FilmNova presents first roving in-field camera at World Para Athletics Championships

Sports Video Group

Channel 4 has excited audiences with coverage of world class performances over 10 nights of the 9th World Para Athletics Championships, from 14-23 July.

http://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/filmnova-presents-first-roving-in-field-camera-at-world-para-athletics-championships/Presentation for the broadcaster at the iconic Olympic Stadium is the responsibility of indie producer FilmNova, which aimed to build up to all the big moments and ensure that viewers learn about the personalities of those competing. In particular, and in a first for any major athletics championship, a Roving Presenter Camera is offering heart-of-the-action coverage right from the track and in the field.
“The Roving RF field camera, presented by Lee McKenzie, has been seen as a real innovation,” agrees Phil Sibson, FilmNova, managing director and event executive producer. “It has enabled us to be at the start line with Jonnie Peacock, David Weir or Liam Malone giving their expert view on how athletes prepare in the final seconds before their race, while we can see those athletes in the background of shot just a few metres away. Or we can react at the finish line as pundit Stef Reid celebrated with her husband after he won Gold. In addition, we’ve been able to speak to people in the crowd and present from the heart of the field competition on the in-field.”
None of this has ever been possible at a major athletics championship before. This is largely because with cameras pointing in all directions, any extra bodies trackside or on the in-field are likely to be noticeable in coverage.
However, FilmNova worked with the IPC and host broadcaster Sunset + Vine as well as Timeline Television to ensure that they only entered positions that wouldn’t impede on main coverage.
“It is also fair to say that there are less rights holder broadcasters present for the World Para Athletics in London, so our request wasn’t mirrored by lots of others,” notes Sibson. “The IPC are keen to help Channel 4 innovate athletics coverage, so were warm to our request.”
“From a production point of view getting permission to run a presentation operation from the field of play is a major scoop,” says Simon Fell, project manager, Timeline. “There’s been quite a lot of negotiation about where they can and can’t go. Mainly they’ve been around track perimeter areas because of course it is very tricky to stay out of shot. They have taken interviews though right next to athletes on the blocks which is a very unusual angle.”
RF operations
There are, in fact, two RF camera operations: one radio cam for field event coverage, hubbed out of the Timeline’s UHD2 scanner, and a presentation truck built in a portacabin to accommodate a ramp for wheelchair access into which the roving pres camera is fed.
Vislink links are taken from a Sony HDC4300 and received in two orthogonal positions up in the stadium for good coverage. These are then fed over fibre to the OB units. Wisycom MCR42 radio mics are recording audio.
Early sight of the Sunset + Vine camera plan enabled FilmNova to strategically place additional cameras that supplemented the host coverage with shots of the British athletes. These include head-on cameras that provide both pre-race close-ups of British Athletes and SSM replays from the race.
“This means that even if the British athletes are not the main focus of the host coverage, we can still focus on them for our C4 audience,” explains Sibson.

Inside Timeline Television’s UHD2 truck at the World Para Athletics Championships

Also in partnership with Timeline, FilmNova developed and gained IPC approval for an RF wheelchair camera, which according to Sibson, would have provided fantastic live POV coverage during wheelchair races.
“However, we needed to persuade an athlete to agree to wear the camera and unfortunately this wasn’t possible, which is understandable given the fine margins in performance that they look to achieve,” he explains. “We are optimistic, though, that the work we have put in will mean this will become a real possibility for coverage at Tokyo. The recorded footage that we gathered from our testing is being used in features within coverage.”
The proof of concept – including a camera offering reaction shots back to the competitor and another facing onto the track with radio transmit and receive – was tested along with remote switching. It was all good to go but ultimately the athlete’s management decided they didn’t want to risk compromising his performance.

Slight delay
Although FilmNova is not producing a highlights package for the event, on rare occasions it has to take a commercial break meaning that the live broadcast is not back in time for the start of a race.
“Where that happens, we use EVS to show the race on a very slight delay,” says Sibson. It also has three networked Premiere Pro edit suites cutting feature material and closing montages. The field competitions by their nature are not fast moving enough for live coverage and so are condensed into updates that are played in from EVS and commentated on live.
In addition to the host feed carrying graphics with all the timing and data on it, FilmNova’s graphics provider, Moov, supplied a host graphics terminal that enables the production to generate graphics in the host style as needed for its own start lists or results. An additional Chyron in the presentation gallery produces all the Channel 4 presentation graphics, such as timetables, medal tables and social media.
While UHD2 is wired for IP, the event is a standard OB in practice. All the camera signals are SDI and with neither Sony nor EVS yet to introduce native IP sources, the signals remain SDI until they are turned into an IP stream for transport around the truck.
“As soon as we’re able to do that we can handle many more streams in the network switch meaning we can add to our system hugely in future,” says Quinn Cowper, lead vision engineer. “From a production point of view it’s business as normal. They are still cutting on the same mixers, pressing the same buttons but it’s a massive improvement for us in terms of scaling workflows and being able to take on larger jobs and contracts.”
UHD2 is also 4K primed, but the event is operating in HD. Timeline is fielding nine cameras, including RF, and mixing those with the host feed. Sony HDC-4300s with Fujinon UHD lenses are trained on Channel 4’s presenters, Ade Adepitan, Sophie Morgan and Arthur Williamsin situated in the studio, as well as Jeanette Kwakye, Sonja McLaughlin in the mixed zone. The truck combines host broadcaster feeds with these cameras and supports two transmission galleries including EVS XT3 servers and edit suites.
Around 1300 athletes from 100 countries are competing in 213 medal events.

360° Video Is No Gateway to VR, says BBC

Streaming Media

BBC R&D is not convinced of the case for producing news in VR, and warns against the perils of relying too heavily on tech company sponsorship of branded 360° or VR news content.
http://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/360%c2%b0-Video-Is-No-Gateway-to-VR-says-BBC-119364.aspx
If broadcasters and publishers view 360° video as an on-ramp to full VR then they'd better think again. While VR is promising and will likely succeed as a new content media, there are multiple issues with its development, according to the BBC speaking at the HPA Tech Retreat UK in Oxfordshire this week.
"Perhaps the biggest problem is that there is no audience for VR yet," said Zillah Watson, a former current affairs producer, who is now editorial lead on future content and storytelling projects for BBC Research & Development. "We haven't got a way of distributing VR to an audience to find out what they want from the experience."
Watson is leading BBC investigations into how suitable VR might be for news reporting.
She said the industry has come a long way in terms of creating hard news programming in 360° since 2015 and the BBC's first news experiment from the Calais migrant camps—but it was clear that there are still a lot of challenge left to overcome before VR news goes mainstream.
"360° has been justified by the broadcast news industry as a gateway to VR. It is not. I question if there is any evidence that watching 360° will make a user want to watch on a VR headset. 360° video on mobile or in browsers will not drive people to VR. If we don't create a good content ecosystem that people want to explore and view and we don't make headsets better, then the whole thing won't work."
What 360° is, she said, is a gateway to production. "It is much easier to produce interactive 360° now with lower-cost cameras since this reduces cost and speeds turnaround—two essentials for news reporting."
So, who is the current audience for VR news? "VR news producers—and I'm not really kidding," she said. "Content needs to be cheaper and easier to produce. The complexity of porting to different platforms is a real issue. Even things like the amazing work we have done around object-based or binaural sound will be redundant if people don't wear headphones. VR business models are weak, and the content is not that good."
Nonetheless news organizations have been among the first to invest in VR.
"What is clear is that a lot of early investment is being enabled by tech partnerships," she said. The New York Times daily 360° video reports are being underwritten by Samsung, she said, while The Guardian newspaper's Daydream VR content is sponsored by Google.
"There is a danger in the relationship tech giants like Google may exert on the growth of VR in news publishing, especially since news is built on independence and relies on accuracy."
She added, though, that publishers have been shrewd. "There's no monetisation case for a newspaper to invest in VR just now when there is no audience for it, but they have been clever at partnering with tech companies to make content and see what works and what doesn't."
It is notable also that the Digital Production Partnership (DPP)—a trade body promoting broadcaster and content creator interests in the UK—has also advised its members to keep a watching brief before rushing in. Members should feel "no pressure to act just now," it stated in March, considering that UHD production is more important.
Watson was skeptical of predictions made by analysts for the growth of VR. "By 2022 a maximum of 25% of UK adults might have access to some kind of VR headset," she said, quoting the BBC's internal research based on analyst reports. "But this includes Google Cardboard, which is fairly low quality. It will take some time before higher level headsets take off, and even then sales will be dominated by gamers."
Having canvassed the opinion of news producers across the industry, Watson said no one was under any illusion that VR was anything other than niche.
"I'm not convinced that publishers think there is huge monetization of VR in future. The best short-term scenario is mobile VR, but it is questionable whether full VR with six degrees of freedom is useful for communicating news."
News broadcasters have a choice, she said: to opt for quality or reach. The documentary type of content with high production values that run up to 20 minutes long delivered via apps to headsets is the quality route, while very short sub-2-minute clips intended for the magic window or browser viewing on smartphones and distributed on social channels is the other.
"The danger in going for quality is that you don't build a big enough audience to justify investment, and the danger of reach is that content is not distinctive enough to be special and it might be better shooting with regular video," she said.
To further illustrate the issue, she observed—tongue in cheek—that interior design may have to change to accommodate VR. "Sofas do not make it easy to look around you in 360°. Perhaps we do have to redesign the home furniture or at least make the perfect swivel chair to watch these experiences.
"It's ironic that the VR industry is returning to the model Westinghouse exploited first to drive commercial TV in the 1950's—branded content," she said.
"When the telephone was invented, it took a long time for people to work out why they needed it. That's the stage we are at now with VR. When sound was first introduced to the movies—that is the stage we are now at in working out the grammar for audio in VR. We have a long way to go before the VR experience is compelling enough to make you want to put on a headset everyday, unless you are a diehard gamer."
Watson added that she wanted to see more "happy" news content. "There are a lot of miserable news story documentaries, but to drive the consumer side people will want happier experiences. We do need content that will make people feel full of joy, and VR does have this amazing, perhaps even unique ability to make you feel happy."

Nagra Declares the "Post-OTT Era"

Streaming Media

Content security and UX specialist also says the industry's TV everywhere experience is too complex—which is why pirates are scoring big hits.
http://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Nagra-Declares-the-Post-OTT-Era-119208.aspx
We have entered the post-OTT era in which it no longer makes sense for any operator to run separate online video and TV services, according to digital security and delivery solutions company Nagra. The company also said the TV industry needs to learn from content pirates.
"OTT is officially dead," declared Ivan Verbesselt, SVP group marketing at an event in Switzerland, host country of Nagra parent the Kudelski Group. "It doesn’t make any sense to run a business without a unified IP network. The time has come to bring this together, to take the IP network as a baseline and not think in a bespoke way."
Key to this, for pay-TV providers, is to embrace digital native experiences and devices.
"We need to acknowledge that consumers want a frictionless experience that embraces all devices," said Verbesselt. "In the TV industry we seem to think that we can treat native IP devices as an afterthought. The industry should stop ignoring that [such devices exist] and place them on a par with the set top box."
Coupled with this should be a revised approach to content security, he argued. Nagra suggests $90 billion worth of film and TV demand goes unmonetized each year.
"Broadband ubiquity is driving piracy," he claimed. "The longevity of the entire creative value chain is at stake with live and premium content most exposed. We should learn from the pirates. Let’s be honest, pirates are becoming pretty convenient for the consumer and that is why it’s a real problem. We’re talking about pirates who bring all the desired content into one convenient place. This brings us to the biggest threat to pay TV as we see it, which is that it is self-created. The industry has made so-called advanced TV or TV everywhere too complicated. With more and more fragmented services, we have created stress in the value chain for everyone."
Instead, he said the emphasis should be on a fundamental simplification for discovery, consumption, and operations that caters to all demographics. "We need to look beyond piracy and secure the end-to-end digital ecosystem which will open up opportunities for operators in the internet of things (IoT). Some pay-TV operators can credibly stand up as a supplier of critical infrastructure for the IoT. They have the opportunity to bring the customer along with them by being the service provider customers can trust with their personal data."
Ultimately, Nagra says it has a solution based around its multiscreen software OpenTV about which it will reveal more at IBC, as well as details of a contract with a major sports league.
Since the ideal replacement for OTT—IPTV—has already been used perhaps prematurely, Nagra's Senior Director Product Marketing Anthony Smith-Chaigneau suggested that instead the industry might use the term "pure digital IP" or simply "TV".

Beware the Android TV Revolution

Streaming Media

The pluses of Google's platform should be approached eyes wide open by operators, says 3 Screen Solutions MD Kai-Christian Borchers.

http://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Beware-the-Android-TV-Revolution-119252.aspx
If rumours that Alphabet is renaming its mobile apps and API platform Google Mobile Services (GMS) Google  to Google TV Services (GTVS) are to be believed, it would underscore the idea that mobile is no longer the net giant's sole focus and that it is increasingly eyeing TV as a critical space.
It would certainly put the seal on an extraordinary last few months for Google's smartphone-to-interactive TV OS Android, which has received a dramatic surge in interest among operators.  As many as three quarters of video service providers either have an Android TV or Android Open Source Project on their technology roadmaps, according to a recent survey by Ovum (commissioned by security firm Irdeto).
Conditional access system (CAS) and user experience (UX) developer Nagra recognises Android TV as a "serious player" in the space traditionally dominated by specialist middleware providers but warns of security issues inherent in the open software.
Meanwhile Kai-Christian Borchers, managing director of German multiscreen software provider 3 Screen Solutions (3SS), says demand for Android TV "is really picking up... we are questioned constantly by operators about this topic."
That's a change from a year or two ago where Google's agenda seemed to be to more overtly control the home screen. "Operators weren't signing up because Google were dictating what the operator needed to do in terms of what TV channels and features needed to be include, how the home screen had to look - that the identity of the home button was Google branded," Borchers told Streaming Media. "Now [Google] has softened dramatically in the direction of the operator allowing operators to maintain their branding and their content where they want it rather than pushing Google to the front."
Among the benefits of Android TV for operators are the availability of new features and services, faster time-to-market, an attractive user interface, and cost efficiencies.
"Google are really revolutionising the TV space because they bring the way a web company thinks into TV," Borchers says.
"The agility and speed of development which Google executes on the web is transferring to TV for the benefit of operators. When you look at project run times when building on legacy middleware platforms it is typically well over 12 months but Android TV reduces this cycle and reduces costs for operators."
Plus, Android TV comes with a raft of pre-integrated apps—seen by many as the future of TV—among them Amazon Prime, Netflix, and of course YouTube.
"It is crucial for any operator to have these lighthouse VOD services demanded by end consumers," said Borchers.
He also claimed that security concerns around the software "were almost non-existent."
Google's web-centric approach to development clearly is finding favour among operators, but they should still be wary of getting into bed with one of the biggest data miners on the planet.
"For all the many benefits [of Android] you have to look under each stone and be aware that Google might at some point change the way it does business with operators," says Borchers.
Google might re-orient its business model, for example, by getting more involved in advertising on the big screen just as they dominate online.
Since Google is in the business of gathering data, it could conceivably collect measurement data from services running over its platform as a strategic weapon to launch rival services.
"They could kill your TV service by changing the rules of the game rule such as moving the YouTube app front and centre," said Borchers.
After airing similar comments earlier this year, Borchers says he received personal assurances from Google that not only had it no intention of doing so but that it was not even gathering such data. "Honestly, nobody knows in which direction Google is going in the future," he says. Usually you don't get things for free. With all the benefits to operators there must be something in it for Google. The operator just needs to be watchful."

3SS Deploys on Nordic Cable

3SS will deploy its new multi-device OTT front-end solution 3Ready on a cable network in October. The Nordic operator will implement the front-end solution on its set-top-boxes.
3Ready, which launched last September, is designed to speed deployment of multiscreen services. Borchers says that 3SS began working with the Nordic operator in March – meaning deployment will have taken six months.
Other benefits of the 3Ready solution include enabling an operator to combine VOD with linear TV (Lean Back 2.0 or Linear on Demand, as Borchers calls it) by pulling content out of silos into a playlist which becomes the viewer's own personal channel.
The first customer for the solution was Hamburg-based OTT service bobbles.tv in-conjunction with SES-owned MX1.
3SS is taking space at IBC 2017 for the first time to promote the product.

Hyperreality and the Urgent Need to Scale Content

Streaming Media

The demand for realistic CG content to fuel immersive media applications requires new production methods and a new codec

http://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Hyperreality-and-the-Urgent-Need-to-Scale-Content-119209.aspx

The demand for virtual, augmented, and mixed reality content is set to skyrocket to such an extent that current content creation and distribution technologies cannot cope. At the same time, content will evolve to a point where physical and virtual realities appear to merge, giving rise to a new "hyperreality"—the inability to distinguish what's real from a from a simulation of it.

"If the forecasts are right, not only will a whole new set of tools and workflows be needed but these tools need to be in the hands of a lot more people," says Jon Wadelton, CTO at visual effects (vfx) software developer Foundry.

The biggest market for virtual reality (VR) content won't be entertainment but training and enterprise scenarios (such as medical surgery and CAD). In its Virtual Reality Industry Report: Spring 2017, Greenlight forecasts a $26.7 billion global VR content marketplace by 2021.  The bulk of this is in design and industrial visualisation ($18.2bn) with games creation around $4 billion.

That sum is dwarfed by figures from the International Data Corporation, which estimates worldwide revenues for VR and augmented reality (AR) will grow to more than $162 billion in 2020 (including hardware sales). That's from a base as low of $5.2 billion in 2016.

"That is a massive amount of AR/VR revenue in a short time period and means massive amounts more content which begs the question who is going to make it all," contends Wadelton. "The market is going to need a lot of content, and they are going to want it to look as real as possible—to see things digitally that are even better than the real world. To do that, the entire production workflow needs to be revised and it needs to be made scalable."

As a vfx production and postproduction software house with credits including Gravity and Star Wars, Foundry has potential answers to this in R&D.

Wadelton outlines the numerous challenges to creating hyper-real content in such volumes.

This starts with capturing 360° video with multiple cameras. "Three to four years ago you had to build your own camera," says Wadleton. "These days you can buy one off the shelf. There are tools for stitching the images together such as Kolor's Autopano, Foundry's Cara, and camera systems which include realtime stitching (such as Nokia Ozo). We're getting there with camera capture, but there are still issues. These techniques can record from only one point of view. You can't walk behind walls, for example, move into a room, or interact with objects. It doesn't in principal lend itself to a greater sense of immersion and therefore doesn't deliver that hyper-real feeling."

Part of the solution is to run the content through a games engine. This brings its own set of issues, not least that games engines work at 90fps per eye, a rate at which mobile devices are not powerful enough to render in realtime.

There are other issues too. "For mixed reality, you need to perform accurate real-time lighting capture. Getting game assets into the engine is quite hard unless you reduce the complexity of the asset so it can run in realtime. It remains very hard to capture human expression to lay on top of digital humans."

Another big challenge is reusing assets. "We want to get to a place where if you create high-resolution master assets for a commercial or feature film, then you can also publish that to 3D renderers or game engine or some unknown format in future," says Wadelton. There's a big challenge around that. We don't want to be manually re-creating assets."

Foundry's R&D Project Bunsen is exploring this. Its framework can be used for both high-quality image and video rendering and for preparing data for VR and real-time use.

Arguably the biggest issue is simply that of creating sufficient 3D content to satisfy the predicted surge in demand. "We need to make tool so intuitive that making 3D assets is simple for anyone who is currently not involved in visual effects," he insists.

An alternative to using multiple cameras is to capture volumetric data using light field or point cloud. Light field captures all the light rays at every point in space, travelling in every direction. A point cloud is a large collection of points acquired by 3D laser scanners to create 3D representations of existing structures

Both will allow capture of depth information and theoretically real-time capture from multiple points of view.

Development in this space is being led by companies including UK-based Figment Productions, which has its own motion synchronisation and control platform for VR; 8i, the New Zealand headquartered company which has a studio in Culver City fitted with multiple cameras to develop holographic video for display on mobile phones; and Lytro, the light field camera developer behind the Immerge VR and Cinema Camera which is currently targeting short vfx sequences. Foundry has a development partnership with Lytro in which it is integrating its Nuke compositor alongside Lytro plug-ins for post work. It is also extending this into the cloud with its forthcoming virtual pipeline system Elara.

MPEG-I on the Drawing Board

Nonetheless, the biggest headache faced by all companies working in immersive formats is handling the vast amounts of data. That's where the work of international standards body MPEG is comes in. It has begun conducting experiments into compression technologies "for use in applications that provide an increased sense of immersion beyond that which existing video coding standards can provide," according to an ISO paper on the subject.

The proposed ISO/ IEC 23090 (or MPEG-I) standard targets future immersive applications. It's a five-stage plan which includes an application format for omnidirectional media (OMAF) "to address the urgent need of the industry for a standard is this area"; and a common media application format (CMAF), the goal of which is to define a single format for the transport and storage of segmented media including audio/video formats, subtitles, and encryption. This is derived from the ISO Base Media File Format (ISOBMFF).

While a draft OMAF is expected by end of 2017 and will build on HEVC and DASH, the aim by 2022 is to build a successor codec to HEVC, one capable of lossy compression of volumetric data.

"Light Field scene representation is the ultimate target," according to Gilles Teniou, Senior Standardisation Manager - Content & TV services at mobile operator Orange. "If data from a Light Field is known, then views from all possible positions can be reconstructed, even with the same depth of focus by combining individual light rays. Multiview, freeview point, 360° are subsampled versions of the Light Field representation. Due to the amount of data, a technological breakthrough – a new codec - is expected."

This breakthrough assumes that capture devices will have advanced by 2022 – the date by which MPEG aims to enable lateral and frontal translations with its new codec. MPEG has called for video test material, including plenoptic cameras and camera arrays, in order to build a database for the work.

"If we can capture a volumetric representation of the world then we can produce true 6Dof since you can't do this with 360-video," says Wadelton. "With 360 you can't see behind things or around things which breaks the experience. For VR, a new compression system is a must to be able to deliver hyper-real versions of the world."

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Hyperreality Explored

The concept of hyperreality itself demands closer investigation. Officially coined in 1981 by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, the idea can be traced back to at least as far as naturalism, the nineteenth-century movement towards representing things closer to the way we see them. The invention of still photography, then motion pictures, adding sound, colour and stereo 3D, are all stages on the same trajectory toward greater immersion and a closer and closer simulation of reality.

Arguably, scripted (or structured) documentary ("reality") shows like Keeping up with the Kardashians is one form of hyperreality. Facebook is another, where what we choose to post online may be what we want the world to see of our life.

The emergence of AR/VR/MR (mixed reality) takes this to another level. Here, hyperreality is about whether one can tell the difference between real and unreal when you're in that environment.

Literature and films have explored the concept, including Ready Player One, the highly anticipated Steven Spielberg feature adaptation of Ernest Cline's novel.

VR is already evolving from being able to look into a scene and rotate around a specific spot—o called three degrees of freedom (3Dof)—to six degrees of freedom (6Dof) which simulates movement forward and backwards.

A stage along this evolution is location-based VR where the virtual world is matched with the physical world. In some VR theme parks users walk untethered in spaces which are mapped to the VR sim and are able to sense touch through haptics. Location-based VR is a rapidly growing business. Greenlight Industries forecasts that installations in malls and movie theatres will bring in $222 million worldwide this year; by 2021, that amount will have grown to almost $1.2 billion.

Another related development is MR, having virtual content integrate with the real world.

An example of this mixed reality is envisioned by designer and filmmaker Keiichi Matsuda whose art video Hyper-Reality has gone viral. It shows the real and CG worlds merged into one. "In this scenario life itself has become gamified," observes Wadleton, echoing the central idea behind Ready Player One.

Google, Apple, and Facebook are already capturing data, such as geometry about real-world objects scanned via mobile phones (cameras, GPS, depth sensors) into databases. Data from Google's Tango or Apple's ARkit, for example, can be used to build a geometric representation of the world into which content creators might be able to licence and insert CG, rather than having to map the world afresh each time.

Wadelton reveals that in a poll conducted by Foundry, nearly a third of those surveyed believed that real-world experiences will be eventually be replaced by virtual reality. "Already with vfx we have got to the point where simulation on screen is better or more interesting than the real thing," he says. "People expect to experience hyperreality."

The future of Public Service Broadcasting in Africa

Knect365 AfricaCom

It’s a slow and complicated process, but a sub-Saharan Africa public service broadcast (PSB) network is taking root, according to the visionary behind it.

https://knect365.com/media-networks/article/6464a29d-441b-4fc1-8cdd-8f1342a7cb68/the-future-of-public-service-broadcasting-in-africa

Having worked on the concept for more than two decades, George Twumasi is prepared to play the long game. The CEO of the African Broadcast Network (ABN) and a founding member of the African Public Broadcasting Foundation (APBF), believes there’s a confluence of cultural, political and technological forces that make a PSB network both necessary and practical.

“Most of the work has been done including the research and institutional capacity building,” he says. “There is an opportunity and a need to re-evaluate broadcasting and create a new PSB with commercial sustainability and a mandate to enlighten though entertainment.”

Twumasi hopes to create 11 PSB channels programmed with content “made by Africans for Africans”.

He is under no illusion as to the billions of dollars this will cost. Nonetheless, Twumasi is adamant that ABN could help create an editorially independent, USD$20 billion, PSB and digital content publishing company by 2025.

It’s ambitious on several fronts, not least because public service broadcasting, at least in its westernised version of editorial independence (defined by the UN as neither commercial nor state-owned, free from political interference and pressure from commercial forces), has arguably never existed on the continent.

The only African country with a model that comes close is SABC in South Africa. The radio broadcasts of the Francophone nations or BBC World Service that emerged in the 1950s are considered an extension of colonial rule. When African governments came to power in a post-colonial continent many took over national broadcast networks “in part symbol of sovereignty and in part, a partisan political megaphone” says Twumasi.

By 2002, some African state broadcasters had abandoned efforts to provide public service programming altogether, squeezed by falling levels of state subsidy and increasing competition from satellite delivered and local, private television stations.

“Except for a handful of international news television brands, editorially independent and financially robust PSB services barely exist in Africa,” says Twumasi. “What does exist, besides cut-throat pay-tv operations, are mostly poorly run free-to-air television broadcasting entities. APBF and ABN will change that.”

The concept of an African Public Broadcasting Foundation has been in development since 1998 in accord with a Pan African Audio Visual Action Partnership (PAAVAP) model.

PAAVAP is envisaged as a process that will be implemented by a partnership with the state-owed broadcasters of Africa.

“The focus is firmly and centrally on broadcasting,” says Twumasi. “But its impact, on improving education, increasing the flow of revenues into Africa and developing the confidence of African programme makers, will influence all spheres of national cultural life and help boost general economic activity and performance.”

Based initially on a network of satellite-delivered programming, the APBF has gained momentum with the growing penetration of mobile devices and the spread of the internet.

“With the increase in mobile phones, broadband and social media, the cabal of the political elite will be broken forever,” says Twumasi.

By 2020 there will be more than 700 million smartphone connections in Africa – more than twice the projected number in North America and not far from the total in Europe, according to GSMA; an association of mobile phone operators. In Nigeria alone, 16 smartphones are sold every minute, while mobile data traffic across Africa is set to increase 15 times by 2020, state Cisco.

Twenty percent of the continent already has access to a mobile broadband connection (GSMA), a figure predicted to triple by 2020. And internet penetration is rising faster than anywhere else as costs of data and devices fall. Ericsson attributes the rapid expansion to the rise of social media, content-rich apps and video content accessed from cheap smartphones.

The world’s major technology companies including Facebook, Google and Microsoft are investing in last-mile connectivity across the continent to hook up its billion-plus population.

ABN’s recast vision is to create a PSB run on commercial lines. Twumasi explains that the PAVAAP model only works through having direct and easy access to abundant free-to-air and pay-tv airtime. ABN and APBF intend to partner with a network of distribution platforms including privately owned, commercial and state-controlled broadcasters. The goal is to ensure access to low-income earners across Africa who collectively represent nearly 70% of the continent’s population.

The principal means by which ABN plans to generate revenues for APBF (which is legally constituted as not-for-profit in the UK and in the US) is through sponsorships and ad spots. It’s a classic chicken and egg situation: ABN needs to originate quality African made and culturally relevant content to attract advertisers but needs an income stream to generate the content.

“Quality content will drive eyeballs which will drive ad revenue so you create a virtuous cycle of growth,” says Twumasi.

ABN claims access to a television primetime audience of more than 100 million people, through its television production and broadcasting partners in 10 African countries, turning a disparate television advertising market into a unified ‘buy’, and beginning to make Africa attractive to major multinational advertisers.

Twumasi wants to engage major international content producers and distributors that are already trading on the continent to co-invest in the production and monetisation of Africa-originated content via ABN.

Rapid Blue Productions, a BBC Worldwide affiliated company, is already on board. Through its Worldwide and World Service Operations, the BBC is beefing up its presence in Africa with production studios in Kenya and Nigeria to produce original African content over the course of the next three years.

Other partners in ABN’s sights include Scripps Network, Discovery Communications, Disney, Fox, Viacom and TBS. Twumasi hopes they will allocate 5% of their total production budget for spend in Africa and suggests that the resulting content can be sold back at a profit to the mass African diaspora.

The goal is to secure 15 million ABN affiliated, pay-TV subscribers across sub-Saharan Africa by 2024 equating to a 20% share of Africa’s pay-TV market. ABN has factored in the switch to digital television, which should be complete by 2020. This will create a market of around 80 million new low-income pay-TV subscription prospects across Sub-Saharan Africa (the current penetration of pay-TV in the region being around 20%).

Ad generation is not the only income stream. There are plans to raise financing from international development agencies and then look to the private sector for investment.

As part of this process, Informa or specifically AfricaCom is seen as key to capturing the attention of investors, content providers and partner distribution platforms including international broadcasters.

ABN has secured commitments-in-principle from a core group of African industry partners to help it realise its vision. In addition to Rapid Blue, they include South African digital infrastructure provider Sentech and Abicoos, a streaming media start-up. It also has an “ongoing dialogue” with BBC Africa about developing a BBC Africa Legacy Project.

The first stage is to launch one channel as proof of concept. Twumasi believes this will happen by 2019.

“Africa is set to embrace a multiplatform, digital content delivery environment within the next five years, through which hundreds of millions of Africans can be readily reached via mobile television broadcasting,” says Twumasi. “I strongly believe that public service oriented television broadcasting, underpinned by relevant educational programming, can play a unique role in these processes.”