Force of Nature: Matthew Chuang, ACS on Apple TV+ Epic Series “Chief of War”

Interview and words written for RED

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The epic saga of Hawaii’s violent unification at the turn of the 18th century is powerfully told by filmmakers who lean into the energy of the islands’ natural environment. Performed by a predominantly Polynesian cast, Chief of War was created by Jason Momoa and Thomas Pa‘a Sibbett and produced by Fifth Season and Chernin Entertainment for Apple TV+. The sweeping drama was almost entirely shot by Matthew Chuang, ACS for directors Justin Chon, Brian Andrew Mendoza and Momoa.

“We were all on the same page when it came to the look,” Chuang explains. “The show is about Hawaii culture and history. So, first and foremost, we wanted to pay respects to that. It had to feel real. We didn't want to go contemporary or too stylized. We wanted to keep it quite naturalistic and genuine and to work with ambient light.”

They referred to classic historical epics like Braveheart, The Last of the Mohicans and The New World. “A lot of Terrence Malick and some Tarkovsky too,” says Chuang. “Then we aimed to put our twist on that.”

The production shot on location in Oahu, Maui and Big Island before re-locating to New Zealand, partly for economic reasons and partly to access lesser seen landscapes. Kuli'ou'ou Ridge in eastern Oahu, for example, is stunning but has featured in everything from Jurassic Park to George of the Jungle.

“Jason especially wanted to go to and shoot in places that have never been shot before. New Zealand made sense not just because it has the filmmaking resources and stages but Māori culture is Polynesian in spirit. It was really a great match for Hawaii.”

On recces, Chuang carried a RED KOMODO with Atlas Mercury lenses to shoot the locations with a particular eye to light conditions.

“The path of the sun was a big factor for us. On every scout we’d look at the sun direction, where it rises and sets, and where it is in the middle of the day. Recording this on KOMODO was a really good basis for us to start building the look and seeing what the locations looked like in a 2.39 frame. We continually reverted back to those references as we selected locations.”

Momoa took a keen interest in these scouts. “Jason loves the visual side of things. He loves cameras and lenses, so everything was discussed. He encouraged us to push the cameras in tests and see what they produced in full sun, dapple sun, in cloud, at sunset, with firelight. It was good for us to have crew on location for tests as well because we needed to see how fast we could move and react to the natural elements.

“Everyone immediately saw the results of the tests and were like ‘Wow! This is really interesting and it feels very realistic.”

Momoa stars as Ka‘iana, the warrior charged with pulling four warring kingdoms into one nation. The ensemble cast includes Luciane Buchanan, Temuera Morrison, Te Ao o Hinepehinga, Cliff Curtis, Kaina Makua, Moses Goods and Siua Ikale’o.

Much of the story takes place against the backdrop of beautiful and harsh natural vistas including beach, volcano, sea and jungle. The choice of large format in conjunction with the way Chuang moves the camera allows the intimacy of the performances to be contextualised against epic scale.

“We let the blocking of the characters lead the camera quite a bit,” he says. “At the same time, we see the space of their environment. A lot of that is designed around which direction we'll see the characters, what time of day in the schedule depending on the location and on where the sun is, and obviously responding if it's full sun or cloudy.”

Chuang, who shot the majority of the series on V-RAPTORS, used atmospheres like smoke and spray to add texture but they often had to deal with what nature provided on the day. Out on the ocean, for example, they were constantly shifting the position of the actors in accordance with the sun and clouds. In the forest they designed shots for a particular time of day using smoke to bring out the shafts of light. If it was cloudy and the scene needed full sun they brought in large light sources.

They shot two-cameras for drama and bulked up to four or more cameras for action sequences.

“Our ultra slow motion plates of surf and torch flames and action throughout the whole series is shot on V-RAPTOR because it has a such a great high frame rate capability,” says Chuang who began his career shooting RED One and graduated to EPIC when it released. “There are a couple of Phantom shots of the battle in the first episode but most of this was on V-RAPTOR.”

In the opening sequence to the series, Ka‘iana dives underwater to wrestle with, then ride, a shark. “That was a day of full sun which was tough but the sequence ended up being quite poetic,” he says. It was filmed in the waters off Hawaii using a V-RAPTOR housed in underwater casing by specialist Don King. Jason Momoa was harnessed to devices to simulate being pulled back and forth -- understandably, the shark itself is CGI.

“Color rendition was a big factor in our choice of RED,” says Chuang. “Starting off in Hawaii we wanted the greens of the landscape and the skin tones to be right. The colors on the character’s capes were quite specific so we needed to be true to that look. We didn't want to stylize the grade too much nor to force anything that felt too designed. The color was all quite naturalistic, enhanced a little with contrast and saturation.”

Chuang built a look with Tom Poole, senior colorist at Company 3, with whom he and Chon had worked on Blue Bayou. “He just gets our sensibility and can see straight away where we’re heading,” says Chuang. “He built a basic LUT for our tests after which we developed it further. It was a LUT built with all our cameras in mind.”

Poole graded the first two episodes, setting the look for the series for day and for night. Chuang explains, “Fire light was the main creative source for night, but to have the flames properly exposed we had to supplement quite a lot in and around the space with supporting light, additional fire light and more moonlight. It was quite an extensive lighting set up.

“The toughest thing with shooting out in full sun and trying to maintain highlights without blowing them out. That was why we needed cameras to be able to handle high dynamic range which V-RAPTOR did superbly.”

Apple's streaming requirements dictated a 4K minimum deliverable which entailed shooting full frame. “We wanted the 2.39 scope and classic anamorphic look but there’s not a huge range of full frame lenses in that format, so Panavision presented us with a set of T-Series lenses that they could modify. This custom look pushed the halation and contrast towards more of a vintage C Series look.”

The episode 9 finale, directed by Momoa, features an epic battle scene shot on a real lava field on Big Island. “No-one's ever really filmed something of that scale there before but Jason really loved the idea. Then our questions were ‘Can we even shoot here? And how can we make it possible?’ We commissioned geologists to survey the area to make sure it was safe.”

The sequence was scheduled to film over eight days and was meticulously planned and prevised involving choreography of five film units, special effects, stunt teams and hundreds of extras.

“The way the battle was scripted has it starting in day and progressing into sunset then night as the lava field is erupting. Once again, we scouted with the direction of the sun in mind and planned to shoot pieces with different units often simultaneously, depending on which scenes needed which actors and which section we could shoot at what time of day in accordance with the sun’s path.

“Sometimes we’d start at 3AM and shoot the night first then go backwards into the morning and into the day. Jason, who was also acting, enlisted the help of Brian and Justin to direct sequences and we all just bounced between the units. That was definitely the biggest sequence by far. It took my lighting guys two weeks just to run cables and have the lights set up.”

Chuang is indebted to gaffer Greg Doi in Hawaii, and Scott Harman and Sean O’Neill in New Zealand, while Jason Ellson was A camera operator for Chuang throughout.

“When Justin told me about Chief of War we knew what the potential could be with scope of the show and the responsibility of the subject matter. But once we started the sheer scale of it was quite daunting especially working to TV schedules.

“We had to be smart in our approach. There was a lot of discussion about how to deal with the weather. We had to constantly shift our plans. We needed the crew to be flexible since we would scout one location then two weeks later it would look quite different because of the environmental conditions. Shooting in and on the water you’re dealing with the tide and wind as well as full sun.

“There was a lot of elements that we couldn't control but as we started shooting we trusted more in our camera operators, we trusted more in the camera and the lenses, and that gave us confidence to push ourselves more and more. I’m extremely proud that the crew was on board with that so we could achieve what we did.”

How can AI help us adapt to climatic extremes?

IEC Tech

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Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to overcome some of the worse effects of extreme weather. International standards pave the way for its safe and responsible use.

Even climate change deniers seem to be changing their tune. In the face of persistent evidence, not least when floods and wild fires impact the lives of people the world over, the impact of severe weather episodes, which have been multiplying at an increasingly rapid rate, is getting more and more difficult to ignore.

As in other fields, from medical to transport, AI is being explored to help with their mitigation. According to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, a third of the world’s population, mainly in the least developed countries and small island developing states, is not covered by early warning systems (EWS). He announced that the UN would spearhead a new universal EWS with AI at its core.

With water scarcity and rising temperatures threatening food resources in all countries, scientists are also using AI to fast-track the development of new types of crops capable of withstanding climate extremes. In May, a UK-based plant genome editing lab said it was constructing a synthetic potato chromosome from scratch – “a world-first achievement that could transform agriculture”, it claimed. “If successful, the research will unlock new ways to make crops more resilient and productive… securing global food supplies amid the growing challenges of climate change.”

Harvesting data for weather resistant crops

There is a role for machine learning (ML) to help in better matching crops with environmental conditions, adopting growing techniques that boost their resilience and even developing new breeds of weather- and pest-resilient plants.

A number of these are outlined in a paper published by Nigeria’s Obafemi Awolowo University. For instance, AI-driven crop models which incorporate weather predictions and long-range climate data “can simulate how a crop will respond to future climate scenarios, allowing breeders to identify the most resilient varieties for specific conditions”.

AI can supercharge measurement of the physical attributes of crops. This process, called phenotyping, “traditionally required manual labour and was therefore limited by the availability of human resources”, according to the research. Data from drones and sensors fed into AI models can enable “automated and large-scale phenotyping, collecting detailed data on plant morphology, growth patterns and responses to environmental stress”. The speed  of AI systems allows more time for the farmer to find a better response.

Identifying plant genes

Academics and scientists are very active in using ML to identify plant genes which exhibit greater resilience to heat, moisture and disease. When genomic selection is sped through an algorithm, it can help predict the breeding value of plants and ensure that resources are used effectively, the Nigeria research outlines.

Researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands are unpacking the genome sequence of mustard with a view to building an AI model that could be used to identify the non-coding ribonucleic acid (RNA) across plant species. Non-coding RNA plays an important role in the development of organisms, for example by activating genes, according to project lead Michael Shon.

“By understanding the non-coding regions of plant genomes, breeders can develop crops with specific desirable traits, such as making crops more resilient to climate change,” he explains. “The potential impact could be huge.”

Early warning systems helped by AI

After the tragic loss of multiple lives when a flash flood raised the level of the Guadalupe River in Texas by eight metres in just 45 minutes, questions were asked about the performance of the region’s EWS. Weather forecasters had warned of heavy rainfall, and alerts were issued to mobile phones, but cellular coverage was patchy, and there was no county-wide EWS in place, with the cost of implementation blamed.

The need for better EWS was deemed urgent by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) when it told COP27 in 2022 that the number of recorded disasters had increased five-fold “driven in part by human-induced climate change and more extreme weather”. Three years on and challenges remain in “hazard forecasting, risk communication and decision-making”, according to researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Germany. They are exploring whether AI models, integrated with meteorological and geospatial data, could improve outcomes.

Since flood forecasting “suffers from many unresolved processes in hydrological modelling”, they suggest using ML to tighten predictions. They point out that wildfire risk prediction which links earth observation data with anthropogenic and meteorological information would equally benefit from ML.

Rubbish in, rubbish out

Regardless of whether AI is used or not, the results of any predictive model are only as good as the input. Where the data is weak, forecasts will be weak too. A project led by the University of Oxford with the UN World Food Programme and the IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centres claims to have developed a first-of-its-kind hybrid approach to generate more accurate forecasts without the need for expensive local infrastructure.

“We use AI models to fill in the traditional physical forecasting models,” explained researcher Shruti Nath. “This allows better, more accurate representation of reality, particularly for regions that don't have such good observations, like Africa.”

The USD 3,1 billion Early Warnings for All (EW4All) initiative led by the UN, due to come into force by the end of 2027, aims to ensure universal protection from hazardous environmental events.

Central to its effort is the collection, sharing and access to high quality data at a global scale with ITU tasked to improve warning dissemination and communication. At the heart of its efforts is AI. For example, AI can be “leveraged to contextualize disaster risk information comprehensively to facilitate well-informed and equitable decision-making”.

ITU says AI has the “capability to enhance the capacity for detection, observations, monitoring, analysis and forecasting of hazards”. AI will further “optimize information delivery with personalized ‘client’ profiles, ensuring timely, comprehensible and actionable insights”.

Standards are key

In order to be effective both at scale and at a local level, various technologies, ranging from satellite and plane imaging to IoT sensors and long-term meteorological modelling, ideally need to be standardized, transparent and equitable. The work of the IEC, often in concert with organizations like ITU and ISO, delivers essential work to ensure compatibility among diverse technologies and data sources and between multiple stakeholders.

A key set of standards is developed by JTC 1/SC 42, the joint technical committee formed between ISO and the IEC to produce standards for AI. It has for instance published ISO/IEC 5259-1 on the data quality for analytics and ML.

Standards for sensors are published by IEC TC 47, while anything linking sensors to IoT is standardized by another joint technical committee between ISO and IEC, JTC 1/SC 41. Among its publications is ISO/IEC 20005, covering sensor networks.

A new IEC and ISO joint technical committee, JTC 3, on quantum technologies is planning to help standardize such technologies and coordinate with the work of relevant committees. It is hoped that processing data using quantum tech will exponentially increase the capacity for computation and the speed at which calculations and analysis are performed.

 

Data centres to bear the brunt of climate change

IEC Tech

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Artificial intelligence (AI) requirements are boosting the installation of data centres all around the world. Can they adapt to climate change and how can standards help?

How will data centres fare in harsh climate conditions?

In 2022, the London data centres of two US tech giants failed as cooling systems broke down during a heat wave, which saw temperatures hit 40 °C. In the US, data centre operators in Florida, a region prone to hurricanes and tornadoes, are building greater resilience into buildings to protect against increasingly common severe weather events.

Data centres (DCs) house the essential compute power and storage for all range of consumer, commercial and public services. Some governments  have deemed them critical national infrastructure. Without data centres, entire sectors, from banking and medicine to scientific research, would collapse. While these giant servers have generally been built to withstand cyber attacks, the risks posed by natural disasters and extremes of weather due to climate change may not have been sufficiently factored in.

Data centre gold rush

The World Economic Forum describes a global data centre gold rush, citing estimates that the industry will more than double in value between now and 2032 to USD 584 billion. DC expansion in the UK, for instance, is set to grow by a fifth, with another 100 facilities expected to be built over the next few years as the rise of AI increases the need for processing power.

This is changing the location of data centres, as industries and countries seek to build capacity in AI processing, which in turn incurs outsized demands on energy to power servers and cooling systems. Goldman Sachs forecasts global power demand from data centres will increase 50% by 2027 and by as much as 165% by the end of this decade.

While the US overwhelmingly dominates the global data centre market (calculated to host 45% of the world’s DCs or 5 426 DCs reported in March 2025), there are marked increases in investment in places such as Thailand, Kenya, Brazil, the UAE, India and Singapore. The DC market in Europe is growing at nearly 7% a year, especially in countries like Sweden and Denmark. They are becoming emerging hubs for more sustainable data centres relying on renewable energy to operate.

Likewise, Bangkok and the corridor to Chonburi, 100 km southeast of the capital, are “rapidly becoming one of Southeast Asia’s most dynamic data centre markets”, according to a new report. With total IT capacity now exceeding 2,5 gigawatts (GW), it ranks as the region’s second-largest market after the Malaysian state of Johor.

Concerns about severe weather are growing

While pundits expect investments in new DCs to increasingly focus on sustainability, energy efficiency and scalability, there is a heightened concern about the ability of critical infrastructure to survive incidents such as wildfires, floods and record-high temperatures, which now plague most countries around the world.

A 2021 survey reported that 45% of US data centres had experienced an extreme weather event that threatened their continuous operation. The same survey revealed that nearly 90% of stakeholders believed climate change and weather-related events would increase the cost of DC infrastructure and operations over the next decade. “Data centres, the lifeblood of our digital world, are at the frontline of the climate crisis,” states one financial services consultancy. “Their enormous energy consumption, reliance on water and vulnerability to extreme weather events make them a critical concern for environmental sustainability.”

Data centre providers and consultancies are putting contingency plans for severe weather events at the top of their agenda. One of them advises management teams on how to prepare for tornadoes, hurricanes and ice storms.

Extreme weather events “can cause significant structural damage to buildings,” it warns. “This can lead to prolonged power outages and data loss. Wind and storms cause excess dust and debris in the air, which can contaminate equipment and cooling systems.”

The water conundrum

Perhaps the most alarming threat to DC sustainability is that posed by rising and consistently occurring high temperatures. The threat is twofold. Increased external temperatures necessitate more water to cool the server systems within the data centre. This demand is exacerbated by potential water scarcity as a result of drought conditions. Regions already grappling with water scarcity, such as California, are particularly susceptible to this issue. The energy used to power systems like air conditioning is not only financially costly but rips holes in the industry’s carbon reduction targets.

To combat this, one US-based data centre provider says it is designing its facilities “with 50-year weather extremes in mind”. This includes expanding the operating temperature ranges of its facilities at the same time as using less power. In pilot projects, it says it has moved operating temperatures closer to 80 °F (27 °C) versus the industry average of 72 °F (22 °C). “Operating our data centres in a higher temperature range enables us to use less energy for cooling, adapt to changing weather conditions and reduce the risk of outages.”

The pros and cons of liquid and immersion cooling

Other solutions include liquid and immersion cooling. Liquid cooling, according to a US data centre consultancy, is a system that circulates a cooling fluid (often water mixed with additives) through a closed loop to absorb heat from high-temperature devices. DCs implement more complex versions of the system, known as direct-to-chip cooling, where water or other specialized fluids directly contact cold plates attached to critical chips. While using these solutions remains a problem in areas where water is scarce, these methods are more energy efficient than air for cooling.

Immersion cooling, according to this market researcher, involves submerging hardware in thermally conductive, dielectric fluids. This liquid absorbs and dissipates heat directly from the components to reduce energy consumption and lower operational costs.

Water and specialized liquids have a higher specific heat capacity than air, meaning they can absorb more heat before experiencing a temperature rise. This allows more efficient heat transfer, enabling hardware to run at lower temperatures.

Both methods are, however, more complex than cooling by air. Liquid cooling involves a system of “pumps, pipes, plates and coolant reservoirs” according to the consultancy. “Each piece of hardware can fail, potentially leading to leaks or downtime,” it says. In addition, the fluid can “become contaminated or evaporate over time”, making management problematic.

Immersion cooling is considered the more “radical” approach but also one that “removes heat more effectively” than other systems because the fluid uniformly and comprehensively surrounds every surface.

On the debit side, dielectric fluids “can be significantly more expensive than water”, so if temperatures rise, putting more demand on the amount of fluid, “costs can escalate quickly”. Replacing the fluid over time “can represent a substantial cost”.

While immersion cooling systems can reduce operational costs due to lower energy consumption, getting access to any part of the server which is submerged in fluid is challenging since “operators need different procedures for installation, cable management, maintenance and upgrades”.

What standards for data centres?

International standards and guidance are produced by an ISO/IEC subcommittee which is part of both organizations’ joint committee on information technology. ISO/IEC JTC 1/ SC 39 prepares standards which help to assess methods, design practices, operation and management aspects to support resource efficiency, resilience and environmental sustainability for data centres.

ISO/IEC 22237-2 specifies requirements and recommendations for the construction of data centres including location and site selection which takes in to account the natural environment and protection from environmental risks. It specifically details guidance for physical fire protection and protection against damage from water.

ISO/IEC TS 22237-31 defines key performance indicators (KPIs) for resilience, dependability, fault tolerance and availability tolerance for data centres. This document also covers the data centre infrastructure of power distribution and supply, and environmental control, and provides examples for calculating these KPIs for analytical comparison of different DCs. This will be replaced in the coming months with an updated document, ISO/IEC DTS 22237-31.

The international standard ISO/IEC TS 22237-30 specifies requirements and recommendations for risk assessments to be employed concerning seismic activity and earthquakes in relation to data centres. In addition, it describes design concepts that can be employed as mitigation within the construction and other design elements of DCs. ISO/IEC 21836 specifies a measurement method to assess and report the energy effectiveness of a computer server.

All these standards are essential for data centres to mitigate climate change and for the market to continue growing in line with new digital and AI-related demands.

YouTube, TikTok attacked for control of audience

Streaming Media

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Social media are essential to monetization but leaves content owners vulnerable, said Candle Media CEO Kevin Mayer; while UK government threatens to force YouTube to promote BBC and ITV news content to prop up social cohesion.

The global reach of social media has become essential to the media business but content owners are at the mercy of Big Tech and especially vulnerable to the algorithm, heavyweight US execs told the Royal Television Society in the UK. YouTube came under most fire purely because it’s the platform that media owners can’t do without.

“Social media have the central ability to control the media experience of the audience,” said Kevin Mayer, co-founder and co-CEO of Candle Media at the annual RTS Cambridge Convention. 

“YouTube has become more difficult. Monetization is lumpy,” said Mayer. “Sometimes, YouTube decides to take their programmatic ad interface and favor our content. Other times, it takes that programmatic interface and favors competitive content or content that has nothing to do with the family audience that we serve.”

Among Candle Media’s assets is UK-based children’s content producer Moonbug which it acquired for $3bn in 2021. Its kids channel CocoMelon boasts the largest family channel on YouTube with 200 million subscribers.

“YouTube is hard to deal with at times,” Mayer said. “They tweak their algorithm and all of a sudden we get nine million views instead of 12 million views. We go talk to them and say, ‘hey, why'd you do this? And they reply ‘oh we didn't mean to do that, that was unintended, we'll turn it back’. The power and the global nature of those platforms is undeniable [but] you do have to be very careful about it.”

Mayer spent 15 years at Disney before briefly becoming CEO of TikTok and COO of ByteDance. “You launch a video on TikTok and it overnight you can have 5m followers but you can’t monetize on that. For TikTok, it's all about the technology and the algorithm to figure out exactly what every single user wants. If you're a professional content creator TikTok does not offer you money to put you content on TikTok and it’s not going to happen either. Insta, Snap, TikTok spend zero on content and they don’t need to.

“The exception is YouTube. It has created an incredible economy that that has not been replicated by anyone else. The last thing TikTok or Instagram want to do is start taking half their revenue and paying it off to creators.”

Having come of out legacy media, Mayer is now a convert to digital. “There is no age group to which the march toward alternative media consumption does not exist,” he said. “So, if I were investing today, I would use social media as the centrepiece of IP that you create and then you create monetization platforms around that social media storytelling, including traditional media for streaming, TV and movies.”

 

 

UK may force YouTube to promote BBC content

The UK government has hinted at plans to force YouTube and other major streamers to ensure content from the public service broadcasters BBC and ITV is given prominence. It has already legislated to give them prominence on Smart TVs, but wants to go further.

“We support [media regulator] Ofcom’s recommendation that public service media should be prominent on major video sharing platforms,” the government minster for culture and media Lisa Nandy told the conference. “If we need to regulate, we will.”

This isn’t just about preserving the future of the PSBs in a sea of digital content and fragmented distribution but to prop up the visibility and integrity of establishment news.

“We want to empower audiences so they can distinguish between news and misleading or false content,” Nandy said. “The lines have blurred in recent years which has eroded trust in our media and democracy.”

“It's about ensuring that the standards we expect from our PSM are reflective across the whole of broadcast media. So that polemic isn't presented as fact and people trust what they see. The lines between editorially curated and user generated content, between content providers and content platforms are no longer clear.”

BBC wants regulatory support and investment

Earlier, BBC Director General Tim Davie has opened the conference by trumpeting the BBC’s leading place on the global stage and urging the UK government to give it a stable platform to continue.

“We spent years talking through the angst of digital transition and despite it all this industry continues to be a success story. But now it does feel a little different. A lot seems at stake,” he said.

He claimed was the world’s most trusted news brand and that, in the UK, trust in the BBC rose last year; “A significant achievement in a fraught election year in polarised times.”

The immediate audience may have been TV execs but Davie’s message was addressed to the UK government. The funding for the public broadcaster, currently a universal licence fee, is under review.

“We don’t want the licence fee just to continue as before,” he said. “We want reform, we want it to modernise.”

AI will cause job losses behind the camera

Two years ago, the event’s theme was Too Much to Watch - a reference to an industry grappling with the challenge of attracting consumers flooded with choice.

“Since then, the pace of change has accelerated and the impact is more immediate and more profound,” said Jane Turton, chair of the RTS. “Discussions about technology, especially AI, have become part of our everyday.”

All three tech titans offered candid if alarming commentary on how AI will impact the industry, both negatively and positively.

“The opportunity for the creative industries is to substantially reduce production cost,” said Joe Ravitch, Co-Founder and Partner at investment group Raine. “Everybody I talk to in film and television is using generative AI. Obviously, that will come at the expense of a lot of jobs behind the camera, but I also think that the underlying value of the IP itself (the story) is where there's a tremendous amount of value.”

The cost of content creation is going to decline substantially at the expense of substantial cost to society, Mayer predicted.

“Some companies are going to be entirely using AI for their production,” he said. “They no longer need physical sets or green screen. Even the advances we made at Disney with Unreal Engine (on Mandalorian) is being leapfrogged by AI. AI creates an environment where long-form content can be made at a substantially reduced price but the flip side of that is that the barriers to entry collapse.”

Mayer is an investor in AI voice synthesizer Elevenlabs. He warned, “AI will make incumbents more efficient in production while also risk rendering them obsolete. If you can create long-form storytelling of the quality that you now see out of [OpenAI video generator] Sora it makes it makes defending your turf as an incumbent very difficult.”

While AI slashes production costs global streaming platforms allow distribution for all.

“There’s been a complete shift in power across the media industry,” said BrandonB, CEO and Founder StudioB, a creator with a combined following of 25 million and 16 billion video views.  “For the first time ever distribution at scale is free. Suddenly, anyone with access to a phone and the internet is able to create a video, upload it online, and distribute to the world's largest platform on a TV.

“We're going to see talent start-up from across the world, not just the big media in the top cities and people who are able to get into the right rooms to pitch to the right people. Talent is going to spread their stories across the globe.”

Jeff Zucker, CEO, Redbird IMI said the use a company makes of AI was now critical to Redbird’s decision whether to invest or not.

“AI will create new things we want to watch and it won't involve a lot of people in its creation. Having said that, there's still going to be a need for great movie stars and great TV stars. And let's see if AI can really write with the same emotion that the great screenwriters do. I can’t see that it does – yet.”

Nick Clegg warns of internet fragmentation

Nick Clegg, until recently the policy chief at Meta, talked of the “collision” between the worlds of Big Tech and politics.

“West coast Big Tech and governments do not speak each other’s language or understand the pressures and incentive on either side of the divide.”

He said there is no such thing as the internet which is “remorselessly splintering” with unforeseen consequences.

“Something powerful is happening out of sight and out of mind which is the gradual balkanization of the internet. We have a Chinese internet, a Russian internet and a western internet which is itself fragmenting.”

He said the globalization of technology and the deglobalization of politics were on collision course.

“It’s something which hasn't been examined in the detail I think it deserves.”

In a lighter moment Clegg observed that Mountainhead, a 2025 HBO satire about billionaire tech bros, had hit home.

“There’s incredible hubris in Silicon Valley. I have been in conversations exactly like that. In Silicon Valley they believe, not without some reason, that they are great disruptors inventing the future yet it is a stiflingly conventional place. There’s a herd movement to genuflect before Trump.”

 

RTS Cambridge Convention: One last wave of the flag for British news and content

IBC

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The fate of public service broadcasting was transmuted into an existential threat to British culture, politics and prosperity at the RTS Cambridge Convention this week.

“This country is staring down two alternative paths,” said Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy in a keynote to the Royal Television Society. “We can fall apart or we can rise together. We can drift into a future where only some of us can be seen and heard or we can choose to build a society that is inclusive enough to respect - and civilized enough to embrace - different debates and dissent without being destroyed by either.”

Introducing the two day conference, BBC Director General Tim Davie said, “We’ve spent years talking through the angst of digital transition and despite it all this industry continues to be a success story. But now it does feel a little different. A lot seems at stake.”

Davie stressed what he believed to be the importance of the BBC not just to UK GDP but to cultural influence and global soft power.

“What is the place of the UK on the world stage? Are Western democracies able to deliver in the modern world? Can we preserve civilized debate, trusted information, and a secure participative society? How should the UK compete against or partner with US and Chinese media companies and the AI giants who are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on supercomputing power?”

The latter was a nod to Microsoft’s announcement of a $22 billion investment in UK AI, quantum compute and data centres.

Nick Clegg, the former deputy PM and Meta’s former policy chief, was scathing of the deal. Describing the UK as a “vassal state technologically” he said; “We’re exhausted as a country, fearful of the future. How do we resuscitate the spirit which is flagging in the country? Why can't we create the trillion dollar tech company of the future? Why can't we keep our tech entrepreneurs in the UK? That can't just be turned around by governments [and] it’s not going to be done by sloppy seconds from Silicon Valley.”

BBC urges sustained investment

The creative industries have been singled out as one of the key growth driving sectors that the government is prioritising in its industrial strategy. Media and Entertainment contributed £29 billion, or over a quarter of the total creative industries, to the economy in 2024 and PSBs have the potential top contributed nearly £10bn by 2035, provided they invest in “creative capital” according to research presented by Rachel Wolf, Founder & CEO, Public First.

Davie urged for a clear and urgent growth plan. “Without it we will be managing decline,” he said.

“It will require sustained investment from the industry and from PSBs, as well as enlightened strategic thinking on how to enable this from government.

“If I have one message it is we've got to get on with it at speed to make sure we have the right policy and regulatory environment in place quickly to incentivise growth and attract investment.”

The Culture Secretary called on the TV sector to do more to create consensus and chastised broadcasters for failing to do enough to commission regional content.

“Last year [at the RTS Convention] I asked for much greater urgency to diversify TV work and move commissioning out of London to ensure that the whole nation is reflected in the stories told. Can anyone say they’ve done enough? When what constitutes news and culture is determined and commissioned by a group of people who are drawn from just one background and one part of our country. It's a conversation that too often excludes not just some of us, but most of us.”

Acknowledging that PSBs are “fighting with one arm behind its back” and that “regulation has not kept pace with the media revolution” she vowed to “fix those foundations.”

Regulating for PSB prominence on streamers

This included a suggestion that the government would regulate to ensure PSB content was given prominence on online platforms.

“The Media Act [2024] ensures Public Service Media (PSM) has prominence on smart TVs, but we want to go further. We support Ofcom’s recommendation that PSM content should be prominent on major video sharing platforms. If we need to regulate, we will.”

This isn’t just about securing an audience for UK broadcaster content on YouTube or better commercial returns, Nandy said, but to prop up the visibility of journalist-led news.

“We want to empower audiences so they can distinguish between news and misleading or false content. The lines have blurred in recent years which has eroded trust in our media and democracy.”

“It's about ensuring that the standards we expect from our PSM are reflective across the whole of broadcast media. So that polemic isn't presented as fact and people trust what they see. The lines between editorially curated and user generated content, between content providers and content platforms are no longer clear.”

That includes combating AI generated disinformation with Nandy insisting that the government would build a regulatory framework that works for “world-class creatives and publishers” balanced with support for “responsible innovation and growth” in the UK's AI sector.

There was also a nudge toward a future merger of public service broadcasters.

“There are limits to what the government can do to tilt the scales back in favour of PSM without action from all of you,” she said.

“Ofcom have called for more ambitious partnerships amongst PSM providers – and with others in the sector – to support their sustainability and benefit audiences. We agree.”

Warnings over reliance on big tech and social media

Clegg bemoaned the “one-way traffic” of Big Tech acquiring British innovation and talent.

“The moment our companies develop any scale or ambition they have to go to California because we don't have the growth capital here. We don't have the scale of market – because we foolishly took ourselves out of the EU. We’ve defanged ourselves because of adherence to transatlantic relationships.”

In the room were three US media entrepreneurs with investments in UK media who each spoke of the necessity to work with global streamers and social media and of the risks in doing so.

“Fundamentally, tech companies are going to be the enemy,” said Joe Ravitch, co-founder and partner at US investment bank Raine. “You're not just creating content from a UK or European market or selling product into a U.S broadcaster anymore you're delivering it into global platforms. You just need to make sure you're getting paid for it. There are numerous examples of platforms like Roadblox and YouTube which offer an enormous opportunity for monetization.”

Arguing that the “hegemony of long-form entertainment” had passed Kevin Mayer, Founder and Co-CEO, Candle Media said TV networks are being eclipsed by viewing on other platforms.

In a reverse of decades of entrenched media strategy he advised making social media the primary platform and broadcast a secondary outlet.

“I love the idea of taking social media and finding brands, stories, and personalities, and extending that traditional media.”

Candle Media acquired British children’s content produce Moonbug for around £2.3bn in 2021. It has the second biggest YouTube channel in the world with 12 billion views a month yet Mayer also highlighted the vulnerability of relying algorithms that could change overnight.

“Social media have the central ability to control the media experience of the audience. YouTube is hard to deal with at times. Monetization is lumpy. They tweak the algorithm. You have to be careful but the power and global nature of those platforms is undeniable.”

Last year, US venture capital firm Redbird IMI bought super-indie All3Media for £1.15bn. The maker of Traitors and Race Across the World posted a loss of £113.5m for 2024 but CEO Jeff Zucker, insisted, “We're still big believers in great quality scripted unscripted content. That's why we placed such a big bet on All3Media. We believe mixed economy of digital and traditional media will exist for a long while.”

His Bit Tech warning was around the AI. “When we want to invest one of the key things we look at is how our those companies are using AI to their bottom lines. AI will create new things we want to watch and it won't involve a lot of people in its creation.

“AI is going to fundamentally upend everything [but] there's still going to be a need for great movie stars and great TV stars. Maybe not as many, but there will still be a need for them. And let's see if AI can really write with the same emotion that the great screenwriters do. They don’t yet.”