IBC
MPTS is the latest event to lay bare the faultlines running throughout the TV business which is being eviscerated by AI and the creator economy
The Media Production Technology Show started out like so
many trade shows catering to a broadcasters, postproduction services and
equipment manufacturers but faces the same dilemma as the rest of the industry:
how to adapt in the face of creators and AI.
This was the central theme at the event in central London
where the gap between the traditional industry and what was once called new
media is yawning.
“We are trying to calibrate where we are on the adoption
curve and what speed we are going,” said Jon Roberts, Chief Technology Officer,
ITN in a session about AI.
He described a disconnect between the tech’s potential as
genuinely transformational and the day to day practical experience of those
working in the industry.
“We are moving out of PoCs and theoretical discussion. I am
excited about our IBC Accelerator which [with BBC, Cuez and Google] starts to
offer a vision for agents but the next phase has to be to narrow the gap. Our
brilliant engineers and operators need AI to feel more connected and AI needs
to make a genuine impact right at the heart of production.
“In reality, the vast majority of production is happening
day to day without AI doing much heavy lifting. Here at a production technology
show we can see specific tools like Adobe integrating AI but there’s a lot of
work we need to do as an industry to understand how AI genuinely helps in super
complex production workflows. That is the biggest gap and the biggest
opportunity right now.”
He said AI was integrated into ITN’s backend functions for
making quick transcriptions and summaries of meetings and exposing value in the
company archive which is work it is doing with Moments Lab.
Its CTO and Co-Founder Frédéric Petitpont, said; “GenAI is
seen as incredible productivity tool but we tend to forget about creating new
usage cases. It’s easy to make AI deliver on cost savings but we don’t spend
enough time to scope out new possibilities.”
The BBC’s Programme Director of GenAI, Peter Archer echoed
this view. “I can talk about snazzy use cases and experiments and that we’re
seeing a lot of use of AI in HR and finance but in terms of production we’ve
got to put the tools in people’s hands and they will find new ways of using
it.”
Just 21% of UK production companies are spending more than
10% of their total tech budget on AI, according to research by GlobalData
presented at the show. The same survey found a quarter of broadcaster’s
spending 10% and that 63% of postproduction/VFX companies regularly use GenAI
tools such as Adobe Firefly.
Kathryn Webb, MD, AIMICI claimed that AI usage among
production teams was quite high but people are afraid to publicise it. “There’s
a lot of don’t ask, don’t tell,” she said. “Many people are worried about how
things might be perceived. They even worry about talking internally to
commissioners which is a shame because use cases would help companies that are
making valuable AI tools. If you don’t jump in with both feet you don’t see the
gains and value. There needs to be much more conversation about AI and to stop
putting heads in the sand.”
Roberts insisted that the industry had to get comfortable
with the idea of AI as both threat and partner. “Any tech that can change how
we make and consume content and who is making it and the interaction experience
is disrupting. We have to recognise that policy makers are looking to us to
engage with standards and ethics standards bodies. We need to look for new
commercial deals and recognise that change is coming. The key is to make sure
the media industry is a sophisticated player in the AI debate.”
For Archer AI is “overwhelmingly” a creative partner. “You
have to have that mindset. It’s the only way the industry will get the value we
need.”
While ensuring trust in BBC content was the vital first
concern he enthused about GenAI’s potential to reduce the barriers for entry to
TV.
“Prior to podcasts the market for audio content was largely
the BBC,” Archer said. “New technology allowed anyone to create podcasts and
the market exploded. Podcasts show an insatiable demand for niche content. I
expect the same thing to happen in video beyond even YouTube.”
TV doesn’t exist any more
On the same day that BBC Director General Tim Davie called
on the government to confirm the switchover to IP in the 2030s, indie producers
at MPTS were contemplating a TV landscape with no linear channels in as little
as a decade’s time.
“TV doesn’t exist
anymore in the way we knew it,” asserted Kate Beal, CEO, of true crime doc
producer Woodcut Media. “It's simply amazing content in different forms on
different platforms watched by different people. For me, the excitement and the
opportunity is what does it look like in five years? How can we bring our
storytelling skills to different platforms?”
It’s been a painful few years for the sector she admitted,
“but change has happened and there’s no going back to the boom times. The rules
have gone. It is a lot more democratic now and it is up to us to find the next
gig.”
Derren Lawford, Founder & CEO, Dare Pictures, said, “We are in the middle
of a decade of profound transition and we’re past the tipping point. TV is not
an isolated industry. It is part of wider connected series of industries around
the creation and distribution and funding of content. In many ways, nothing has
changed and everything has changed at the same time.”
He added, “The big danger for all of us is trying to cling
on to what our audience used to be. We need to be moving at the speed the
audience is moving. We all need to think laterally about what we're producing. The old days of getting our shows
commissioned fully via broadcasters for the telly has clearly gone, but there's
an exciting new world in its place.”
Dean Webster, Development Executive, Ten66 Television, said,
“What remains true is a huge demand for premium content but we need to
re-imagine how to deliver that for new audiences. The idea that no-one wants to
watch TV is for the birds. They just want to watch in different ways.”
Matt Richards, MD & Executive Producer, Air TV said he
still checked overnight TV ratings. “We are obsessed about those numbers
because people are still watching linear channels – even if they are important
only as a shop window to streaming. We’re very much in that transition from one
way of viewing to another and as an industry we need to make it as easy as
possible for the audience to find all that content that we obsess about at
2am.”
Beal looks at numbers too, only her first check is to
YouTube channels. “It won’t be long before White Lotus premieres on
YouTube rather than HBO. We're not that far away from that world. It doesn't
really matter about the platform. It's the brand of the program or the content
that matters.”
Fluid multimodal news
BBC News is already using AI extensively as a transcription
aid from speech to text, Archer said. “The next stage is that GenAI can help us
reformat content from audio to text and text to video and the other way around.
An example of this was described by Nathalie Malinarich,
Director - Growth, Innovation & AI - BBC News in another MPTS session. “We
can take local radio commentary of a football match and [using AI] turn into a
live update of key moments for online or social or a longer report post-match.
It gives us the ability to cover local events that we do not have the staff to
cover. We are seeing how we can apply that source material to different
formats. We end up in a liquid news space with multiple modalities.”
Mário Tarouca, COO, Framedrop shared some insight into this
could be done. “We spend a lot of time with news teams. They give us some
previous articles for us to train ou algorithm on. Then we build the algorithm
based on editorial guidelines. Every single show is different. After that we
have two month onboard process to fine tune the process. It might take [a
journalist] 30 minutes to make one highlights video or write a short article.
We can do the same in 2 to 3 minutes and in multiple different versions.”
To Malinarich this was the bigger win. “If you had to have a
dedicated TikTok team and YouTube team and digital platform team and another
for iPlayer there comes a point where you can’t keep scaling. That is where AI
has a big role to play.”
Some editorial roles might be lost but both insisted the
human remains in the loop.
“AI helps but it is not the whole thing. You still need
experts to understand each platform,” said Malinarich. She suggested it was
necessary for journalists to consider multiple delivery platforms and gather
more information at source, in order to feed outlet with different audiences.
“Humans doing reporting in the field remain invaluable and
are already skilled at filing additional takes from an event.”
Ross Kemp: Adapt to Survive
Talking about his career making investigative documentaries,
presenter and journalist Ross Kemp called current work prospects, even for him,
as “barren”.
“I'm fighting at the moment to get [a project] over the line,”
he said. “Docs have never recovered from Covid. Broadcasters are under more
pressure to come up with big sensational shows and they can’t compete with
streamers on budgets. The industry has suffered immeasurably. I work with
really good DoPs, directors and producers who are in training because they
can’t get work. In terms of making docs at the level I make them in the way I
make them it is becoming increasingly hard. You have to adapt to survive.”
He put down his ability to cover stories on the front line
of wars, about cartel bosses and organised crime gangs to one of trust.
“You will not get people to tell you the truth unless they
know you are telling the truth. They will know in a second if you are not
telling the truth. I specialise in telling the truth, it is as simple as that.”
There is no topic he wouldn’t cover, he said. “I don’t draw the line. You have to be aware
of being used as a platform, as a soapbox to sell an agenda. Hopefully we are
wise enough to know when that’s happening.”
However, there are certain areas he dare not go “or it will
end with me not waking up next morning.”
Asked how he dealt with witnessing trauma and conflict Kemp
said, “The one thing is you never get used is people dieing, particularly
children. Obviously, [those pictures] never make the cut. It’s tough being
under fire in Afghanistan but looking into a mother’s eyes when she’s just lost
her son is not an easy day at the office either.”
He said he wanted to make a campaigning doc about the state
of healthcare and education provision for people with dyslexia, ADHD and
special needs in the UK. “It’s a personal story since my elder son has special
needs,” he said.
“I’ve never been to a country beginning with Y or Z so I
want to make a film in Zimbabwe, Zaire and the Yemen,” he added. “Purely for my
own OCD.”
Taking a stand
NFL pro turned American Football pundit Jason Bell, who
covers the sport for British broadcasters, said he wouldn’t shy from talking
about politics in his commentary.
“I can’t shy away from talking about what [the players] are
talking about in the locker room since that will play into [their game] the
pitch. You have to be aware of what is going on from a societal standpoint. You
have to have an opinion that is well thought out.”
He talked about the importance to him of research to prepare
for broadcast. “It is so challenging with all the information you need to know,
even if I use just 5% of it on screen.”
Bell also said that the NFL had plans to expand further
internationally by playing more regular season games in places like UK, Germany
and Brazil.
“I would love a European league. A European NFL league would
make sense but the next step is a international game every week. It will be
bargained in the next agreement with the teams.”
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