ULL-timate goal: How streamers are prioritising ultra-low latency

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With audiences expecting instant global information, and broadcasters competing against social platforms that deliver clips within seconds, the race is on to deliver ultra-low latency (ULL) as a competitive edge.

“Latency and quality now go hand in hand,” explains Dr Anthony Basham, President, SCTE. “It’s great hearing the ball hit the net, but if you can’t see it because the picture is blown out, that’s no good.” 

Although increasingly important to live sports, interactive formats, and real‑time streaming, low‑latency media delivery is most often impeded by the simplest, most integral steps in the content delivery workflow. For example, delays don’t only result from video processing, compression, and caching, but also from the redistribution of content over digital networks.

As the industry pushes to solve this crucial issue, IBC365 explores the two key, contrasting approaches to the ULL goal shaping media transport today.

The first is from BBC R&D, which emphasises open standards to achieve ULL at scale. The other, from Eluvio, claims to have demonstrated the same with a just-in-time software pipeline that runs as an application protocol on top of the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP).  

Eluvio targets satellite replacement

ULL streaming has long been one of the industry’s most persistent challenges, but Michelle Munson, CEO, Co‑Founder, Eluvio, believes the sector has finally reached a turning point. After a summer of large‑scale testing, she says the company’s Content Fabric has demonstrated that ULL can be delivered consistently, globally, and without the trade‑offs that have historically held back adoption. 

During the FIFA World Cup, Eluvio streamed all 105 matches in a paid commercial pilot with a tier‑one US broadcaster, designed specifically to validate performance in a real‑world, direct‑to‑consumer environment. The results, Munson says, were unambiguous.  

“We were ahead of: the broadcast by seven to 10 seconds per match; the best streaming service by 15 to 25 seconds; and the other streaming services by 30 seconds to a minute consistently.” 

What impressed partners most, she says, was the uniformity of that performance. According to Munson, latency didn’t vary by region, and the system didn’t degrade under load. For global sports events – where millions watch the same moment simultaneously – that consistency is critical. Fans expect to see outcomes on the live stream first, not after social media or stadium cheers have already spoiled the moment. 

However, the implications extend beyond consumer streaming. Eluvio’s stack also supports B2B broadcast feeds, which require extremely tight latency budgets. “Those have an imperative for ultra‑low latency in broadcast – well under 500 milliseconds, consistently around the world,” Munson reveals. “In the US, in some cases, we’re well under 20 milliseconds of broadcast.” That level of performance, she argues, is what enables realistic replacement of satellite distribution. 

Munson rejects the idea that this is simply about gaining a small competitive edge. “When you’re 10 seconds ahead of broadcast, 15 seconds ahead of best‑case world streaming, and typically 30 seconds ahead, you’re in a different category,” she says. Historically, low‑latency solutions have forced compromises – sacrificing security, ease of deployment, universality, or cost. “Until now, it hasn’t really been something people could lean into because it was either compromising those other things… or it wasn’t good enough.” 

Eluvio’s approach is based on the Content Fabric’s zero‑copy architecture. Instead of the traditional cloud/CDN workflow – transcoding, packaging, chunking, pushing through CDNs, and caching at the edge – the fabric creates a componentised, reference‑based representation of the content directly in the network. “It’s literally the same parts in the network,” Munson says. Live streams, VOD, clips and B2B feeds are all generated from the same underlying objects, without republishing or re‑packaging. 

The benefits are substantial: no egress fees, no storage of multiple renditions, instant clip creation, and core bandwidth that remains constant regardless of audience size. This architecture also underpins the platform’s latency performance. The fabric’s just‑in‑time video processing pipeline fetches and assembles object parts with no added latency, delivering uniform results worldwide. Munson says full‑season customers see the same metrics “game after game after game.” 

Compatibility is another pillar of the design. The fabric accepts standard broadcast inputs – secure reliable transport (SRT) protocol, transport stream, real-time messaging protocol (RTMP) – and outputs standards, dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH) and HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). It supports high-efficiency video coding (HEVC) multiview, Widevine, FairPlay, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and HDR10. During the World Cup pilot, Munson says: “We were given the feeds literally a few days before it started and just go.” No workflow overhaul, no player changes, no custom APIs were needed.

The market response has been immediate. “Our company has just exploded this year,” Munson enthuses. Broadcasters want simplification, efficiency, and picture quality; leagues want global reach and new monetisation opportunities. Eluvio is now working with European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR), United Rugby Championship (URC), and Cricket Australia, all of whom have expanded their use of the platform. A major US tier‑one league – “second to none” – is also onboard, though not yet publicly named. 

For Munson, the momentum reflects a broader shift in how live sports are consumed and valued. ULL is no longer a specialist feature – it’s becoming the baseline expectation for global events. Further, she believes the Content Fabric shows the industry doesn’t need to compromise to achieve it. 

BBC edges closer to broadcast‑level streaming latency  

As the UK edges toward an internet‑first broadcasting future, BBC R&D has been testing whether live IP streaming can finally match the speed and reliability of traditional broadcast. A large‑scale low‑latency DASH (LL‑DASH) trial, conducted across thousands of devices and viewer sessions during the Wimbledon Championships, suggests broadcast‑like delays are now achievable in real homes  –  and that the corporation may soon be ready to make the leap. 

Phil Layton, Head, Applied Research, Media, BBC Research and Development, says the pressure from audiences has become impossible to ignore. “We always get viewer feedback about social media getting there first, or hearing cheers from next door,” he says. “People interact with our services differently now. The goal is to make IP as good or better than broadcast.” 

That urgency has shaped the BBC’s low‑latency work since 2018, culminating in a three‑phase trial that tested LL‑DASH across more than 20,000 sessions and 5,000 IP addresses. The trial achieved a client latency target of 5.96 seconds and end‑to‑end delays of around nine seconds, taking into account encoding and transport – broadly comparable to digital terrestrial TV (DTT). 

Chris Poole, Lead R&D Engineer, BBC, says the organisation’s decision to use LL‑DASH was driven by standards, compatibility, and cost. “LL‑DASH has advantages in backwards compatibility, which reduces deployment cost,” he rationalises. “We can encode the same media and make it available for low‑latency or normal delivery.” 

Other emerging approaches, such as low latency, low delay (L3D) DASH, are on the BBC’s radar but were not tested within the trial’s timeframe. “We’re interested in how performance may differ,” Poole says. 

The trial began with a small beta‑user test, then expanded to 21 device families – and their 500 model numbers – before scaling up during Wimbledon. The BBC provided a low‑latency stream of BBC Two’s coverage, reaching peak audiences of 30,000 and generating around 700,000 sessions. 

Across all phases, the results were consistent: low‑latency streaming performed well, with only a slight increase in the proportion of viewers experiencing impairments such as buffering. “For every 100 viewers, low‑latency streaming added roughly one additional viewer experiencing more than a trivial impairment,” Poole says. “Performance was pretty good.” 

Preparing for the future

The BBC believes that improvements to client‑side players can reduce some of those lingering impairments. “We see patterns suggesting the player could be improved,” Poole says. “With more work, performance could improve.” 

Device variability remains a challenge. Layton says plug tests and test streams have not yet driven significant industry‑wide improvements. “Device manufacturers aren’t necessarily preparing for what’s coming,” he comments. The BBC has contributed enhancements to MPEG-DASH via JavaScript (dash.js) back to the open‑source community, but inconsistencies across TVs and streaming sticks remain. “If we deploy this, we want it in both iPlayer and Freely,” Layton adds. “There’s work to ensure all those devices are capable.” 

The looming possibility of DTT switch‑off around 2034 adds pressure. Layton acknowledges the “ticking clock,” but stresses that the transition must be audience‑led. “By 2034, the number of DTT homes will be small,” he admits. “We want IP to be an attractive place for people to end up, not a forced transition.” 

The BBC is also exploring future technologies, including Media over QUIC (MoQ). Poole says the corporation has long been interested in QUIC‑based video transport. “We’ll start with healthy scepticism,” he says. “We need to look at commercial deployment. It takes a long time to transition millions of devices.” 

For now, the R&D team is reviewing the trial results and preparing recommendations. The decision to roll out low‑latency streaming across iPlayer will sit beyond the department. “We’re interested in other technologies as well,” Poole concludes. “We’re thinking about how we get more information on the pros and cons of those.” 

What the trial has made clear is that broadcast‑like latency over IP is no longer theoretical. It is technically achievable, operationally viable, and – with further refinement – increasingly ready for prime time. 

Behind the scenes: Vigil

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To embrace the stark, crystalline reality of the Arctic, Blazing Griffin’s Gareth Bishop leveraged colour compression techniques, LED volumes, and plates captured on an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean.

After the claustrophobic submarine of season one and the Gulf tensions of season two, the BBC’s Emmy Award-winning thriller Vigil heads for the Arctic in its third run. With Suranne Jones and Rose Leslie reprising their roles as DCI Amy Silva and DI Kirsten Longacre, the new case takes them to a remote research station in Svalbard to investigate the murder of a scientist.

Produced by World Productions (also known for Line of Duty) in association with ITV Studios, and directed by Gareth Bryn and Faye Gilbert, the six‑part series was shot on location across Svalbard and Scotland, combining photography with practical sets, virtual production, and VFX.

Bishop worked closely with DOPs Ryan Kernaghan ICS, Emily Almond Barr, and Nic Lawson, as well as Producer Marcus Wilson, to build a visual identity that felt both new and continuous with Vigil’s world when he graded the series in DaVinci Resolve Studio.

A stark landscape 

Despite the icy environment, Vigil S3 is not a VFX‑heavy show. Some snow was added in post, and a few buildings were removed to enhance the sense of remoteness. There is an explosion, a gunfight, and several car chases, but no major VFX set pieces. 

According to Bishop, the central research hub’s Bond-like sleekness is much the same in person as it is on screen.

“There’s very little Arctic stuff that’s actually visual effects,” he says. “We used simple grain techniques and Luma keys in the highlights, just to make it look a little frostier in some close-ups, but honestly, it really is that cold. Sometimes, even BBC execs thought things were VFX, and they weren’t.” 

The key difference, he notes, is the behaviour of light. “The ice doesn’t reflect very much when you’re up there because it’s so cold. When it’s that frozen, it doesn’t reflect like we’re used to. Plus, the air is so clean, so when you see DI Longacre on the boat travelling to Svalbard in episode one, that clarity is just how it is.” 

This natural contrast shaped the grade. Exterior material from Svalbard, largely shot by Kernaghan (who was also DOP for Kneecap), arrived with crisp edges, deep shadows, and minimal atmospheric haze. “There’s so much contrast in the image already,” Bishop adds. “You don’t get mist or cloud. It’s beautiful contrast.” 

Building an Arctic LUT

Working in DaVinci Resolve Studio with an Academy Colour Encoding System (ACES) workflow and HDR delivery in mind, Bishop and Kernaghan developed a single LUT for the entire series, using camera tests shot in Glasgow ahead of production. 

 “It wasn’t anything complex,” Bishop says. “Maybe a little bit of film emulation blended in, but mostly it was something we built through grades.” 

On the other hand, the Arctic palette required careful control. Bishop leaned on Resolve’s colour compression techniques to tame colours that felt too saturated for the environment. “You don’t want extreme colours in the Arctic,” he insists. “I use tools that let me ease colours off, compress things. It keeps everything in that world.” 

Although Vigil has an established visual identity – steel, chrome, and clinical surfaces – Bishop and the DOPs were not asked to replicate previous seasons. “We took a guide from the offices, but really, this is a new story in a completely new location. We weren’t going to do anything crazy, but we weren’t matching seasons one or two.” 

Producer Marcus Wilson provided direction while giving the team space to explore. “He’s very hands‑on but gives you creative space,” Bishop recalls. “He keeps it on track.” 

Virtual production that feels real 

Virtual production supervisor Ben Saffer and the team at Supervision VP captured plates in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, using the URSA Cine 12K LF to bring the Arctic environments back to Scotland for use on the LED volume. 

The decision to shoot extensively in Svalbard paid off. “They realised it was going to be cheaper to go out and shoot it for real than spend a lot on digital effects,” Bishop says. “And the show is much better for it.” 

For Bishop, one of the most striking sequences is of a car driving across the Arctic landscape in episode one. The opening wide shot from Svalbard sets up the sense of place, but the close-ups of the actors in the car were shot in a volume.

“That’s because they went out there and shot plates,” he explains. “They captured a lot of reflections, then set the camera in the volume so it would flare off the windows, and you’d get the background on the screen. It helps massively.”

Volume material can present challenges, though, according to Bishop. “Sometimes you get strange colour shifts off the windows. You can have issues with the brightness of lights hitting the screens. Sometimes plates offline aren’t in Rec.709, and you have to push them. Sometimes you see grain structure coming through because you’ve pushed it so much.” However, these issues were minimised because the production captured such high-quality plates.

“Often in these kinds of shows you’d expect things to be incredibly complex. [However,] this was very well organised. Trying to shoot practically and match cameras as much as possible made a big difference.”

Minimal VFX, maximum reality 

Back in Scotland, interiors including the Svalbard police station (shot at Stirling University, Scotland), offices, and homes required another approach for the final touches of the show. According to Bishop, the grade for the Glasgow police office needed to be “quite strong” to achieve a clean, consistent look, but overall, the work was straightforward.

Beyond that, Lewis Carmichael, Finishing Editor, Blazing Griffin, handled the online element, adding snow, screen replacements, and environmental tweaks. 

“I think the success of the show lies in the simplicity of the approach,” Bishop concludes. “They shoot as much as possible for real. We built a LUT that respects the environment and let the Arctic speak for itself.” 

 

RTS Convention: “The prize for standing still simply isn't an option”

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AI was largely sidelined at the annual RTS gathering where the fate of public service media took precedence

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Consolidation of UK TV seems increasingly inevitable even if, equally inevitably, each broadcaster vows to keep calm and carry on.

At the Royal Television Society’s annual convention in London there was unanimous agreement that change was unstoppable but differences of opinion about the extent.

“The prize for standing still simply isn't an option,” said Jane Turton OBE, RTS Chair and Deputy CEO, Banijay Entertainment. “The stakes are high.”

Describing the “unprecedented pace and scale of change” Sophie Jones, CEO, RTS talked of “a pivotal, seismic moment unlike anything we have encountered before.”

Since the RTS last gathered in Cambridge a year ago, the BBC has a new Director General, Channel 4 and ITV have installed new CEOs and there’s a new President at Five.

The lawyers and financiers have been busy too. Internationally, Paramount's planned merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney's full acquisition of Hulu and Fox’s pending £16.5bn acquisition of Roku are signs that scale

At home, All3Media’s £6bn merger with Banijay will create the world’s largest independent production company (though ‘indie’ seems an inappropriate badge for a group of this scale); Sky is buying ITV’s media and entertainment business for £1.6bn; and Channel 4, the most vulnerable of the main UK broadcasters, is setting up its own production division to fend off attack.

The BBC faces most scrutiny. With licence fee income fallen by approximately £1.3bn over the past decade, equivalent to 25% of its funding and with Charter settlement uncertain, it is making significant cuts to news, sports and media technology.

“We are having to make half a billion pounds of savings and we don't yet know what our future [financial agreement] will be,” said DG Matt Brittin. “The way the BBC is currently funded by the licence fee is a busted flush. We need a new mechanism if we're going to have the sort of scale of public service media that we've had in the past.”

The former Google Europe boss called for a more open approach to partnerships, arguing that the BBC should be present wherever audiences consume media, from YouTube to Spotify and TikTok.

“We're trying to reinvent our apps at some speed. iPlayer was incredible when it launched; it's way off the technology today. That’s no fault of the people working on it but we have to invest in that so we can fulfil our mission in better exposing audiences to this incredible content.”

Channel 4 future

Discussions are underway with Channel 4 about distributing its programming on iPlayer, provided a way is found for the commercial broadcaster to generate ad-revenues. The pressure is on both PSBs to merge completely, something that CEO Priya Dogra ruled out.

“I don't want Channel 4 to be taken over by the BBC,” she said. “Consolidation often leads to less choice whereas collaboration can increase choice because it allows organisations with complementary strengths to work together.”

Wayne Garvie, a former BBC head of entertainment, now President, International Production, Sony Pictures Television thought the writing was on the wall.

“If Channel 4 became part of a wider public service broadcasting structure there could be benefits,” he said. “As things stand, Channel 4 has a challenge around identity and long-term sustainability. Frankly, it's difficult to see how Channel 4 survives indefinitely in its current form. That's not their fault. The market is changing around them every week.”

He was more positive about the BBC’s chances. “It's got a brilliant new leader who is clearly not afraid to make difficult decisions. Obviously, the BBC won't be able to do all the things it used to do, because audiences have changed. PSBs can no longer rely on the linear schedule in the way they once did. But let's be positive about the future.”

Mega-merger of UK PSB

Acknowledging that PSBs still produce world class shows, Heather Jones, Chief Creative Officer EMEA and General Manager UK, Hearst Networks said content alone was not enough.

“You also need a fantastic [streaming] product and you need to understand discoverability and marketing,” she said. “The businesses that are furthest ahead across all three areas are the streamers and Sky because they've nailed each of those elements in a way that perhaps public service broadcasters have not.”

Calling the BBC “Europe’s university of media” and saying “no-one else would have commissioned Peaky Blinders”, writer, director and executive producer Steven Knight advised the BBC to sell TV licences in the US.

“Anyone in America who wants to get unbiased news, for example, then buy a licence for iPlayer. It’s only [the cost of] a subscription. I understand the BBC is not allowed to make a profit so all revenues should be returned into programmes.”

Jeremy Clarkson was prepared to go further than anyone by contemplating a full scale merger of all UK broadcasters, Sky included.

“If we had one great big broadcaster, let's call it ‘Britflix’, perhaps everyone could come together and make fewer programmes, but make them bigger, better and properly funded,” he said.

Clarkson added that he would ringfence news and have that paid for by the licence fee.

“The biggest problem with social media is accuracy and the tendency to mistake opinion for news,” he said. “Having said that, I think old media is suffering from the same problem to a dangerous degree. Opinion increasingly being dressed up as news.”

Pressed as to why broadcasters are not discussing collective consolidation, Sky’s Chief Advertising and Content Officer and CEO, Sky Studios Cécile Frot-Coutaz said, “We have different business models and shareholding structures.”

The sector had collaborated more in recent years, she said, adding that UK broadcaster competition is no longer with each other but YouTube and streamers.

Yet she doubled down on Sky’s “advantage” as a platform for PSB content. The Comcast-owned business is in the process of buying ITV channels and committed to maintaining news as a public service.

“The goal of our transformation is to create a business model with more revenue streams that is sustainable to scale content. We know that content is super important but so is the technology that goes with it since as a viewer that effects your ability to engage with a platform,” she said. “Bringing an ad-funded broadcaster with ad-funded streaming and subscription TV will create scale.”

“Focus on what you do well”

Richard Halton, Country Manager, Roku UK said he believed the global industry will wind up with just a handful of major TV operating-system platforms.

“That means a platform has to be incredibly respectful of the consumer, who simply wants to find something to watch quickly and of content partners, who need revenue, data and proper brand credit for the programmes they've invested in and produced. Platform businesses that understand both sides of that equation are the ones that will succeed.”

As BBC head of strategy Halton was responsible for the BBC’s first YouTube deal in 2006 and saw how online platforms would become more important in how audiences choose what to watch.

“Audiences now sit at both ends of the spectrum,” he said. “At one end, you've got niche FAST channels serving highly specific interests. At the other, you've got major shared experiences like the World Cup, where broadcasters come together to create huge moments for mass audiences. Platforms need to support both with tailored search, recommendations and discovery.”

What's remarkable about the UK content economy isn't just its ability to create new shows, he added, it's also the depth of its archive and IP built over decades.

“One of the most profitable streaming services globally is Crunchyroll, which proves the value of truly understanding a specific audience and serving it exceptionally well.

“That may be the future for many broadcasters,” he said. “Rather than trying to be everything to everyone, focus on what you do uniquely well.

“The BBC's specialist expertise remains among the best in the world, and that's a strength it should continue to build on.”

Clarkson: Event TV has to go big

Clarkson was sharing the stage with his daughter, Em Clarkson, who has built her own media career online including with the chart-topping podcast ‘Should I Delete That’.

Taking note of the rise of creator-led content the veteran broadcaster believed that TV should go big or go home.

Ever since I started in television the argument has always been the same,” he said. “We need to make fewer programmes, but make them bigger and better. The problem is there was never really any urgency to do that.

“We've all carried on making lots of programmes because it's very difficult to stop. At some point, you've got to put money in the attic, as it were. You've got to keep the machine running. But I think we're now reaching a point where it has become imperative.

“Cinema is struggling and will increasingly become more like theatre - a premium experience rather than a mass one.

“Meanwhile, there's a huge wave of creator-led content coming up from underneath. And because of that, I genuinely believe television has to become bigger.

“It has to do fewer things, but do them on a much grander scale.”

He said that current discussions with Amazon Prime about a successor to Clarkson's Farm “will have to be bigger and ambitious enough to stand out against everything else that's competing for attention.

“We've always had event television, but there's far less of it than there used to be. I think television now has to lean back into that.”

The rise of sports social

Gary Neville, former right-back and co-founder of soccer content creators The Overlap, rejected suggestions that broadcasters should attempt to compete directly with creator-led formats.

"What I don't understand is why people think the BBC, ITV or Sky should be competing directly with something like The Overlap," he said, in a session devoted to the differences between legacy and social media’s ability to reach sports fans. "They can never be the same thing."

The appeal of independent digital formats, he argued, lies in their freedom. Conversations can be closer to the way fans discuss football in pubs.

"On The Overlap, I can swear, I can be more relaxed and I can take conversations into places that fans would naturally take them," he said. "Broadcasters can't do that. They operate under Ofcom rules."

Traditional broadcasters and creator-led platforms serve different audience needs, he said, even when discussing the same stories.

“When myself, Roy [Keane] or Ian [Wright] appear on TV we might say the same thing we’ve said on our programme but we say it in a different way.”

Built around flagship formats such as The Fan Debate and Stick to Football, his business is preparing to launch a daily football news podcast in response to growing audience demand.

"When Ruben Amorim was sacked at 11 o'clock on a Monday, we didn't have a programme for ten days," Neville said. "We looked at that and thought: that's not right."

The same challenge emerged during developments surrounding Manchester City's 115 charges, where major news broke days before The Overlap was due to air.

"People don't want to wait six days for analysis anymore," he said. "They don't even want to wait six hours.”

Signals to watch

The panel discussed which signal, of all the data collected about audience viewing habits, was the one they valued most. For Neville, this was audience sentiment. “A couple of hours after a programme goes out, I'll read the first 20 or 30 comments from people who've watched it. That gives me a feel for what people actually think.

“Sometimes they're critical. Sometimes they're harsh. That's fine. What people are genuinely thinking about your content is still the most important thing.”

Alex Kay-Jelski, Director, BBC Sport looks toward completion rate. “If you've made a 60-second video, are people watching all 60 seconds? If you've made a 60-minute documentary and everyone switches off after 10 minutes, then you probably haven't made a very good documentary.

“People can sit there and say, ‘We had 10 million people visit the live page.’ But if the live page was rubbish, then all you've done is show 10 million people something rubbish. That's not good for your brand.”

For Nikki Doucet, CEO, Women's Super League it starts with the product itself.

“If people care about what's happening on the pitch, they'll want to watch. They'll consume more content. Everything else follows from creating a competition that fans genuinely care about.”

The advice of Fiona Wood, Strategy Director, of All3Media’s Little Dot Studios was to focus on engagement.

“Don’t obsess over follower counts. Subscribers and followers are increasingly vanity metrics. You don't have to follow a channel anymore to be served its content. The algorithm has completely changed that dynamic. You can overlook a lot of important moments if you're only focused on total views. Engagement shows you where niche communities are forming and where audiences are genuinely connecting with content."

 

BBC must be an 'antidote to the algorithm', says BBC boss Matt Brittin

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The BBC faces a "moment of real jeopardy" as it navigates unprecedented technological, financial and societal change, according to Director General Matt Brittin.

Speaking at the RTS London Convention, Brittin argued that while the BBC remains one of the world's most trusted media institutions, the broadcaster must adapt rapidly to a media landscape defined by infinite choice, AI and declining trust.

“Half a billion people turn to the BBC every week," he said. "Seventy-five per cent of them are in countries with low levels of press freedom. Trust is all we've got.”

The former Google executive, who spent a decade leading the company's European operations before taking the BBC's top job, acknowledged the scale of the challenge facing both the Corporation and the wider industry.

"There is infinite choice and scarce trust," he said. "Everyone now has the ability to create content at a standard that would have required a Hollywood studio only a few years ago.

“We are polarising as a society. People feel disconnected and that's very problematic both geopolitically and domestically in the UK. PSBs have the opportunity to address some of that, to bring people together, to show us who we are and to show the world is our family.”

Alongside national moments such as Planet Earth, major sporting events and state occasions, Brittin highlighted local journalism, children's programming and trusted news as services that are increasingly difficult for commercial markets alone to sustain.

"If we reinvented public service broadcasting today, what would we do?" he asked. "One of the questions is: what is it that only the BBC should be doing?"

At the same time, Brittin suggested the Corporation must embrace new forms of distribution and rethink how audiences discover content.

He called for a more open approach to partnerships, arguing that the BBC should be present wherever audiences consume media, from YouTube and TikTok to emerging digital platforms.

“BBC News is a disinfectant for misinformation. We should be everywhere people are getting their news. If we're funded by the public, we should be available wherever the public is."

The BBC is facing significant internal pressures, including plans to deliver around £500m ($583m) of savings. BBC licence fee income has fallen by approximately £1.3 billion ($1.7bn) over the past decade in real terms, equivalent to around a quarter of the broadcaster's funding. About 60% of that decline stems from licence fee freezes, with the remaining 40% attributable to fewer households paying the licence fee.

Those pressures have already resulted in a series of cost-saving measures, including £80 million ($93m) of savings to BBC Media Tech, the division that powers the UK broadcaster’s online services like iPlayer. 

"We wouldn't guarantee any programme, channel or service can exist forever," he said. "The financial situation means we're having to look at some of those decisions a bit sooner than we might like.”

Uncertainty hangs over the next Charter settlement, the pact with the state that has seen public service broadcasters in the UK financed by a mandatory licence fee since 1946.

As part of that funding, PSBs must deliver certain types of programming, such as education, and reach all UK audiences. The current Charter fund expires at the end of 2027.

“We are having to make half a billion pounds of savings and we don't yet know what our future [financial agreement] will be,” he said. “The way the BBC is currently funded by the licence fee is a busted flush. We need a new mechanism if we're going to have the sort of scale of Public Service media that we've had in the past.”

This appears to include ending support for digital terrestrial coverage – and by extension the infrastructure provider Arqiva - in 2034 to concentrate on a streaming-only BBC service.

“If you look at on-demand consumption versus live broadcast the balance is starting to get to the point where you have to ask is [DTT] the best way to spend the licence fee.”

Among his strongest messages was the need for the BBC to differentiate itself from commercially driven platforms.

"I'd like us to be the place where the algorithm works for you," he said. "We're there to serve you."

Describing the BBC as an "antidote to the algorithm", Brittin argued that public service media can offer audiences recommendations driven by public value rather than commercial incentives.

“There's an opportunity to be a place where what we recommend is not driven by the commercial interests [of a streamer or social media platform] or their desire to get data that can help them send you the next toilet brush. That’s a great business model and [audiences] have got the choice, but I'd like the BBC to be the place where the algorithm works for you.  Someone comes to watch one thing, and we help them discover something they might never otherwise have encountered.”

However he appeared less confident of plans to promote BBC and other PSB content on the UI of YouTube and streamers which is being proposed by the government and has been opposed by digital platforms.

“It's a complicated issue because you can't simply dictate how platforms organise their services,” he said. “But there is a legitimate public policy question around how content that's funded in the public interest remains discoverable.”

He described the industry as being in an "AI take-off" moment.

"There's a danger that six tech companies will control access to information in the future, and the creation of information and misinformation,” he warned.#

Brittin even revealed he’d been “sent” a 50-minute episode of Doctor Who generated by AI. The long running BBC IP is currently on pause after a co-production deal with Disney was not renewed.

“It's pretty good,” he said of the AI-generated sci-fi, quickly adding, “I don't think anything we do should be replaced by AI but there are lots of places where AI can help us make the licence fee go further.”

Having wielded the axe to Media Tech the DG is still intent on reinventing iPlayer.

“We're trying to reinvent our apps at some speed. iPlayer was incredible when it launched; it's way off the technology today. That’s no fault of the people working on it but we have to invest in that so we can fulfil our mission in better exposing audiences to this incredible content.”

This strategy may well include folding Channel 4 content into iPlayer. Channel 4 is also a public service broadcaster but relies on relies on advertising for about 90% of its £1bn in revenue. Discussions are underway.

Channel 4 CEO Priya Dogra – also at the Conference – said, “The idea of a platform that showcases PSB content is something we should consider seriously. The question should be what makes sense for audiences and what serves the British public best?”

She highlighted the recently announced partnership with Paramount to represent Channel 5’s £300m-plus TV ad sales business.  Channel 4 will also be responsible for promotional slots with brands including MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, but not for ad sales for Paramount+ or Pluto TV.

“I'm proud of that deal. It brings together complementary brands and audiences, solves problems for advertisers and gives all of us greater scale,” Dogra said.

She also ruled out a full scale merger with the BBC. “To me, consolidation often leads to less choice whereas collaboration can actually increase choice because it allows organisations with complementary strengths to work together.

“It's fair to say that I don't want Channel 4 to be taken over by the BBC.”

It is also fair to say that most people in the industry think this merger is inevitable.

HBS on the Ultimate: A more ambitious, story‑led athletics presentation

SVG Europe

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Host Broadcast Services (HBS) says the tech innovations and new presentation format behind World Athletics’ Ultimate Championship marks one of the most significant shifts in athletics broadcasting in years.

“The entire production has been rebuilt around storytelling, clarity and shared audience experience,” says Stefan Koch, senior director at HBS which is host broadcaster of the new event along with TATA Communications.

The programme has been built specifically with television and digital audiences in mind,  starting with a revamp of the traditional competition timetable. Instead, WA adopted a show‑script model, where every second is planned to ensure storylines are captured and no decisive moment is missed both for broadcast and fans in the stadia.

“In athletics, competition event presentation and TV are three parts of the show working together. Here, we’re running on one rundown. You more or less see and hear the same thing at home as you are in the stadium. This is unusual and requires a new level of coordination between event, presentation and broadcast. Normally each is separate and we try to optimise. Here we do it from the beginning.”

This proved very challenging, he admitted. “We are a super experienced team, but live is always challenging.”

The most important goal was to have audience attention focused on the main events, the critical moments in each discipline.

“We have made a very tight and detailed schedule,” he explained. “For example, how we can go to the three or four key jumps in long jump and show them live, so the whole stadium and the whole TV world is on trained on these athletes at this moment.”

Just one field event is contested at a time, whenever possible, to give each athlete the full attention of the audience. The Ultimate Championship in Budapest featured three sessions across three evenings, each lasting three hours. Each session featured both a horizontal and a vertical jump, a throwing event and track finals.

“Of course there will be surprises. We are ready for that as well. We have a lot of plan Bs and Cs. But the goal is to be on all decisions — all of these ‘aha!’ moments.”

Athletics has long struggled with fragmented attention in stadiums — fans often miss key field‑event moments happening simultaneously. Koch believes the new approach addresses that. The new virtual finish line visualisations for example will also appear on stadium IMAG screens.

“Now we try to be ready with the whole crowd in the stadium and at home so viewers and spectators know that this pole vault or this high jump is decisive.”

“That’s the big change we wanted,” he stressed. “To emotionalise not only the track events, but also the field events.”

In aid of this, the field of play is transformed by a dramatic black infield, with only the competition areas in use during the session lit up to literally put athletes in the spotlight.

The Ultimate format also introduces flash interviews conducted in the arena Wimbledon Centre Court‑style. There are planned TV breaks, every half hour for three minutes during which competition is paused.

“The idea is not just for commercials. The idea is that the rights holder can do their interviews, their analysis. They can plan: ‘Okay, I have three minutes to do my own story, to prepare my own athletes who are coming up soon.’ At the same time, they know they are not missing the main competition or decisive moments

“That’s the big aim. In our opinion, it would be a game changer for athletics.”

An updated graphics package includes augmented‑reality elements, athlete headshots, refreshed visual styling and new data points. Win probabilities and projected finishing positions are also being introduced, calculated using an algorithm weighted towards recent performances and updated live. Even small design changes — such as shifting the race clock to the bottom‑centre of the screen to improve vertical‑video usability — reflect the federation’s intent to optimise for modern viewing habits.

Audio, atmosphere and immersion

A bespoke sound identity will reflect the “vibe and energy” of the Ultimate brand, according to event marketing. Live acts will ensure that each session warm-up “will start with a bang” and get spectators in the right mood.

The Ultimate’s production is also experimenting with audio capture, aiming to bring viewers closer to the athletes’ physical effort. “Our goal is to one day hear the breath and steps of the athlete on track,” Koch said. “It’s not easy because they’re running on a rubber track, and you have a lot of spectator noise in the background.”

The team is testing filters, multiple mic placements and even optional athlete‑worn microphones.

“Some athletes might be ready to wear a microphone during competition. It’s all a project. They don’t have to, but some might give it a go.

Audio makes the difference between very good and exciting. It pulls you in. It goes right to your stomach. I believe audio is super important for this sport, and it’s not easy. But it’s easier if everybody is on the same audio instead of [the noise of the crowd] being split between one field event while the other half of the stadium is roaring to another event. That’s the focus.”

More than 20 major broadcasters — including BBC, NBCUniversal, NRK, SVT, L’Équipe, Polsat and TBS — carried the event live, supported by Infront as international media‑rights partner.

HBS and TATA also have a five-year global host broadcasting services deal covering World Athletics Series events that was in June 2025.

Reimagining the finish line

Intended as a biennial event, the Ultimate features is designed to appeal to younger demographics and TV audiences with a focus on fast-paced sessions and events determined to be popular among viewers. There are limited fields for individual events consisting of defending Olympic, world and Diamond League champions and entrants determined by the WA rankings.

The Ultimate offers the largest prize pot in track and field history, with $10 million up for grabs, including $150K for individual champions, and every participating athlete set to receive prize money. Instead of medals, athletes receive a unique participation token and Ultimate Champions will each earn a trophy.

Announcing the new format World Athletics President Sebastian Coe set the bar high: ““We have said from the very beginning that we are doing things differently with the Ultimate Championship. These innovations offer a taste of how we intend to move the sport forward with this brand-new global championship, elevating athletics and its many stars while reimagining how fans will experience the inaugural edition.”

 

Virtual Finish Line: How Sony and HBS built a new data‑driven view of sprint finishes

SVG Europe

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World Athletics’ new Virtual Finish Line (VFL) system made its debut last week, offering host broadcaster HBS a near‑real‑time 3D reconstruction of the final metres of sprint races. The project, developed by Sony’s Sports Entertainment Technology Development team, combines optical tracking, computer vision and rapid 3D rendering to give directors an additional visual option during live coverage.

At the heart of the system, shown exclusively to SVG Europe ahead of the event, a 26‑camera optical‑tracking array installed at gantry height around the track. Each PTZ unit is motorised, synchronised and network‑controlled, forming a continuous capture line around the stadium. “From those cameras, we capture the video, and we also capture the motion from video analysis. With this motion data, we create the visualisation,” explained Sony engineer Koshino Sota, who oversaw the camera deployment.

The cameras feed into a Sony OB hub, where captured video and motion vectors are aggregated and converted into 3DCG. HBS receives the generated graphics in its OB truck, where directors can choose to integrate the VFL output into replays or analysis sequences.

The system is designed to feel like having “1,000 cameras everywhere,” Sota said — giving directors multiple angles and perspectives that would be impossible to achieve with physical cameras alone.

A new workflow for track and field

Hiro Hattori, General Manager of Technology for Sony’s Sports Entertainment Technology Development team, described the R&D project as a departure from traditional athletics coverage.

“This is a brand‑new approach for track and field. So that’s why my R&D team is involved,” he said. “The focus is on finish‑line reconstruction of sprint races, where margins are smallest and outcomes are decided in milliseconds. We want to create 3D visualisation footage for broadcasting, to help fans understand all of the drama.

“Our system captures every motion on the track, mainly around the finish area. Soon after capturing such motion live, we generate the 3D visualisation for the broadcasting system.”

Development and technical challenges

The proof of concept premiered in Budapest is the result of 18 months R&D and further discussions with World Athletics during the Tokyo Championships last September. Additional behind closed doors tests were then made in Japan. Sony already had experience with optical capture for football officiating, but adapting it to track required new engineering.

“We had two main challenges,” Hattori explained. “We needed to capture data with absolute precision. Even if the difference of distance [between athletes] is very, very small, it matters.”

The second challenge was to process the VFL output quickly enough to be made available like a replay.  “If we create this kind of footage one day after the event there is no value. But there is tremendous value if we can compress the workflow,” he said.

“Our motion capture is almost live. Within one second we can capture the motion data. After that we integrate the official timing data from Seiko and then create the visualisation.”

Currently this takes less than 30 seconds and the aim is to reduce that further.

The graphic visualisation workflow was developed jointly with HBS. “This part was mainly based on discussions with HBS, because they are professionals of sports broadcasting and also of fan engagement,” Hattori said.

Stefan Koch, senior director at HBS, described the process as a genuine co‑development effort with Sony and World Athletics. “It’s definitely a joint venture,” he said. “We sat together before World Championships Tokyo and asked what could we do, or what would make sense? And then we came together to this idea.”

For Koch, the appeal of the VFL was simply that the finish is the defining moment of a race, yet traditionally one of the hardest to show clearly.

“The winner of the 100m is the athlete whose chest cross the line first. That is the rule.  If you think about it, this actually means a virtual wall. Now, for the first time, we can actually show this virtual wall in reality,” he said. “What is the most important moment on track? It is that moment. Now we visualise that.”

Koch sees it as a way to give viewers a clearer, more intuitive understanding of what happened. “This is a visualisation, a new ‘aha’ moment. Seeing this, fans can understand the result and the performance so much better. If it’s a tight finish, we will always show the official Photo Finish because you want to see what the judges saw.”

HBS worked with Sony to define the angles and replay patterns directors could use. Two main options emerged: a single camera move from front to diagonal to top, or a sequence of three angles showing the finish from different perspectives. Koch said the choice depends on the race format: “In the semi‑finals, the single camera move works best because we have four [qualifying] athletes to cover. For the Ultimate Champion — the visualisation could work better by showing just their performance from three angles because it’s always about who wins.”

Camera control and presets

The camera array is fully remote‑controlled. “Each one has a motorised head, so we can control it from our video village,” Sota explained. Sony prepared multiple preset angle patterns — multi‑camera sweeps or single‑camera arcs — which HBS directors can select per race.

“We show the director a couple of examples - shorter versions, long versions, multi‑camera and single‑camera. Then they pick, for every race, what they want for the broadcast. It gives them a lot of flexibility.”

However the number of cameras trained on the athletes is less important than their angle. Most of the cameras in Budapest were positioned towards the finish line, since this is the focus of the first application though in theory an entire circuit of a race could be tracked and data-captured for CG visualisation.

“It’s important for the cameras to have line of sight onto the athletes on the track,” Sota said.

It’s also not yet practical to create 3D visualisations of races like the 1500m where athletes will bunch together onto a single lane – partly because the data gathering of movement from individuals would be obscured, partly because the on-screen presentation could look confusing. In addition, many longer duration races tend to be more strung out with a clear winner so there’s less of a compelling case for 3D storytelling at the finish line.

The motion‑capture pipeline uses computer vision and AI, trained on general human movement rather than athletics‑specific datasets. 

“For this Championship, we are just showing one kind of visualisation. Soon— maybe after the next Ultimate Championship — we will add more. You can overlay more data. You can extract more data. It will expand to another discipline,” Hattori said.

Sony also hopes to migrate parts of the processing pipeline from GPU-powered workstations into the camera itself, creating a more compact edge‑processing platform.

The next staging post for the tech could be September 2027 when the World Athletics Championships returns to Beijing 12 years on from the city’s successful staging of athletics’ flagship event and almost two decades on from the Beijing Olympic Games.

Sony is an official global partner of the World Athletics Ultimate Championship and is also providing Hawk-Eye’s video replay service for officiating.

Media industry experiencing disruption, cost and uncertainty as AI takes hold

Cable Satellite International

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AI is reshaping the global media industry from the inside out but executives driving that change say the transition is proving more complex, more expensive, and more culturally disruptive than expected.

While AI might in the long run streamline costs out of the operation, right now the industry is in the investment stage and the rising cost tokenisation is becoming a board‑level issue.

Heavy-hitters from the EBU, JioStar, Nvidia, Crunchyroll and Sky joined the discussion at the IBC conference session Technology Fit for The New Era of Broadcasting and Media.

At Crunchyroll, where 21 million subscribers stream anime in 200 countries, SVP Engineering Samir Ahmed said AI is now central to search, discovery and personalisation. But the cost of running those models is escalating.

“When you’re surfacing content for millions of global subscribers, that’s a lot of tokens,” Ahmed said. “We’re continuing to invest, but we’re also looking at how to optimise and reuse components, modular architectures, automation — anything that helps us scale without costs running away.”

India’s JioStar — one of the world’s largest commercial media operations, producing 100,000 hours of content a year for 750 million consumers — is feeling the same pressure. CTO Rajat Nigam said tokenomics is now a strategic concern.

“AI can maybe take costs out of the business, but right now it feels like it’s adding more cost in the short term. We’re cautious in our approach because of the scale we operate at.”

Nigam said JioStar has already integrated OpenAI for content search across its vast catalogue — but the cost of running those models at population scale is significant.

“It’s a good initial way to start using AI,” he said. “But when you reach steady state, that’s where costs become a major factor.”

Sky’s Group Content Services Director Gabby Redfern echoed the sentiment.

“With any new capability, there’s a business case,” she said. “We’ve had to incorporate AI costs into that. It’s another element you have to consider.”

Broadcast engineering teams face a new skills crisis

If cost is one challenge, capability is another. NVIDIA’s Director of AI for Sports, Adtech and Media Jamie Allan said the next major shift in broadcast engineering is already underway — and it’s going to be difficult.

“Broadcast engineers had to learn IT when the industry moved from metal to software,” Allan said. “Now they need to understand how AI platforms and services work with enterprise IT. It’s another ‘change is hard’ moment.”

Allan said NVIDIA sees this across every major media organisation it works with.

“It’s a new skill set we’re all going to have to bring in,” he said. “But because we’ve been through a big transition recently, it should be mentally easier to accept.”

The challenge is not just learning new tools — it’s adapting to entirely new workflows. Allan described a future where production facilities are AI‑native, dynamically allocating compute, spinning up virtualised production environments, and automating tasks that once required large teams.

“You might just say: give me 10 cameras and 25 audio feeds,” he said. “The system will configure itself. That’s where we’re heading.”

Sky’s first experiments in accessibility and localisation delivered poor accuracy — around 30% but improved rapidly.

“Success depends as much on hearts and minds as on technology,” Redfern said. “You’ve got to bring teams in early. They want to work with the latest tools.

“AI evolves very quickly. Test, retest, keep playing. It gets better,” she urged.

Sovereignty, trust and cautious adoption

For public broadcasters, the AI transition is shaped by different pressures. Newly appointed EBU CTO Annsofi Eriksson said public service media must balance innovation with trust.

“The money in public service is trustworthiness,” she said. “We’re careful about that. It’s our competitive edge.”

Eriksson said PSBs cannot afford to ignore AI’s productivity benefits, especially in administrative and programming workflows, but must avoid undermining editorial integrity.

“We’re not that careful when trying AI tools in the rest of the operation,” she said. “We’re quite keen on that. But when it comes to news and presenters, trust comes first.”

She also highlighted sovereignty, cybersecurity and content prominence as major priorities and warned that generative AI introduces new risks.

“I haven’t met a single person at IBC who knows how to handle agentic cybersecurity yet,” she said. “There are ideas, but no one has solved it.”

A global industry in transition

Across the board it seems AI is no longer optional even if the transition is uneven.

Crunchyroll is using AI to deliver anime in 17 languages within an hour of broadcast in Japan. JioStar is using it to personalise content and advertising for three‑quarters of a billion viewers. Sky is using it to modernise accessibility workflows. NVIDIA is pushing the industry toward AI‑native infrastructure. And the EBU is preparing Europe’s public broadcasters for a future defined by sovereignty and shared cloud ecosystems.

They also agreed that the investment phase is far from over.

“We’re on the precipice of major change,” Allan said. “The returns will come but right now, we’re still building the foundations.”