Setting individual products aside, Simon Hawkings, director of sales strategy at Ross Video, said the cloud, artificial intelligence and viewer engagement are the three biggest trends to emerge from the 2025 NAB Show.

Speaking during an Executive Q&A with TVTech contributing editor Phil Kurz, Hawkings pointed out that the M&E Industry is in a transitional phase that will see technology vendors moving away from “selling metal to selling minutes” in the cloud and users embracing the cloud and cloud-based software to run production instances and enable other media workflows.

Contrasting the move to the cloud with previous technology transitions in the industry, Hawkings noted this one “is really different.”

“This is a more fundamental change in how we're going to do business as well as how the technology works,” he said, “and especially where Ross is coming from in the live production world.”

AI has witnessed rapid transformation in the media industry in the nine months since IBC2024, he noted.

The hype around AI has given way to real applications that improve media workflows. “People are using [AI] stuff in a practical way every day,” said Hawkings. Those include graphics, automation, transcription, auto tagging of metadata, fully assisted productions to make completed shows without an operator, facial and body tracking in cameras, highlight reel creation and clip generation, he said.

When it comes to viewer engagement, Hawkings noted the internet back channel from Smart TVs will give traditional broadcasters deploying ATSC 3.0 an effective way to identify users and serve ads and content better suited to their individual interests.

“All of a sudden now I [broadcasters] know who’s watching, and I know what they’re watching and when. [T]his is driving up ad revenue for some of these more traditional media companies, which is great,” he said.

The transitions evident at the NAB Show this year weren’t strictly limited to these technologies, however. Show organizers made a concerted effort to advance the effort they launched at last year’s show to appeal to the creator community.

“[NAB] created a forecast that said this [creator] market would be worth $500 billion… by 2030. [T]hat would be made up of 50 million professional creators. So, I think there’s a great level of interest in how the industry is going to shift and how we can take advantage of that growing market,” said Hawkings.

LOS GATOS, Calif.— In a bid to boost engagement on its streaming platform, Netflix has introduced a new feature that will allow users of its mobile app to bookmark, save, replay and share their favorite scenes from TV series and movies.

The new mobile feature rolled out Oct. 28 for Apple iOS users and will be available on Android in the coming weeks.

The feature would allow someone watching the latest season of “Bridgerton” on their phone, for instance, to save the scene where Colin and Penelope share their long-awaited kiss in the carriage, Netflix said. By simply tapping Moments at the bottom of the screen, the scene will be automatically saved to a subscriber’s My Netflix tab.

Users can also revisit Moments on their phone at any time. If the viewer rewatches the episode or film, it will start playing right from the bookmarked scene.

The feature also makes it easy for mobile users to share Moments on Instagram, Facebook, and other social platforms, Netflix said. Mobile users can share a Moment as they create it or, from their My Netflix tab, select a scene and tap to share it across all of their platforms.

Netflix also announced that the roll-out of Moments coincides with a new Netflix global brand campaign called “It’s So Good,” featuring memorable moments that have captivated fans worldwide — including Cardi B, Simone Biles and Giancarlo Esposito.

Netflix also reported that it has plans to expand Moments in the future. It is not known if those plans might include expanding the feature to connected TVs.

NEW YORK—Nielsen’s Gracenote unit has launched Gracenote Watch Prompts, a new dataset that allows global video platforms and services to offer facts about TV programs and movies. 

Designed to be paired with viewer preference and consumption behavior data, the new provides streamers and other video content providers with the ability to deliver more personalized viewer experiences that can increase audience tune-in and time spent.

The launch comes at a time when many surveys are reporting that consumers find it difficult to decide what to watch and traditional recommendation offerings aren't very effective. 

According to Nielsen's 2023 U.S. Streaming Content survey, 74% of consumers either don't know at all or only have a vague idea about what they want to watch when starting a streaming session, meaning a large majority are making on-the-fly viewing decisions. Furthermore, fewer than three in 10 feel that recommendations are useful in helping them find compelling content. As video platforms and services seek to monetize viewers through engagement, effective content discovery and personalized promotion are more important than ever, Gracenote explained. 

Gracenote Watch Prompts aims to overcome those issues by complementing both basic program metadata and Video Descriptors with additional information on individual TV programs and movies to drive viewer consideration. Developed using a combination of Gracenote's unmatched machine learning capabilities and human editorial expertise, the solution presents the following:

• Critical facts: Prominent award wins and praise from renowned TV and film critics, providing evidence of content quality
• Talent spotlights: Showcases popular actors and creators to appeal to viewer preferences
• Content comparisons: Analogies based on thematically similar content presenting new frames of reference

For example, the information page for the TV show "Succession" could highlight its 13 Emmy Award wins, including two in the prestigious "Outstanding Drama Series" category, to educate a potential viewer on the show's critical acclaim and motivate sampling. Or the "Barbie" page could describe the offering as "Legally Blonde" meets "The Lego Movie," providing a relatable analogy based on beloved films to pique interest, the company explained. 

Gracenote leverages a mix of machines and humans to bring Watch Prompts to customers. Advanced machine learning techniques help to automate creation of content snippets based on the company's unmatched video data on millions of program titles. Human editors with language, market and content expertise review outputs to ensure accuracy and quality, creating a feedback loop that helps the algorithms continually improve over time.

"Streaming services are challenged to continually enhance the user experiences they offer to delight viewers, increase time spent and reduce churn," said Trent Wheeler, chief product officer at Gracenote. "Watch Prompts leverages the expertise of Gracenote's human editors along with scalability enabled by machine learning to deliver an entirely new dataset that will help our customers evolve and meet these challenges."

Gracenote has a long history of powering the user experiences of the world's biggest and most innovative TV providers. The company's gold-standard program metadata, imagery and ID offerings fuel modern video user experiences and contextual advertising capabilities. As the entertainment industry continues its evolution, Gracenote is transforming its offerings in step to ensure customers can effectively leverage programming to maximize engagement and monetization.

Gracenote will exhibit at IBC 2024 in Amsterdam from September 13 - 16.

NEW YORK—The key challenge facing publishers of digital video—whether they’re broadcasters, publishers or even creators of online courses—is finding a way to increase viewer engagement, according to a new report from JW Player, a video services platform provider.

Based on the findings of a survey taken in January, the report, “Digital Video Industry Insights for Media Companies in 2021,” says half of respondents identified increasing viewer engagement as their No. 1 challenge. Among TV and film sites, more than 75% said viewer engagement topped their list.

“With more digital media consumers online (especially since the pandemic), increasing engagement has become essential,” the report said. 

However, respondents noted several other key challenges. For instance, 54% of broadcasters identified reaching audiences on new screens and doing more with less as other key challenges. Forty-two percent of publishers saw insufficient advertising demand as a major challenge. Respondents from the eLearning sector said doing more with less was their top challenge, the report said.

More than half of the digital video publishers responding identified increasing video ad revenue as their top goal for 2021. The survey found that news and lifestyle media in particular are searching for ways to grow ad revenue, it said.

The pandemic has increased video viewing, and as a consequence brands are starting their own digital media outlets, including online learning courses and live fitness streams, it said. 

The report looked at what characteristics brands starting their own digital media outlets, especially those launching online courses, are looking for in  online video.  A total of 44% of respondents identified reduced video platform cost, 40% said ease of use and 30% selected scalability and performance of live video delivery, it said. (Respondents could choose more than one characteristic.)

“New media are looking for flexible and customizable APIs [Application Programming Interfaces] that can easily integrate within their existing content management software,” the report said, noting that APIs are enabling video players to be integrated with a brand’s web infrastructure.

The report is based on the findings of a survey of publishers, broadcasters, online course creators and other digital content producers conducted in January 2021. A total of 1,812 people responded, and 221 companies were represented. Of the companies, 51% were publishers, 14% broadcasters and 12% were online course creators.

More information is available on the company’s website. 

COVID-19 has compelled broadcasters to use home-based workers extensively. In doing so, both sides have had to endure lower-quality performance and productivity in content creation, plus the reduced capabilities available to home-based users compared to those working in production centers and studios. 

These problems have arisen because a typical broadcaster’s network infrastructure was never designed to serve so many remote connections and functions. Add the inferior cybersecurity available to home-based users (and the incursion risks this poses to broadcasters), and working from home has been a necessary workaround at best.

Fortunately, there is an available, feasible, and affordable IT solution to all of these problems. It is the innately secure communications protocol known as Teradici PC-over-IP (Teradici PCoIP). 

In place of traditional two-way data communications, Teradici PCoIP compresses, encrypts and transmits only video pixels from the broadcaster to home-based/remote users. The actual file remains within the broadcaster’s domain, with any interactions going through a secure interface that keeps the content safe. 

On the home workers’ display screens, everything looks the same. The video quality is lossless and color accurate, while the entire experience of connecting from any remote location via PCoIP looks and feels like using a conventional computer at work. Video editing performance is unaffected because Teradici PCoIP technology can deliver full-motion video up to 4K at high frame rates to home-based/remote computers.

Teradici PCoIP has been adopted by many industry players including Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) of Star Wars fame. Because PCoIP sends pixels rather than complete files, its bandwidth requirements are relatively small. This is why ILM uses PCoIP to share dailies between its San Francisco headquarters and collaborators worldwide. Doing so avoids sending proprietary video files as large as 100GB or larger over the internet.

On August 11, 2020 at 2pm eastern, Teradici Technical Marketing Principal Ian Main will share how Teradici PCoIP (and other Teradici products) can provide broadcasters and their home-based workers with a secure, efficient, and scalable virtual work environment. He will also detail how ILM and other users are using PCoIP today, and how easily broadcasters can implement PCoIP in their own IT infrastructures.

To register click here.

BURLINGTON, Mass.—The rise of social media, digital and smartphones as go-to sources of news and information for millions of consumers is transforming how broadcasters view their role as a critical source of news, weather and sports, says Ray Thompson, director of Market Solutions, Broadcast & Media at Avid.

“Just repurposing stories that go out over traditional OTA [over-the-air] broadcast won’t cut it,” he says Thompson. “Having a social/digital strategy is a requirement as data shows more and more people rely on mobile and social platforms for their news/sports source.”

To register for the “Social Media Platforms –Profit or Problems” webinar, Nov. 21, click here.

Thompson and Craig Wilson, product evangelist, Broadcast & Media at Avid, will present their perspectives on the evolution of TV newsrooms as they leverage social, digital and mobile Nov. 21 at 1 p.m. EDT during the “Social Media Platforms –Profit or Problems” TVTechnology webinar, sponsored by Avid Technology. (Full disclosure: I am moderating this hour-long webinar.)

In the past, journalists focused their efforts on creating news stories for TV or one particular news show or bulletin with specific deadlines, says Wilson. “Now they need to be able to produce across many platforms and meet almost instant deadlines.”

No longer do journalists hold stories till airtime. Today, they are looking to publish as soon as they have information and then refine and update the story throughout the day as well as produce a package for the evening news, says Wilson.

As a consequence, workflows and the thinking of journalists and news managers are changing in newsrooms. “Journalists now have lots of competing demands for their time, and it requires a new, creative mindset to deliver throughout the day on these platforms and then on-air,” adds Wilson.

One workflow strategy that’s popular among stations is merging traditional TV news teams with digital/social media teams into a single unit. “Even if they are not merged, stations want them to collaborate and to be as efficient as possible so they can pool their resources and deliver the biggest bang for their buck in terms of content production,” adds Wilson.

While disruptive to traditional TV newsroom workflows, these new platforms offer broadcasters that leverage their full potential benefits that extend far beyond bringing news to consumers faster, says Thompson.

“As producers develop content, they may be publishing to different social, web and app platforms that are built to cater to different demographics,” he says. “This can help stations realize higher ad rates and higher CPMs as the ads served are easier to deliver to a specific audience and demographic group.”

The availability of analytics about consumers of news on these social and digital platforms enables broadcasters and other content creators to deliver metrics to ad buyers looking to reach different groups with ads, he says.

“To be successful, content creators and publishers must deliver a TV-like experience –meaning no buffering—to any device, anywhere, anytime, then measure both the network –meaning reliability--and the playback, including who is watching, for how long and potentially where, and last but not least, develop a more catered experience based on the types of content and shows a user is watching,” says Thompson.

To register for the “Social Media Platforms –Profit or Problems” webinar, Nov. 21, click here.