Fantastic write-up in the IBC Daily of our panel session on tech leaders' strategy on the opening day of the IBC Conference.
Thanks again to Grace Boswood, Cristina Gomila and Sinead Greenaway for their candid discussion about their tech strategies.
I was left with a huge sense of optimism for our industry, and clarity around the role of tech in enabling established broadcasters and operators to evolve and adapt to the changing markets.
Some of the key points from our discussion:
-- Tech investment has to justify itself vs. investing in content or marketing
-- As such, every tech project must either make new money (increasing focus on ad tech) or save money by delivering effiencies
-- Cloud remains top priority, particularly for enabling more flexible live production and news operations
-- A focus on simpler, modular, software-based solutions that are interoperable and API-driven
-- Linear channels remain important, still accounting for the majority of viewing and revenue
-- AI for its own sake is not a priority. Where AI features in the plans, it's about delivering specific operational benefits. Speech to text top of the list.
-- Increasingly tighter integration between production innovation (including AR and VR studios and graphics overlays), and the apps for consuming that content.
-- Serving YouTube and short-form video is important.
-- Broadcasters don't want to build fundamental components in house but are acting as SIs to glue the vendor-provded modules together.