The BBC is encouraging production teams to go live from Periscope or Facebook as it drives innovation. Irish broadcaster RTE is also encouraging its journalists to use mobile phones as content creation tools.
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Any broadcast organisation that is not in the mobile space at the same time is effectively signing their own death warrant,” declared Glen Mulcahy, head of innovation at Irish broadcaster RTE in a IBC session devoted to live broadcasting yet actually about the huge impact of mobile as both production device and viewing platform.
“Smart phones can be used as a viable content creation tool for broadcast and more and more becoming an actual content platform in its own right,” Mulcahy said. “It’s a layer on top of what we do as traditional broadcasters.”
The BBC recognises this too – but admits it cannot keep pace with the deep pockets and giant technical leaps of in a Google or Facebook.
“On the one hand broadcast engineers are trying to make it cheaper to introduce IP technology and on the other hand there are internet companies pushing cash to build better tools,” said Tim Sargeant, Head of Product, Systems & Services, BBC North. “We can’t keep up technically. We can’t afford it. We are chasing it all the time.”
He said the idea that journalists and production teams can go live from anywhere to Periscope or Facebook is to be encouraged since it is driving innovation.
“The caveat is that we know when people see BBC content on social networks the attribution of that coming from the BBC is low. So, we are driving habits and behaviour away from our platform onto Facebook and the audience is not recognising it as BBC content. The attribution and referral back is low. We don’t tend to get people breaking away from YouTube or Twitter back to the BBC site.”
Irish broadcaster RTE is also encouraging its journalists to use mobile phones as content creation tools.
“For me, mobile journalism is more about leveraging all the different consumer tech devices to tell a great story – including 360 cameras and drones,” said Mulcahy. “It’s about putting the content creator at heart of the story.
He suggested broadcasters could cut news gathering costs – yet deliver more and better content. A typical news crew kit costs 80000 Euros, he said. By contrast a mobile news gathering kit with all the tools for capture, editing and streaming, costs less than 4000 Euros.
Moreover, mobile technology is on a constant incremental curve.
“4K is effectively standard on mobile, HEVC brings efficient compression, Tesla are driving battery research, we have Google and Facebook driving mobile with huge amounts of research and 5G is on our doorstep giving ten times faster speeds. It means 4K to mobile is absolutely viable. Mobile is about to make a substantive jump over broadcast.”
On top of that there is the push into VR and 360 where multi-GoPro VR rigs have been replaced by tools like the Insta360 costing a few hundred Euros.
“Live TV is a fundamentally shared experience,” Mulcahy said. “Mobile is personal, intimate and its niche. Niche is the key opportunity we are missing as broadcasters. By going for the big ‘broadcast’ picture stuff all the time the niche is not being served. But you can do that by sending out a mobile journalist you can tell the story visually well and share it across multiple platforms.”
The BBC is trying to move its live coverage into a world of ad hoc and self-operated streaming by enabling its journalists to stream live from an event and publish online. It now needs to incorporate ideas of discovery, sharing and social “that pushes you beyond what TV and multiscreen can offer” said Sargeant. The BBC is experimenting, it does not have all the answers but as importantly it does not have the cash.
“There is a danger in social media fundamentally doing live better because they are connected to viewer,” he said. “It’s the difference between a presentation and a conversation. We are putting huge amount of effort into that dynamic. It’s about interacting with others and making social a key part of live. Will we catch up with social media giants? No. Do we need to adapt? Yes.”
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