongoing competitive nature of the industry, media companies today are strongly incentivized to make use of their archive content. However, many have been stalled in their attempts to leverage archive content by their libraries' sheer volume and complexity. 

Broadcasters may have several decades of unorganized material to sort through and furthermore, said companies’ content may still reside on physical media (e.g., tapes), thus needing to be digitized.

Metadata—simply put, a set of data providing information about other data—can enhance content, providing useful descriptive information, such as the individuals featured, the location of filming, the narrative context, and more advanced information, such as copyrights, expiration dates, and audio descriptions. It can also aid this organizational process. 

Thus, we can understand that the money and time-consuming task of digitizing and organizing archive content can be much more purposeful if metadata is added during and after the digitizing process. This ensures the organization process is streamlined, and that media and entertainment companies’ content is in its most advantageous form, with enhanced discoverability, allowing them to stay ahead in the competitive landscape of digital streaming and production services.

Clearing the Way
Metadata is becoming increasingly important for all media companies due to its improved consistency, data quality and cost efficiency. Its value needs to be utilized across the value chain, where different systems have different metadata requirements due to applications, such as a Content Management System (CMS) and within a production environment via a Product Asset Management system (PAM). 

Without establishing or implementing metadata management within a coherent business strategy, media companies could find themselves at risk of making costly mistakes and missing out on new monetization opportunities. 

One way they have been doing this is through metadata enhancement. Enhancing or enriching metadata is a method used to boost the value and discoverability of digitized content. This involves expanding the existing metadata associated with the content. Moreover, AI-assisted processes can fully automate the addition of extra metadata. 

For instance, in sports content, enhanced metadata might involve tagging individual players, specific types of plays, and real-time score updates, among other details. The primary aim is to facilitate efficient and swift content searches later on, thereby encouraging greater utilization of the available content.

Status Quo Opportunity Costs
Opportunity costs are difficult to quantify, but it’s worth assessing the ROI of metadata capabilities in the context of a highly competitive and fast-moving industry. Media companies that fail to maximize their resources with metadata enhancement put themselves at a competitive disadvantage. 

The media and entertainment industry’s business models are increasingly geared towards diversified monetization strategies, and archive content provides the raw materials to expand your offering. Many sports broadcasters have already caught on to the value of archive material, such as highlights from past matches, to reward dedicated fans and maintain engagement between seasons. The same principle applies universally: having more content ready at your disposal reduces the likelihood of churn and puts you ahead of the competition. 

Setting the Stage for Seamless Collaboration
With a metadata-rich library at their disposal, production teams will have a highly accessible bank of content to work with. This is one of the key differentiators among media companies in 2024: how well are their systems optimized for collaboration? Content that has been indexed through metadata is easily shared and accessed across remote or asynchronous teams. 

The speed and complexity of modern production and distribution may have increased, but metadata will enable teams to zero in on whatever files they need to find at a moment’s notice. Whatever challenges production teams face, ‘needle in a haystack’ situations can be a thing of the past with the assistance of metadata. 

Carpe Datum
Now is the time to embrace metadata. It offers immediate benefits and a long-term ROI that includes business agility, revenue opportunities, and highly-specialized use cases to suit individual content strategies. Production teams gain access to an indexed library that positions everything they need within arm’s reach, empowering them to make full use of their resources. 

With that said, the technology is still new, and we may only be seeing the tip of the iceberg for what metadata has to offer. With the support of a trusted tech provider, metadata can be one of the essential tools that empowers broadcasters to stay ahead of the curve.

We are still some way from an all-streaming future but there is plenty of evidence that preparations for this outcome are accelerating, from sharpened regulatory interest in prominence on connected TVs, to a UK over-60s advocacy group demanding late broadcast switch-off dates rather than early ones. 

For broadcasters, larger BVOD catalogues, closer integration of FAST with BVOD, streaming-first windows for top drama, and next-generation free-to-air platforms all fit with a strategy to stream more.

'Broadcast Scale'
The challenge for commercial broadcasters is to rapidly carry their large broadcast linear audiences and their share of advertising revenue into an all-streaming world.  If they succeed on point one they have the chance to excel at point two because broadcasters will have a unique selling point in the streaming environment: broadcast scale with mass reach addressability.

Commercial broadcasters with aggressive digital strategies will be better placed to compete against the growing collection of global SVOD services offering ad-supported tiers, as well as against YouTube, or even TikTok. And ad-tech stacks are ready to support streaming acceleration, with server-side ad insertion (SSAI) one of the foundational technologies.

SSAI supports addressable TV ambitions at super-scale, whether for live or VOD, with the broadcast-standard, frame-accurate ad insertion that will protect the user and advertising experience regardless of the end device.

End devices are relevant here. Broadcasters will need to serve a multitude of Smart TVs including budget displays. The Smart TV OS market is fragmented, with no signs of consolidation. The next two decades will also see the growth of the connected car entertainment market, with its own entertainment OS hinterland.

SSAI removes complexity from device reach, and broadcasters will not have to worry about hardware capabilities. If their streaming app works on the platform/OS in question, SSAI will work seamlessly.

Future for Addressable Advertising
Client-side ad insertion could be an innovation drag in these circumstances, especially when you hit a long tail of devices that add only small incremental audiences in return for client-side development efforts. Recent work in server-side tracking of ad views would even remove reliance on client-side SDKs for audience measurement when using SSAI.

Server-side ad insertion is the future for addressable advertising in VOD, even if legacy client-side ad insertion has historically served broadcasters well enough. SSAI removes buffering and transitions that are still evident today, and brings consistency regardless of the platform served or broadband connection. 

SSAI is the gold standard—and "born digital" broadcaster rivals, coming late to the ads market, are adopting it.

Support for Interstitials in HLS and XLink in DASH is an important development for SSAI in the on-demand space. This means ad breaks can be resolved when the viewer reaches an ad break, rather than at the start of a VOD viewing session. The impact will be reduced start-up times and streamlined inventory and audience planning.

In linear and live television, SSAI has long trumped client-side solutions. The challenge here on the road to all-streaming is audience sizes, not just for sport but increasingly for hit entertainment shows.

A key to success is SSAI with smart integration into the programmatic advertising ecosystem so that ad requests from millions of concurrent viewers can be processed between ad servers, SSPs and DSPs at such speed that ad calls never ‘time-out’. Time-outs leave a media owner with a choice of showing viewers a UX-destroying ‘Your programme will resume shortly’ message, or falling back on in-house ads that earn them nothing, or giving up on programmatic break opportunities.

Media buyers like to trade programmatically, and more digital will mean more programmatic, so this is not a luxury but a must-have moving forwards. Pre-fetch is an innovation that makes SSAI more scalable with programmatic, by spreading out the ad calls ahead of an ad break, and it can also be applied to direct sold breaks. 

All the same SSAI benefits can be applied to broadcaster FAST channels. Here, the challenge is ensuring a highly automated streaming and SSAI infrastructure that keeps the incremental cost of a new FAST channel very low, while ensuring full monetization.

SSAI will be central to the successful migration of commercial broadcasting to all-streaming, however long that takes. It gives broadcasters the chance to fully monetize streaming audiences and offer buyers the mass reach addressability they want.

The transition to cloud workflows in media QC and monitoring gained momentum around the mid-2010s, but at the start of 2020, the M&E industry began to accelerate its digital transformation efforts. Although cloud workflow adoption is steadily increasing, the industry is still in a transitional phase. 

The percentage of QC and monitoring performed in the cloud varies depending on factors like company size, budget, security, and technological expertise. Some major players have migrated significant portions of their workflows to the cloud, while others are still evaluating and implementing solutions.

While the media industry is increasingly embracing the cloud, this doesn’t render on-premises solutions obsolete. This article will explore the advantages of each, delve into how they complement each other, and explain the need to deploy a mix of both. By striking the right balance between the two, media companies can leverage the cloud’s advantages while addressing specific requirements and concerns that may require on-premises solutions.

Cloud Workflows vs. On-Premises Solutions
Cloud infrastructure offers several key advantages. Thanks to on-demand resources, media companies can scale their QC and monitoring processes up or down based on project needs, eliminating the need for upfront hardware and software investment. Cloud workflows also improve efficiency and agility with remote QC and monitoring, allowing geographically dispersed teams to access projects and collaborate seamlessly. 

Likewise, automated QC checks and standardized workflows reduce manual tasks and ensure consistency. Cloud platforms facilitate integration with other media production tools and provide access to valuable analytics, enabling data-driven decisions and improved insights. Finally, cloud providers offer robust security features and infrastructure redundancy, ensuring the safety and reliability of data and processes.

While cloud-based solutions are gaining traction, on-premises QC and monitoring systems still offer distinct advantages for certain scenarios. With on-prem solutions, users have complete control over their hardware and software, allowing for customized security protocols and data privacy measures — a crucial feature for media companies handling highly sensitive content or operating in geographically restrictive environments. 

Moreover, maintaining data on-premises gives users more control over data residency and compliance with specific regulations or internal security policies. Dependence on an external internet connection is minimized, potentially reducing vulnerability to service interruptions or bandwidth limitations.

Additionally, hardware and software resources are solely dedicated to users’ QC and monitoring tasks, potentially leading to higher performance and stability compared with shared cloud environments. Users can customize the system to their specific needs and integrate it seamlessly with existing infrastructure, offering greater flexibility and control over workflows. On-premises solutions can also be more suitable for applications requiring offline processing capabilities for sensitive content or security protocols.

The latency issues associated with streaming also warrant significant consideration. Despite advancements in streaming technology, latency issues remain a challenge when you compare cloud-based live streaming compared with traditional broadcast methods. Latency in live streaming may have an adverse impact on viewer experiences – especially for real-time events such as sports.

As for costs, the initial investment in hardware and software might be lower than ongoing subscription fees for cloud services — depending on the specific needs of users and usage patterns. Because users can avoid potential variable charges based on usage or resource scaling in cloud environments, costs become more predictable.

Seamless integration with existing on-premises systems and workflows might be easier with on-premises QC solutions. For these reasons, media companies may prefer on-premises solutions and avoid depending on external cloud providers for critical media operations.

The Benefits of a Hybrid Approach
Often, the most effective approach leverages the strengths of both cloud and on-premises solutions through a hybrid model. Cloud resources can seamlessly scale up to handle temporary bursts of processing needs (e.g., during peak seasons or large projects) while on-premises solutions handle core QC and monitoring tasks. 

This approach offers optimal resource utilization and cost savings. Highly sensitive content or data with strict compliance requirements can be processed on-premises, while less critical tasks or collaboration-focused QC can benefit from the cloud's accessibility and flexibility.

Specific stages of the workflow that require high performance or dedicated resources can be performed on-premises, while cloud-based solutions handle tasks like automated checks, reporting, and collaboration. A hybrid method streamlines the overall workflow and optimizes resource allocation. 

Moreover, cloud storage and processing capabilities can act as a backup for on-premises systems in case of hardware failures or natural disasters, ensuring operational continuity and data security. Companies can migrate specific workflows or departments to the cloud gradually, evaluating its effectiveness and feasibility before committing to a complete cloud transition. This reduces risks and allows for a more measured approach.

Striking the Right Balance
Implementing a hybrid model requires careful planning for seamless integration between cloud and on-premises systems to avoid workflow disruptions and data silos. Maintaining consistent security standards and data privacy controls across both environments is crucial. Additionally, reliable and high-bandwidth internet connectivity is essential for smooth data transfer between cloud and on-premises systems.

Media companies should carefully assess their specific needs, resources, and priorities to determine if a hybrid model offers the best balance of security, performance, and cost-effectiveness for their media QC and monitoring operations. This includes evaluating the existing workflow, technical infrastructure, team expertise, and budget. 

Consider the sensitivity of the data, scalability needs, performance requirements, collaboration needs, and compliance considerations. To assess the effectiveness and feasibility of the cloud within a work environment, start with a small pilot project using a cloud-based solution for a specific workflow.

It’s critical to partner with a media technology solution provider that is experienced in designing and implementing hybrid cloud models for media workflows. Their expertise can help users select the right cloud services, integrate them seamlessly with their on-premises environment, and ensure optimal performance and security.

Conclusion
Based on current trends and emerging technologies, it's unlikely that media workflows will ever be 100% cloud based. The media industry will likely see a continued shift toward the cloud, driven by its scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. However, on-premises solutions will remain relevant for specific security, compliance, performance, and customization needs. 

The future will likely be characterized by hybrid architectures, with media companies strategically utilizing both cloud and on-premises solutions based on their unique requirements. Depending on the pace of technological advancements, evolving industry needs, and unforeseen developments, the actual trajectory of cloud adoption and the future of on-premises solutions remains dynamic and subject to ongoing transformation.

During a recent interview I had with Hadassa Gerber, the chief research officer at TVB underscored the importance of communicating to companies and their ad agencies the synergy between linear broadcast television and their websites.

“The reason that we make it such a point about television motivating people to go online is [because] so many advertisers are just looking at the last click,” says Gerber. “Well, how did they get there in the first place?”

TVB’s 2024 Media Comparisons Study makes a strong case that in many instances it’s television. Of the 4,000 respondents to its survey, 60% said TV ads motivate them to begin doing research on a product that’s caught their eye. For autos, that figure climbs to 72%.

Granted, TVB is a trade association representing local TV broadcasters. But the group hired German research firm GfK to conduct the research, and it would be in neither the interest of GfK nor TVB to risk losing credibility by fiddling with the results.

The takeaway for broadcasters is linear TV and websites work well together in serving the public and advertisers alike. Just as important is the effect the combination has on reach. Combining the reach of broadcast websites and broadcast television extends total reach by 4%. 

To put that into perspective, consider cable TV and broadcast. “If you take broadcast as a base, and you add on cable, that doesn’t even add a whole reach point. It’s 0.8%,” she says.

While this may seem obvious, Gerber says she has a slide in her presentation for members that explicitly lays out this fact to drive home how important the two together are to advertisers.

Perhaps it’s a good time to begin reiterating to advertisers that the consumer journey that ultimately ends up in a web click often begins by raising awareness via linear TV. One other thought: as NextGen TV, an IP-based television/data delivery mechanism matures, broadcasters would be well-served to begin planning how to leverage it to amplify their web presence.

It turns out, the key to a successful TV advertising strategy can be found in geology.

Namely, brands looking to reach consumers at scale today need to lean on the right mix of Boulders, Rocks and Sand.

Confused? Well in this case, we’re talking about the different vehicles through which people consume video: linear TV (the boulder), connected TV (rocks) and digital video (sand). Because despite all the hype about the macro (and very real) shift toward streaming, implementing the right mixture of these three is crucial for modern brands, both to effectively reach their target audiences and accurately measure their impact.

Because even as viewing habits change, consumers are unlikely to direct all of their viewing to a single platform or channel en masse for the foreseeable future—and ad spending allocations need to reflect that reality.

TV Viewing Will Remain in a Hybrid Phase for Awhile
There is no question that CTV viewing has exploded over the past decade—and ballooned considerably since the pandemic.

In fact, over this summer, streaming consumption surpassed linear TV  in the U.S. for the first time, according to Nielsen. At the same time, we’ve seen cord-cutting continue to accelerate, leading some cable distributors to consider giving up on distributing linear channels at all.

However, the hype surrounding this massive change has led to some obstinate thinking on both ends of the industry.

At one end of the spectrum, you’ll hear plenty of chatter that brands should simply abandon linear TV entirely. Usually this is accompanied by talk that linear TV is, in their view, "dead." This is despite the fact the broadcast and cable still account for roughly half of TV viewing, per Nielsen. Roughly 20 million people tune in to watch Sunday Night Football each week, for instance. In fact, even a service as popular as the binge-friendly Netflix can lay claim to a mere 8% of total TV consumption.

So despite rumors of its demise, linear TV is far from dead.

Yet at the other end of the spectrum, there are the linear TV denialists. Some in our industry are so devoted to/enamored with, linear TV’s historic reach and efficiency that they cling to a linear-centric point of view when planning media. This philosophy ignores the fact that people consume video in huge numbers via a multitude of devices, platforms and viewing patterns—and likely will for some time.

Therefore, the smartest, most forward thinking brands will recognize the need for balance in their TV ad planning.

TV Advertising Requires Boulders, Rocks and Sand
Given the permanently fragmented state the TV market finds itself, marketers can’t afford to go all in on any one platform or vehicle. Instead, brands that are looking to employ TV to reach the majority of consumers are going to need a three-pronged strategy, including the Boulder, the Rocks and the Sand.

Indeed, even as the number of cord-cutters and cord-never households rises, large swaths of the country continue to consume TV through an array of channels, including linear and streaming.

The key will be figuring out how and when to use all three the most effectively. Video is only growing more complex, as brands will need to carefully plan out their budget distribution to ensure that they reach their target audiences via all three vehicles effectively and at the right level of exposure.

In other words, it’s incumbent on brands to know when and how to use Boulders, Rocks and Sand.

This is why accurate cross-platform metrics, buying and planning tools aren't nice to have, but a must have for our industry. If marketers can’t easily calculate basic measures such as how many people they are reaching through each vehicle, and whether they are the same viewers or not—well, they risk overwhelming people with boulders or burying others with sand.

Beyond the basics, brands must also take measures to ensure they have the right blend of mass reach advertising and audience based buying in TV as it evolves. Increasingly, new tools and solutions are entering the market designed to bring TV advertising in line with other media in terms of tracking return on ad spend.

In either case, this will require both brands—and their media partners - to knock down internal silos -  as data sharing and media planning coordination will only become more essential.

TV is Getting Harder to Execute
Amazingly, the audience that can be reached via video advertising keeps getting larger, and the measurement and targeting tools available to brands have never been more innovative. Yet TV viewing is getting ever more fragmented, and complicated for brands to employ. 

That’s why it’s imperative for our industry to not rest on its laurels, as streaming and CTV ad spending surges. To fully capitalize on this medium’s potential, we must move faster to develop cross-platform measurement that allows brands to reconcile their reach, frequency, and engagement across all channels. 

This should enable brands to master just when to use Boulders, Rocks and Sand as effectively as possible to fill in all the gaps of an audience. 

TV advertisers are turning their focus to 2024 planning with cautious optimism. Despite headwinds, there’s plenty of reason for confidence among advertisers going into the new year, with most Americans expecting the economy to trend upward over the next 12 months.  

With technology as an ever-present catalyst, the coming year promises a continued evolution within the TV advertising space, with trends tested and considered in 2023 accelerating to full steam in 2024. Much of this acceleration will be driven by an ever-more-discerning advertiser who is looking to maximize ROI and incremental reach with their most coveted audiences. 

From conversations with advertisers and agency partners, below are some of my predictions for trends that will fuel TV advertising growth and enhanced value in the coming year. 

Streaming Transparency and Incremental Reach
As advertisers continue to increase share of budgets into streaming channels, the vendors that deliver heightened transparency are going to be the ones that take a leadership role in the industry and set the bar for others. 

Vendors proving incremental reach for advertisers allocating budgets across linear and streaming will lead the pack, as well as those who invest in ad tech via dashboards to show delivery across all campaign components in a timely cadence and tie in reach and frequency. 

At the same time, advertisers should expect to see more-granular options when it comes to advertising alongside fixed streaming content like sports and news—including the ability to advertise alongside specific games and other event-driven content within streaming channels. 

The Layering Effect in a Fragmented Ecosystem
Advertisers have more options, and viewership is more spread across channels than ever.  The vendors that have the most precise audience data and sales executives knowledgeable on data usage will be leaned on increasingly in 2024.  

Audience-based buying across linear and streaming, combined with a fixed media schedule across sports and entertainment and inclusive of a hyper-targeted addressable campaign, is a very effective strategy in a fragmented ecosystem. 

Sales teams that can offer this type of multi-screen, multi-platform one-stop approach to advertisers will succeed in an ever fragmented and data-focused ecosystem.

The Value of the A50+ Audience
Beyond improvements in targeting and reporting, advertisers must also factor macro-level audience trends into their 2024 media plans. Within the TV realm in particular, perhaps no single audience will have quite as great an influence as Americans aged 50+. 

This is a growing cohort that has incredible spending power, yet most advertiser demos are age 25-54, leaving out this powerful group with deep pockets and disposable income.

This consumer cohort has historically been overlooked by many brands, and yet they’re living longer, spending more, and increasingly tech savvy in their media consumption. The 50+ consumer set contributes more than $8 trillion to the U.S. economy each year, with a GDP that’s expected to triple by 2050. 

Although 50+ consumers contribute more than half the consumer spending in the U.S., only 5-10 percent of marketing budgets is spent on winning them over. For advertisers that acknowledge and act on this discrepancy, there’s a huge opportunity to connect with these active consumers, many of whom are just as engaged across the spectrum of marketing channels as their younger counterparts and watch a lot of TV. Consider:

• Nielsen’s Scarborough data indicates that 93 percent of 50+ consumers are online.
• Three out of four 50+ consumers have bought something online in the past year.
• Two-thirds have a smart TV or an internet-connected TV.
• On average, A50+ watch 19.9 hours of live traditional TV in a typical week.

For these reasons, TV represents a uniquely powerful opportunity for reaching this highly desirable and increasingly valuable demographic. 

Local Incrementality
Finally, let’s talk about the importance of regionality when it comes to TV advertisers’ growing desire for incrementality. In 2024, local advertising in the U.S. will grow 8.6 percent to $175.6 billion, with a large portion of that growth going to local TV—and not just in the form of political campaigns. 

Regional and local advertisers make up the majority of spending in local markets, but there is also an enormous opportunity for national brands to use the power of local market activations to increase their share of voice in key markets across the country. Local programming, such as news and sports, represents an ideal way for advertisers to find true incrementality with their TV budgets. 

The impact of such buys can be up-leveled even further via localized creative, specific messaging in those markets, and highly visible custom sponsorship packages. The unique packages enable brands to weave their messaging into local programming with highly loyal and coveted audiences with logo integrations and product placement opportunities. 

Navigating the 2024 TV advertising landscape requires a strategic and nuanced approach that goes beyond traditional paradigms. In an era where data-driven insights, targeted audience engagement, and innovative storytelling reign supreme, the right partnerships are key to thoughtful, effective media planning. Those who embrace the evolving landscape will find themselves not just riding the wave of change but also helping to shape its trajectory.

We anticipate there will be a massive adoption of automatic logging technologies, as media rights owners have an urgent need to increase operational efficiency — especially when inflation is increasing OPEX. In a world driven by data and AI, it is no longer possible to miss crucial metadata related to highly valuable assets.

Moreover, prime rights owners will radically change their business model, with a social media first approach. This is to cater more to Gen Z audiences, who aren’t interested in watching linear TV or long-form video; studios will repurpose TV shows on social media in other formats (like short-form) to target this future audience. In the future, AI will be the catalyzer for providing content owners with solutions to adapt, produce, and create content in next-gen formats.

For commercial ads and brand content, synthetic video is going to be the “go-to;" It will help create ads significantly faster and cheaper. For news, sports, and entertainment, AI-assisted story creation will be used for scripting, sourcing, logging, and editing. 

Given the momentum behind AI, it must be at the core of any technology provider’s corporate strategy.

The coming year is poised to bring about significant transformations to the digital advertising industry driven by innovative technologies and changing consumer expectations. 

For businesses aiming to capture the attention of their target audiences, understanding these technologies, consumer behaviors, and industry shifts can help guide decisions in the months to come. From the continued rise of AI to the evolution of privacy regulations, 2024 is poised to be a pivotal moment in the relentless evolution of the digital ad market.

Performance TV Takes Center Stage
One of the most notable trends in 2024 will be the rise of "Performance TV." The initial phase of early adopters is coming to an end, and major brands are recognizing the potential of connected TV (CTV) for achieving KPIs similar to those seen in search and social advertising. This shift is driven by the convergence of CTV capabilities and low-cost creative platforms, which will encourage a significant influx of new TV advertisers migrating from other digital channels.

The adoption of advanced CTV measurement tools will likewise be a game-changer in 2024. These tools will be anchored in the concept of 1:1 TV ad exposure-to-outcome, complemented by advanced attribution analytics that identify the discrete impact of TV ads on conversions. Tools such as incrementality reporting, halo impact studies and more will allow advertisers to understand the full-funnel impact of their TV campaigns. This newfound clarity will showcase the power of TV as a medium capable of delivering measurable bottom-of-funnel results in addition to the obvious awareness impact of TV..

To succeed in 2024, brands, advertisers, marketers, and advertising technology companies are advised to embrace a "test and learn" approach when it comes to TV advertising. This strategy mirrors the early days of search and social advertising, where modest budgets are allocated to test campaigns against performance KPIs such as Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and Cost per Outcome (CPO). By closely evaluating the initial results and partnering with trustworthy collaborators who offer radical transparency, advertisers can optimize and scale their TV campaigns effectively.

The Role of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to play a significant role in advertising in 2024, particularly in marketing and creative aspects. AI-powered tools can automate content-marketing tasks and even facilitate creative development based on existing assets, as exemplified by companies like Waymark. The ability to create high-quality TV ads quickly and affordably based on social and website assets opens up new avenues for brands that couldn't previously afford TV advertising.

TV advertising is becoming more democratic, but the precise path forward is unclear. However, the emergence of tools and managed services with direct platform integrations is expected to make TV advertising more accessible to a wider range of businesses. This could potentially tap into a massive audience segment that has primarily focused on search and social advertising.

The digital advertising landscape is poised for an exciting and transformative year ahead. From the rise of performance TV and the importance of data privacy to the growing significance of AI and machine learning, businesses must remain agile and adaptable to stay competitive. 

By embracing these trends and leveraging the latest technologies, companies can not only navigate the evolving digital advertising landscape but also unlock new opportunities for growth. As the industry continues to evolve, those who stay ahead of the curve and innovate in their strategies will undoubtedly be the ones to thrive.

Sound production is the artistic and technical aspect of broadcasting that is completely subjective. The balance of the sound elements, for example the voices (commentary), as compared to the volume levels of the sound effects and music, is subjective to the point until you cannot hear and understand what is being said. 

As a sound practitioner, I express the tone of a production using equalization to adjust the bass and treble of an audio passage, however my experience guides where I ultimately make a subjective evaluation of the proper level and tone of any adjustments.

Even certain sound phrases and terminology indicates a level of subjectivity. I worked with a British producer at the BBC who said that the mix sounded “wooly.” What is my subjective understanding of wooly sound?

Who Get the Blame?
However, this subjectivity may be related to the reproduction technology or method or perhaps a medical condition such as tinnitus. 

Broadcast sound is subjective because, as the sound mixer, I control the outcomes. But what if I have tinnitus or frequency-specific hearing difficulties? For example if the mixer has lost sensitivity in the higher frequencies then there is a tendency to compensate by adding high frequencies to the mix resulting in a shrill, more brittle sound to the consumer. 

What if the listener has frequency-specific hearing loss? Then possibly the listener may have difficulty with speech intelligibility. Consider if the listener has cheap or improperly installed speakers or just rear-mounted speakers in the TV set? This is clearly beyond the control of the sound mixer, but who gets the blame?

As a newly minted sound mixer, I will never forget a phone call I received from an ESPN executive telling me the mix did not sound right. Perplexed by the call I asked, “What’s wrong?” After some hemming and hawing from the executive, I asked, “Is it the balance or tone or what?” After some silence, I hung up. I am sitting in a 5x8-foot audio control room, trying to mix a live show with the incessant roar of equipment cooling fans behind me and a communications network that is never silent. 

There may be a chance that something doesn’t “sound right.” Well, the executive called back, and I quipped that, “It sounds fine here,” and hung up again. Needless to say, I did not work for ESPN for awhile.

My subjective impression was that it did sound fine where I was, and I am sure that it did not sound right to the executive listening over TV speakers. I never got the opportunity to ask the person what they were listening on, but improper speaker placement and setup was the demise of some fellow audio folks who got burned for bad sound because someone improperly set up the speaker system for Dolby Surround in the network QC room. Who got the blame?

Balance is the most difficult aspect of an audio mix to master. Overly zealous announcers and an unscripted event such as football or baseball can result in the voice being either too loud or too soft. Audio compressors help to smooth out the audio, but to me overly compressed audio is just as hideous as “bouncy” audio or burying the voice in the mix.

Surround and Immersive Sound
Audio is subjective and specific to the listener’s environment, reproduction device and physiological condition. Now factor that by two—the producer of the sound and the consumer of the sound. Sound was pretty easy when it was mono and the television cabinet (housing) was the size of a refrigerator with front-facing speakers. 

Stereo was a little more complex with two speakers and the task of creating a “phantom center” for the voice. Surround sound created more problems with a dedicated center speaker for voice and five other speakers for effects and music. The other problem for surround was proper placement of the center speaker in a world where there really is no place for a center speaker. Technology helped here with the divergence of the voice into the side speakers and the introduction of soundbars.

Immersive sound ushered in a whole new set of issues with still only one center speaker plus an additional four upper speakers to generate more noise and further mask the announcers. What’s an audio person to do?

First, understand your own hearing abilities and do not always trust your ears. I have tinnitus and high-frequency hearing loss, but I do not artificially compensate for the tone of a mix to my liking. Generally, a “flat” mix will cover a lot of reproduction possibilities from poor room acoustics, improperly placed speakers and even cheap speakers.

Second, new mixing techniques can deliver better results. Consider this. The center speaker may not be just for voice. Try spreading out the sound (diverging the sound) into the left, right, left height and right height speaker; not to the point of distracting the listener, but to reinforce the sound like a phantom image. 

This technique works well with immersive sound and soundbars. (See my November column on sound mixing or my book “Immersive Sound Production: A Practical Guide.”)

Finally, at home, after the show, listen to your mix. Also ask for input from your peers and non-audio types. Fred Aldous from Fox Sports used to tell me he always listened to his mother when it came to his mixing. Mama is usually right. 

Since replacing radio as the most popular mass medium in the 1950s, television has played an integral role in modern life. Both reflecting and shaping cultural values, television has often been lauded for its ability to create a common experience for all its viewers. 

Major world events such as the John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations in the 1960s, the Challenger shuttle explosion in 1986, the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and the impact and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 have all played out on television, uniting millions of people in shared tragedy and hope. 

The medium continues to evolve today as streaming services multiply and gain market share, focusing more on content creation than syndication. Broadcast production evolved in tandem to support the ever-changing watching habits of its audience and their insatiable desire for 24x7 content access.

The “Good Old Days”
Although programming was in its infancy, the 1950s were considered the "golden age" of television. Some of the earliest entertainment programming on television came directly from radio, including such popular programs as The Adventures of Superman, The Lone Ranger, and several soap operas.

While many shows were broadcast live during the golden age, I Love Lucy was produced with a new technique. Three cameras caught the action, which reduced interruptions and retakes. The filmed episodes could then be rerun by the network and sold into syndication for extended profitable runs. These production techniques both captured and shaped the stories being broadcast.

The shift from analog to digital TV was broadcasting’s most significant change in 50 years. The FCC replaces the NTSC standard in 1996, requiring all broadcasters to adopt DTV by 2006. This transition was challenging, necessitating new equipment and adjustments, including updating makeup techniques for high-definition broadcasts. 

Audio, often considered an afterthought of television broadcasting, mirrored video advancements over the decades. The 1950s brought about some significant changes, as magnetic tape became the industry standard for recording audio. In 1958, EMI installed the first dedicated stereo mixing system, the REDD 17, at Abbey Road Studios in London. 

This was the legendary console used by the Beatles and many other artists and is often credited with establishing the concept of the large-format console still used today — with faders at the bottom and EQ controls for each channel above.

TV stations began stereo broadcasts in 1985 (see Randy Hoffner, former NBC tech exec and TV Tech columnist introduce the format on Late Night with David Letterman). In the 1990s, as stereo television, stereo VCR, and home theater sales continued to increase, stereo surround sound became common for network programming. CBS broadcast all of its college and professional football games in stereo surround sound for the first time during the 1999-2000 season.

As DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software became the center of many studio workflows for audio recording and mixing in the 1990s, DAW control surfaces began to rise in popularity. In the mid-2000s, home studios began to proliferate as computers became more powerful with each passing year. With the DAW firmly established as the core of most recording studios, many engineers and enthusiasts began looking for ways to expand their capabilities further.  

Looking to the Future: Cloud-based Production
Cloud-based production is the natural evolution of DAW software. It seamlessly integrates various audio devices into a unified ecosystem, revolutionizing how broadcasts are managed. Reducing the need for travel also reduces the associated risks, such as those posed by extreme weather events, political instability, or health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic.

This approach also broadens access to talent. Remote production makes it easier to include commentators, analysts, or guests who cannot be physically present at the broadcast location. They can contribute from wherever they are, making it possible to include a broader range of voices and perspectives in the broadcast. 

Scalability is another key advantage. Broadcasters can easily scale up their operations to cover large, multivenue events or scale down for smaller productions. This flexibility makes cloud production a versatile solution that can be adapted to a wide range of broadcasting needs.

One of the less obvious but equally important benefits realized with cloud-based production is that it reduces the physical footprint at the broadcast venue. By minimizing the need for onsite equipment and personnel, remote production is less disruptive to the event itself, allowing for a more authentic and uninterrupted viewer experience.

Cloud-based production offers a flexible, efficient, and scalable solution that can meet the demands of any broadcast. Audio endpoints can send synchronized, high-fidelity audio directly to best-of-breed or customer-preferred production software in the cloud, reducing the need for mobile studios and trucks. 

Audio can be distributed globally within the cloud, allowing different teams to use the same audio within multiple applications and locations to address different audiences, languages, and aspects of the production process. Source audio can be sent from remote sites directly to the cloud so mixing engineers can do their jobs from wherever they are located, again without the need to roll expensive outside broadcast truck deployments. 

The future of broadcasting lies in the ability to manage complex, overlapping productions from a centralized, cloud-based location. Whether it's overlapping NASCAR events or SXSW, cloud offerings like Dante Connect offer production teams flexibility, efficiency, and scalability that can meet the demands of any broadcast. 

The journey of television from its "golden age" to the digital era has been remarkable. As we embrace the future, cloud-based production emerges as the beacon, promising efficiency, inclusivity, and adaptability. Unlike the significant equipment changes seen during the DTV transition, cloud production and network infrastructure streamlines productions and tells more stories without massive overhauls. 

The next chapter in broadcasting is not just about technological advancement but about creating richer, more diverse content for a global audience.

Cloud and IT go hand in hand, so as IT leaders, you likely need a comprehensive, clear insight into the technologies that feed both the enterprise and the cloud. Of paramount importance to IT leaders and cloud architects is keeping your technology assets secure, well-governed and cost effective. This is a far cry from where IT was a decade or more ago, whereby IT was pictured more as support for the back office and keeping “the network” functional—as well as supporting the users and workplace.

IT leaders need comprehensive, clear insights into their technology to fuel this evasive and evolving data-driven, decision-making processes, which lead to the best of results. The cloud, while convenient and less involved (compared to an enterprise-size data center) is not without its concerns. This is not to be “negative” about the cloud. Quite the contrary, knowing pitfalls of the cloud can only make your implementation(s) better and less risky.

By looking at known issues, we hope to broaden perspective and set the tone for understanding how, why or why not “in the cloud.”

Lifecycle 
Most products sold to users have some concept of how long it will last. This “lifecyle” is no different for automobiles, appliances and certainly electronics. Like hardware, software also has its own version of how long it will last—sometimes based on the hardware it lives on and sometimes just how long the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) wishes to support it or feels it is worthy of maintaining due to technology changes (usually advancements) or their cost of keeping it alive. 

In IT (and cloud) , there is also a software lifecycle. In this case, the software asset lifecycle is about having your IT resources accounted for, cost-effective and properly employed. Vulnerabilities of the products lead the list of concerns about IT assets according to Flexera’s 2021 “State of IT Visibility Report.” This issue is a chief concern of the enterprise information management and staff. The same issues can be and are extended into cloud practices and, like the “ground-based” enterprise, must be carefully understood, watched and protected. The sidebar provides simple definitions as they apply to software systems and hardware components.

In considering cloud, many look at using a combination of ground-based (on-prem) services and cloud services. This is generally referred to as a “hybrid” cloud service and some feel this is not only important, but it may also be essential to its operation. In this model there is a dual role—that is, here the enterprise must manage its own services (on-prem) and in turn manage its cloud services as well.

Is a Hybrid Cloud the Right Answer?
According to Morpheus’ “Gartner Market Guide for Cloud Management Tooling,” “The requirement to support hybrid and/or multicloud deployments is stressing current enterprise operational processes and tooling that had been designed for their on-premises environment. The main use cases continue to be around cloud governance and resource management as enterprises try to avoid overspending or falling prey to security breaches.”

By definition, a hybrid cloud is a mixed computing environment where applications are run using a combination of computing, storage and services in different environments—public clouds and private clouds, including on-premises data centers or “edge” locations. 

On a broader perspective, hybrid cloud architectures are widespread primarily because almost no one today relies entirely on a single public cloud. Figs. 1 and 2 show the values and benefits of employing a hybrid cloud to your solutions.

The value is that in hybrid cloud solutions you need to migrate and manage workloads between various cloud (and ground) environments. In turn, this allows users to create more versatile setups based on specific business needs. Many organizations choose to adopt hybrid cloud platforms to reduce costs, minimize risk and extend their existing capabilities to support digital transformation efforts. 

A hybrid cloud approach is one of the most common infrastructure architectures of modern computing applications for IT, media, healthcare, and the list goes on. Today, most cloud migrations often lead to hybrid cloud implementations as organizations often have to transition applications and data slowly and systematically. Hybrid cloud environments allow you to continue using on-premises services while taking advantage of the flexible options for storing and accessing data and applications offered by public cloud providers, such as Google Cloud.

The Good and the Bad
On the other side of the coin, there are many reasons why there are plenty of workloads that will never go to public cloud—some of which include: regulatory response, life/safety reasons, subscription vs. permanent cost models, less control over your data security, and of course, you must have good Internet. 

The “if it’s not broke don’t fix it,” and the “one throat to choke (your own),” along with long-term costs of cloud computing being higher, all stack up against the “all in the cloud” model. Users also say some applications actually run better on a local server along with not knowing “where” your data really is (risk of regulations that could impact data retention or recovery, and how much does it take of your time plus the inability to control reliability.

Another not-so-pleasant concern is that every action leaves a trail (i.e., Where’s your privacy?). Many of us grew up thinking that almost everything online was anonymous. Wrong. Connecting to the web generates an IP address. Every website we visit can see that IP address, and others can “see” that information, everything from what operating system we use to the size of our screen resolution.

Nothing you do is private any longer, especially when your interaction requires or expects one to “create an account.” The main point in creating an account is to retain certain data in order to display it again later. (Privacy is lost, even if the website “says” differently. If it weren’t important, why does that site need it?)

Everyone Has a Data Profile
Every detail about us can, and often is, regularly bought and sold; cookies track us routinely. Even if you don’t accept the cookies, there are means to track and trace you. Artificial intelligence now “fills in the gaps” using other resources, such as Facebook, one of the largest repositories of personal information on the planet.

This issue isn’t limited to services with public data (as in Facebook and Twitter/X). Amazon, Google and Dropbox each store different but very intimate details about each of us. Personally Identifiable Information (“PII”) is valuable to you, to businesses and to hackers. Personable data generates a “profile” that now positions you into “classes” or groupings, which now link to other connections and end up being “mined” by organizations that profit from knowing what they know and, at times, exploiting that information for less than personal reasons.

And it’s not just cybercriminals who want your data; countless services and governmental agencies want and collect your personal details too.

HR Concerns
So, think further about your own organization or enterprise data, much of which may indeed include “your” personal data. For good reasons, HR departments take worthy concerns over their employees’ personal information and that you, the employee, trust that data to your employer. 

The same might go for corporate records, contracts and such. Hence the interest and concern over security whereby they may employ technologies like blockchain to protect transactions, contracts and other confidential information.

Types of PPI
Direct identifiers, also called “sensitive PII,” are data sets that can be used to pinpoint you and only you. Quasi-identifiers, also called “non-sensitive,” are those details that can be combined with other quasi-identifiers to “label” you—classify or group you for geographic, domestic or other reasons. Quasi-identifier designations are often used for statistical analysis placing you into group(s) that describe which “you belong to.”

Direct identifiers, as mentioned, are about you and only you. Nothing you share with another person is a direct identifier—that data such as your full name, medical history, credit card details, personal identifiers such as social security or insurance numbers, or your passport number. 

Europe took a hard stand less than a decade ago with its General Data Protection Regulation (GDRP), a European law enacted in about mid-2018). The GDPR concept aimed to protect you (the user) and provided a legal means to have to prove that any collector of said data had actually scrubbed and/or expunged your data from their files, should you request such action. 

Initially, the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive set goals and requirements, which the EU member states were free to interpret its general goals and requirements as they see fit when complying with their national (EU) laws. Essentially, this says that organizations must have a lawful reason for collecting personal data; the amount of personal data collected must be limited to the minimum necessary to complete the lawful purpose; and that data must be deleted once the lawful purpose has been completed. 

The U.S. (country-wide) has been struggling to develop a similar protection, but has essentially gotten no-where; yet California has implemented similar policies.

Where is my Data, Really?
The depth of these kinds of actions apply not only to local servers and services, but extend into the cloud, which leads to an interesting caveat. What happens when the data actually resides in a cloud that is in a non-EU country?

Hence, you can see the concerns for using “the cloud” when you don’t know where the data is or under which jurisdiction that data might be controlled at any given moment. Furthermore, these concerns become more complicated as the cloud providers expand and the resiliency models (data duplication and distribution) grow for faster, more improved services.

So, know your solution set thoroughly before jumping on the “all in the cloud” bandwagon. Keep informed or use a knowledgeable entity to help support and maintain your investments.

With the beginning of the 2024 campaign season and elections just around the corner, video watermarking expert Verance announced in November a collaborative watermarking initiative it’s spearheading along with the help of TV and digital news organizations as well as CE manufacturers to combat deepfakes.

The idea is to give viewers a way to tell if the media they are consuming has been tampered with or modified during distribution. 

While on-target—a recent poll showed more than half of Americans are concerned about the impact of deepfakes on the election—the effort raises a troubling question. Does the public even have enough confidence in the media to believe what it reports in the first place, regardless of whether the video is legit or a deepfake?

Consider the findings of a September 2022 Gallup poll. Thirty-eight percent of respondents had no trust in the media. Only 14% of Republicans said they trusted the media, while 27% of independents said they did. Driving the average of all respondents who trust the media to 34% were Democrats, seven out of 10 of whom said they trusted the media. Overall, only 7% of respondents said they had a “great deal” of trust and confidence in the media.

Perhaps Pew Research uncovered the reason why. Polls conducted in February and March 2022 found that 76% of the public said journalists should work to give every side of an issue “equal coverage.” Journalists on the other hand didn’t show a similar level of commitment to “bothsidesism,” as Pew dubbed it. Only 55% of journalists told Pew all sides of an issue should receive equal coverage.

Or maybe it can be chalked up to the public’s general inability to distinguish between fact and opinion. A February-March 2018 Pew Research poll gave respondents five fact-based and five opinion-based statements and asked them to identify what type of statement each was. Only 26% could correctly classify all five statements. Twenty-four percent got four right. The results for correctly categorizing opinion statements were somewhat better, but still poor. Thirty-five percent identified all five opinion statements correctly, and 24% got four correct.

While Verance’s effort to protect the public from deepfakes is commendable, it seems a bit like putting the cart before the horse. It proposes to use technology to solve a problem that is much more deeply rooted.

Before the public can ever trust a watermark the media provides for its content to head off deepfakes, they first must begin trusting the media in greater numbers. Maybe good places to start are more balanced coverage, a hard separation of fact and opinion and clearly identifying each.

The tremendous growth of CTV over the past decade has led to increasingly blurred lines between linear TV and digital. Despite this shift, advertisers and brands are still tempted to look at each platform in a silo to determine the optimal campaign setup. 

The topic of convergence was a prominent discussion throughout Advertising Week New York this year, making it clear that industry leaders need to start implementing operational best practices now if we truly wish to see the convergence we keep speaking of. 

As media types converge, valuable practices from TV can be applied to the digital, and vice versa, with the opportunity to bring new ideas from digital to linear campaigns. Let’s explore best practices from each platform and how they can be applied in a convergent media landscape. 

Bridging the Gap Between Linear and Digital Targeting
One of the great strengths of digital advertising is the power of geotargeting. Within digital advertising, the ad server targets the mobile device, serving ads based on the physical geolocation of said device. This is the power that feeds you iced tea ads on your phone when you’re visiting Florida in January. But when it comes to targeting across linear, household TVs are immobile. Enter: addressable advertising. 

Digital targeting capabilities can be applied to linear TV through addressable technology, which has been steadily growing for the past 10 years and is expected to account for 6.1% of total TV ad spend in 2024. By using addressable, advertisers can accurately target their audience at the subscriber and household level.  

For example, a regional fast-food restaurant wants to target diners in their area without having to invest in a nationwide media buy. By combining the scale of linear advertising with precision addressable targeting, the restaurant can hone in on the specific audience segments within that geographical location, resulting in efficient and accurate reach. This approach also allows for greater control over audience overlap and more accurate measurement of outcomes.

The Key to Effective Ad Scheduling
Proper scheduling has always been a key strategy and best practice in TV advertising. TV ads must be aired at specific times during programming schedules, requiring careful planning and consideration of various factors to ensure that the ad reaches the intended audience at the right time.

Let's take a national soft drink brand as an example. Suppose the brand wants to target men between the ages of 18-34. Live sporting events, such as Monday Night Football, have a large number of engaged viewers, making it a highly effective advertising opportunity. Therefore, the soft drink company knows to plan its advertising campaigns accordingly to ensure that it can advertise during the desired timeslot.

Now what if we transferred this practice to digital? Unlike live TV ad scheduling, digital ads have traditionally been displayed at any time with frequency caps set for the entire campaign upfront. However, linear scheduling practices can be adapted to digital platforms by taking into account the context in which ads are being displayed, as well as the linear timing of the events advertisers want to target, such as live sporting events. 

By timelocking advertising dollars to marquee events, advertisers need to account for the timing of the game, and other factors like overtime, to make sure their messages air during the correct time frame. Nobody wants to blow all their budgeted impression goals before kick-off. 

The Art of Packaging
Digital advertisers know that a proposal should rarely, if ever, be limited to one format. Instead, it is much better practice to package multiple types of ad opportunities to reach key audiences frequently and effectively. With the rise of new technologies and platforms, even TV buyers can take a page out of digital strategy and consider alternate ad formats as well. 

This shift toward diversification of ad formats is similar to the display advertising space, where buyers must consider both rotational banners and video ads to create a comprehensive ad campaign. It is imperative for investment leads in TV advertising to remain abreast of emerging trends and technologies to ensure that their advertising campaigns are impactful and engaging.

For instance, Pause Ads are now being shown within live TV environments, and can (read: should) be packaged with traditional commercial spots in order to achieve campaign objectives. We’re also discovering that linear ads can be shoppable now, and packaged accordingly. 

Just last year, we saw Coinbase’s QR code take over millions of screens around the world during Super Bowl LVI, becoming one of the most talked-about ads of the year. Its simple approach to viewer engagement was so successful that in the 60 seconds it ran, it generated more than 20 million hits on Coinbase’s landing page and even crashed the platform’s app.

When it comes to advertising, it's important to cover all bases. Advertisers want to make sure that they are reaching their target audience strategically during their viewing experience. With so many different platforms to choose from, it's a good idea to mix things up and try different ad formats and packaging. That way, the message won't get lost in the shuffle.

Each platform has its own strengths when it comes to advertising, so we should take the best parts from each and use them to create a cohesive approach. Operational capabilities like targeting, scheduling, and packaging are just the beginning of what we can do to make our ad campaigns more effective, and, by extension, resonate with our audiences. By learning from both sides of the equation, we can create campaigns that really make an impact.

Delivering live video content quickly, reliably, and at scale is a mission-critical capability for the media industry. Media companies need to deliver content from destination A to multiple destinations (often in the millions) to ensure they reach the right audiences wherever they might be. 

While last-mile consumer delivery has been leveraging IP for some time, so far, industry players have been a lot more willing to opt for cloud and IP-driven video transport technologies for their Tier 2 or 3 content contribution and primary distribution, choosing more ‘traditional’ transport workflows for their high-value Tier 1 content.  

However, innovation in software-defined transport networks that are media-centric in nature renders them fit for purpose for the stringent quality, synchronization, and reliability requirements of the media industry. When it comes to valuable live content, media companies shouldn’t continue missing a trick — here is why!

Building Media-Centric Foundations in Video Delivery
In the media industry, we often hear that the internet wasn’t built for primary delivery of media content. Pretty much any cloud provider can move packets from point A to point B or even to C and D over an IP network. 

However, when these workflows are live video streams any packet loss will lead to failures. This is because a generic IP network lacks the critical foundations, by design, that are required for critical live media transport to platform partners, especially when transporting high-value media content. 

For broadcasters and media services providers, the answer to this challenge isn’t shying away from cloud and IP innovation. The next-generation software-defined networks that are built specifically for media transport combine the benefits of hardware-defined networks and the cloud by leveraging media-centric foundations: 

Observability
Sending a video signal to a destination over a generic IP network is like taking a stab in the dark. By choosing the correct transport protocol chances are that your signal will reach the destination, but you’ll have no visibility of how it got there and what its quality is like at the other end. You’ll be unaware of any problems the signal might have encountered at any point in its journey. In other words, you’ll be completely blind and unable to take any preventative or restorative action. 

The answer comes with a software-defined network that breaks down the network into smaller segments. In doing so, it delivers monitoring metrics that provide insight into the video signal delivery every step of the way. This visibility enables broadcasters and media service providers to have control over their media delivery and ensure it is efficient, high-quality, and seamless.

Protection
Using a generic IP network to deliver video signals also runs into the problem of protecting these signals. Video delivery requires tight uptime and 24/7 robust and redundant services that are simply not available by generic IP networks.  

A media-centric approach to enhancing the protection of video delivery requires a smart combination of ‘traditional’ broadcasting and cloud engineering that can apply some of the traditional broadcasting engineering methods to next-gen IP networks. This is why traditional broadcasting engineers are extremely valuable in this new era of cloud-powered media. With the right approach and innovation, IP networks that are tailored to the needs of video transport can overcome reliability challenges.  

This is where flexibility is key. The more protected the IP networks are, the more expensive they get. With the right media-centric network, media companies can pick and choose which of their content (typically the most valuable) will be the most protected on an input/output basis. In this way, they can control when, which, and how they choose to protect the media they deliver without having to make huge investments upfront.

Scalability
Another critical foundation of a media-centric delivery network is the capability to scale up or down content distribution quickly, easily, and efficiently, depending on demand. This is what we call a "jellyfish" network that is based on an agile and nimble architectural approach that enables broadcasters to scale their streams as and when they need it.

Synchronization
Ensuring accurate timing information across the IP networks and synchronizing contributed with distributed video signals removes the challenge of having different partners receiving feeds with millisecond delays depending on their region. Synchronization is also a critical capability for the betting industry as any millisecond delay can have a big impact on the real-time betting experience and overall fan engagement and cause the broadcaster financial and reputational damage. 

A Media-First Approach
There’s no doubt that IP and the cloud have redefined the media industry, sparking previously unthinkable innovation and use cases. However, not all IP networks are born equal and, in this case, fit for purpose.

Having the right media-centric IP media delivery network is a competitive advantage. It empowers you to drive new levels of efficiency, scalability, and flexibility while protecting your most valuable video content. It also grants you the control you need to optimize quality and prevent any issues with signal delivery.

For the media industry, this isn’t simply the era of the cloud and IP — it’s the era of the media-centric cloud and IP, and smart broadcasters and media services providers will harness their power today. 

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the media and entertainment (M&E) industry isn’t new. Recently, however, it’s increasingly being deployed on an unprecedented scale and for previously inconceivable functions. For example, Marvel recently employed AI to create the impactful opening credits to its new Secret Invasion series. Meanwhile, CGI teams working on the Indiana Jones: The Dial of Destiny film used AI to turn back the clock on Harrison Ford’s appearance.

Though it’s worth keeping in mind that the technology isn’t without controversary— taking the recent SAG AFTRA and WGA strikes as an infamous example—there is, however, little doubt that recent AI breakthroughs are helping to democratize the use of AI across the M&E sector. 

A move that is making it possible for big production companies as well as small independents, film studios, and TV stations to meet the growing demand for content. Armed with AI, these firms are unlocking new levels of creativity that previously would have taken a significant amount of time, effort, and money to achieve.

AI: A Transformative Tool
Today’s AI technologies present an enormous opportunity for M&E companies to improve their operations, engage audiences in new ways, and simplify their content and distribution processes.

For example, production crews can now use AI-powered analytics to automate previously labour-intensive manual processes. Using features like language translation and speech-to-text, they can now tackle tasks like adding subtitles or dubbing with ease and ensure these are appropriately synchronized within video frames—all of which improves output quality while making production budgets stretch much, much further. 

Similarly, AI can be used to tag, enrich, and transcribe huge quantities of content—including raw unstructured data—something that makes video libraries and archives much more searchable and discoverable. With AI, crew members are able to easily search existing content using attributes such as people, places, things, and even sentiment. By adding metadata to video and image files, M&E teams can potentially save hours of time and effort when tailoring content for specific audiences. 

It’s also much faster and easier to generate new content, and additional monetisation opportunities, from existing libraries. For instance, rather than having to search through decades of film footage to locate clips featuring a particular actor, now all it takes is a single mouse click to precisely identify and retrieve each appearance incidence.

In terms of enabling enhanced efficiencies, AI-driven animations and character modelling are helping to streamline the creative process. Meanwhile, in addition to enabling filmmakers to go from concept to camera in minutes, AI is being used to support the creation of highly optimized production schedules and enhance creative decision-making. 

In a world where post-production and editing activities are increasingly being undertaken by teams working collaboratively in the cloud, cutting edge generative AI tools are helping to make the media production and transmission process itself a faster and more integrated procedure. It’s also making processes like the restoration of library and archived content and its transformation into new broadcast standards like 4K a much more economical proposition.

Finally, generative AI technologies like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion are helping to revolutionize the creation and analysis of scripts and storylines. That includes the procedural content, player prompts and dialogue that is utilized when developing new video games. With the right generative AI tools, these fundaments can be created in a fraction of the time and different creative options explored and refined faster and at a much lower cost.

Harnessing all these new capabilities, however, depends on having cutting edge integrated storage environments that are designed to support these new and highly agile AI-powered ways of working.

Putting AI to Work in Storage
The growing pre-eminence of AI is closely aligned with the availability of new high speed and high performance storage solutions that makes it possible for today’s content producers to organize, manage, and share digital content and images faster and make the most of their data assets.

Unlocking productivity, efficiency, and new ways of working, enriching data with AI-enabled storage systems not only lends speed and parallel processing capabilities to production workflows. It also speeds up rendering and video and image processing and makes it possible to add metadata to video and image files. This potentially saves hours of work thanks to content tagging and automated object recognition while accelerating content movement and archiving activities.

Enabling teams in any size of organization to get up and running with new AI applications faster, these high availability solutions make it possible to set up and manage multiple production workflows simultaneously and offer automated content management features that can be customized in real-time.

Releasing Creatives to ‘Do Their Thing’
Enriching data with AI-enabled storage systems enables creative teams to deliver complete productions in significantly compressed time frames and at a much lower cost. This can be anything from integrating automatic text, images, and video generation to enable enhanced experimentation and collaboration between creative teams, to analyzing and enriching the content used in broadcast, post-production, sport, and other media workflows.

By helping creative groups everywhere take advantage of transformative AI capabilities, today’s all-in-one content management and storage solutions are helping to accelerate the delivery of new and compelling content faster—and much more efficiently.