Norigin Media’s Post

Transcript

Hi, welcome to IBM TV, coming to you from IBC in Amsterdam. My name is Stuart Ray from the IBM. I'm joined on the sofas this afternoon by RJ Anand, the CEO of Norwegian Media. RJ, welcome. Thank you for joining us. Thank you very much. So Norwegian Media provide premium streaming TV tech solutions to broadcasters around the world. Can you give us an exciting update from this year? I think exciting and TV's every year and this year. Where we're taking the user experience to the hands of the developers who build these user experiences. Broadcasters come in all sizes and shapes. A content provider comes in all sizes and shapes. And because content is being generated at a rapid speed these years, we're being able to create big, small, medium and fantastic apps for all of them to be on the multitude of app stores that there are. What we are is a UI UX solutions company, but we're a technology company. So what we do is we either reduce the technology for the ones who don't understand. Or increase it for the ones who want more control. So the bigger broadcasters can be flamboyant with their apps, their user interfaces, they can have a lot of animations, or the smaller ones can just be on the App Store with minimal need to be just available for the consumer to find their content. OK, now we've noticed you're doing a lot of work in the US market at the moment. What are the, are there any differences between the US and the European markets? Well, we watch content in both the continents. I think streaming is the same at the end of the day. But there is a, I think the biggest difference is, first of all, the flamboyance of the US market, which is bigger, greater in every sense of the word, simply because there's a lot happening in terms of being a content creator. First of all, from the West Coast to make sure that there's fantastic content that still comes in from there, which is consumed all over the world. Because of which the US also is simpler in some ways because all of the content comes from the USA. Consumed in the US, in Europe, because of the regional aspects of the way the countries are, the regions are whether we're from Scandinavia, where there are certain needs of subtitles, where we understand English better than the rest of Europe. And then there's Germany in Central Europe where dubbing is quite important and there are certain features that's relevant to the European markets, which is not probably needed in the US markets in terms of monetization and ads. We have more rules and you know, GDPR, GDPR in Europe that's not available or needed in America. So the consumers respect is different in these markets, which also allows the US to be more aggressive in terms of getting across beautiful, fantastic features in streaming media, which is the the center of the home right now. So you can do a lot more to monetize ads to reach the consumer and to get things done. How this translates in in America is it's dominance on certain devices, which is like Roku and and Android TV and Apple TV, which is huge. Samsung, LG, the other players are coming into the market, but their relevance is. Little bit lower in Europe, we see the fragmentation just increased by the day. There's no consolidation in smart TV's and connected TV's, which means that we have a business which makes us allow us to come in with technologies that float very, very well across all these platforms. So when we build apps for small, medium, large broadcasters in Europe or America, they're different. But at the end of the day, we do more creative and free things in America and we try to do things that we've never seen before. But in Europe, I would say that it's a more conservative. Market which allows broadcasters to be similar in all of these countries. OK, we're always interested in how providers are using generative AI, of course. So how does Norwegian use AI internally or in your solutions? Artificial intelligence is the word of the year. I think we need to say it in every interview. So we're using it is how are we using it where a developer company, we're an engineering company. We're using the tools that's available, made available by large and great companies like Google and Microsoft. First of all, allowing a engineer to do their mundane jobs with better tools, with machine learning with, with, with AI in general. And the generative nature of AI helps us do the work a little bit better with better. Speed and quality, when you're creating code, you can actually create it with AI. You can test it with AI, you can document it with AI. And this is what we're doing, what we're doing now in 2024 in a very practical sense, as we're actually using it to make sure that we create a mandate on a framework of how 1 needs to use AI and to respect it. And to make sure that you learn how to use it to your engagement and your advantage as well. To make sure that it can be scalable in the future rather than uncontrollable from a consumer side of things. You can see companies like Netflix doing fantastic. They've always been using net, you know, AI in many senses of its term, whether they're engaging the consumer with thumbnails to see that, hey, you're, you're a consumer who watches more content to the night and you're like, you know, comedy shows. And just because you want to watch a dark movie, it doesn't mean that you'd get a thumbnail without a smile. And these are the kind of engagements that AI has been helping Netflix and I think that with streaming TV, they've been leading the race with in the last 10 years and they're certainly with AI as well, which means that the. Schumer is benefiting with these tools as well. So we're using tools today. We're trying to figure out the mandates. We're trying to draw lines, but we're certainly trying to engage our engineers to encourage them to use AI tools that they are in the market. Great. RJ, we're out of time, but thank you very much. Fascinating to talk to you. Join us again next time on IRBM TV.