BBC making AI deals with Silicon Valley and plotting streaming device for PSBs

Streaming Media

Moves to transition the UK’s free to air broadcasters to an all-streaming future have gathered pace with 2035 a likely tipping point.

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The BBC is leading the charge. Today its channels remains the most watched in the country and it claims to be the most trusted news broadcaster in the world. Plans to preserve this for the next generation are its priority and involves among other things expanding its content credentials service Verify; taking control of the UK’s inevitable shift to IP; doing deals with Big Tech on AI to scale production; and securing prominence for its channels on streaming services. The latter further includes a plan to develop a streaming media device dedicated to UK free to air channels.

“The BBC can become an institution that builds social capital and stimulates growth in the online, AI age,” BBC Director-General Tim Davie said in a speech at Salford, Manchester yesterday. “Unless we act we will drift. Becoming weaker, less trusting, less competitive.”

Calling the BBC “a precious national asset” Davie said the organization aims to have “maximum catalytic effect” on the UK. “With courage, collaboration, investment and imagination, we can create a UK that is more inclusive, more secure, and more successful,” he said.

Davie called for a national plan for IP switchover in the 2030s including proposals for a new streaming media device for Freely the subscription free IPTV service that is run as a joint venture between BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and 5 (owned by Paramount Global) to stream linear channels and on-demand programming.

“I talked a few years ago about my belief that we needed to own digital switchover, not get dragged, and proactively shape the future,” he said.

“We think now is the time to confirm an IP switchover in the 2030s, setting out the conditions and providing certainty to ensure success.

“To help, we want to double down on Freely as a universal free service to deliver live TV over broadband. We are considering a streaming media device with Freely capabilities built in, with a radically simplified user interface specifically designed to help those yet to benefit from IP services.”

Battle for visibility

Freely launched a year ago and is available on a number of smart TVs and OS providers including Hisense, Panasonic, Sharp, TCL, TiVo, Toshiba, VIDAA and Amazon Fire TV. It was also recently made available on Philips and JVC TVs, though not yet on Samsung.

New features for the platform released this month include a Backwards TV Guide enabling users to catch-up or on demand TV viewing on the same day as the live broadcast.

Davie is concerned public service content will get lost to audiences in the transition to streaming. UK media regulator Ofcom is currently reviewing the prominence for PSB content on YouTube and other social media platforms in a report due to be published in the next couple of months.

Channel 5 Director Sarah Rose said last week that this may not be enough. “We are all moving into streaming but PSBs are too precious to leave to Korean Connected TV manufacturers. We can’t sit and ask for it passively. I think we need intervention and regulation.”

Davie warned, “We  need to see critically robust implementation of the Media Act at pace – to secure good PSB prominence on every platform. If people can’ t find our services, and prominence is simply secured by the highest bidder, then we can’t build connections and trust.”

A dedicated Freely device would give the PSBs control over how their content is presented, without having to negotiate with Smart TV vendors or social platforms about visibility.

UK audiences spend more time watching traditional broadcasters than they do streaming services today. Figures show 87% of those age four and above watch the traditional broadcasters each month and spend an average 137 minutes a day doing so. By comparison, 78% of people watch a streaming service and they spend only 40 minutes a day doing so.

Yet, in 2024, for the first time, TV sets were the most-used device for watching content on YouTube at home, according to Barb. Forty one per cent of YouTube viewing was done on TV sets, ahead of 31% on smartphones.

AI and trust issues

Davie claimed that trust in the BBC rose in 2024. Over 80% of UK adults watch or listen to BBC content every week and 94% monthly. Three-quarters of UK adults use BBC News weekly, and the BBC is the only UK media brand in the top 5 most used for young people.

“We’re the world’s most trusted global news provider with an audience of 450 million weekly,” Davie said.

“We’re seeing record growth online driven by rapid innovation, with iPlayer the UK’s fastest-growing VOD platform in 2024 ahead of all global competitors.”

He said the BBC would “dramatically increases” its news presence on platforms like YouTube and Tik Tok “to ensure we have a stronger position amidst the noise.”

He added, “We are the biggest news account globally on Instagram, but we want to deploy new technology and skills to create more content that works on these platforms while incentivising links to our services.

“And we need to build Verify across more services globally. [We will] combine agentic AI with trusted BBC journalism to create a new gold standard fact checking tool. Our aim is to work globally with other PSBs to ensure a healthy core of fact-based news.”

The majority of BBC staff are already using AI in their work, Davie said, adding that the BBC sees big potential in developing its own bespoke LLM, deploying agentic AI capabilities.

“This will all be done in support of our public service mission – never relinquishing editorial oversight. We are looking at new, major partnerships with the world leading big-tech companies, the hyper scalers.

“As part of this, we are already working on the media supply chain, the processes behind the scenes that gets content from the camera to screen, from microphone to headphone. This will open up huge creative possibilities.

“And it will allow us to drive efficiencies and reinvest into world-class content. The UK can lead the market in developing a new wave of smarter platforms, like iPlayer, with improved functionality.”

All of this is backed up against a massive drop in funding, certainly relative to major international streamers, and a tussle over the future funding model of the BBC which has its licence fee up for renewal in 2027.

Davie rejected advertising and subscription models while calling for “modernisation and reform. But in doing so we must safeguard universality,” he said in his speech.

One UK broadcaster streaming gateway

One potential route forward, which has been floated before, is to combine all the streaming services of the UK PSBs under one portal – which logically, given it is so well known and used, would be branded iPlayer.

Channel 4 first offer TV on-demand it launched  4oD in 2006, just months after the launch of iPlayer. But its current £1 billion ($1.3bn) a year revenue may not be enough to sustain a modern distribution platform with all the associated investment costs into the long term, according to ‘insiders’ speaking to the BBC’s culture and media editor.

ITV has spent hundreds of millions of pounds to create ITVX, its streaming platform for the Netflix-age. The question is whether any of the UK’s can continue to invest in both content and infrastructure necessary to compete with Netflix – or is their survival of sorts better served by merger?

Peter Bazalgette, a former Chairman of ITV, told the BBC that PSBs will need some consolidation or, at the very least, more cooperation in future.

“We're in danger of having no public service broadcasting within a decade, certainly within 20 years,” he said. “We don't have a strategy for their survival. It's that serious. The regulators need to start thinking about it. Mergers may well be part of the answer. There should be fewer companies in the future.”

MPTS 2025 reveals a media industry struggling to keep pace

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

 article here

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.”

 

Celebrating Stunt Performers in Cinematic Style

my interview and copy written for RED

article here

The 97th Academy Awards featured a series of six high-octane commercials celebrating the work of performers who are not usually in the spotlight. Stunt professionals not only executed a series of daring stunts without the use of CGI or green screen but also played all the extras in the ads.

The marketing spectacle, a collaborative effort involving multiple creative agencies and production companies, was described by Chris Denison, a veteran stunt coordinator and director behind the campaign, as “a love letter to stunt performers” highlighting their often overlooked contributions to moviemaking.

The pitch to brands was for a series of 30-second spots each honoring a different type of stunt and all united by one visual and thematic concept.

“Each has the feel of a certain type of action film and we wanted each to have a similar cinematic language,” explains cinematographer Graham Robbins who oversaw the visuals for the entire project. “The visual language should be consistent, high class and cinematic but respectful of each brand’s unique needs. We chose RED cameras because they give you a massive amount of flexibility which is essential for a project like this.”

Each commercial starts in the world of a classic action movie and, after a rug-pull, ends in a behind the scenes film set. The MNTN shoot was inspired by Mad Max, the ad for Kiehl’s was shot with the iconic look of a Sergio Leone Western and the opening office brawl scene for Samsung was a take on John Wick. A second Samsung spot featured a stunt performer taking a 184-foot high fall off a building references Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol where Ethan Hunt scales the outside of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. L’Oréal Paris showcased performer Samantha Win repeatedly smashing through a plate-glass window and was themed on Skyfall.

“It was so much fun to get as close as we can to a Bond look,” Robbins says. “Skyfall is one of my favorite films of all time. The L’Oréal and the Kiehl’s ads were lit more for beauty but each spot had its own unique flavor in terms of how we approached it from a lighting and color standpoint.”

Robbins first used RED’s V-RAPTOR 18 months ago and has since shot two Netflix Original features (Our Little Secret and The Wrong Paris) and more than 100 commercials with the camera. The DoP says he views modern camera systems as a platform, not just as an individual tool, and that RED checks multiple boxes.

“The huge advantage RED has is the sheer flexibility it gives you. Whether it’s the great little crash cam, a mid-sized body or the V-RAPTOR [XL], it feels like they all have their strengths and pair really well together. That’s especially important for a series of commercials like this where you're doing such a large range of material in a dozen different places. Having that much flexibility in the camera platform is massive for me.”

Robbins personally owns a V-RAPTOR which he says “has this chameleon ability” to be picked up and used for handheld which is what he did for the Samsung fight scene. “Or you can go to a gimbal and move really quickly without losing that bigger image plane. I just find it so flexible to have that smaller size body and still have a big sensor. Plus, the global shutter is a huge advantage when shooting rapid action and you want superbly smooth cinematic motion.”

“Then, if you’re on a techno crane I’ll go to RAPTOR XL. The camera is easy to rig and balance with a large zoom on a crane and the built-in ND system is excellent.”

For the high speed chase in the desert for MNTN they were shooting V-RAPTOR [XL] from a Russian Arm on the roof of a Porsche Cayenne. “Then for all the crazy angles and little crash hits we used multiple KOMODO-X. I know even if I destroy one, it's not the end of the world, because KOMODOs do not cost a ton.”

The last shot of MNTN commercial is of a TV set landing directly in front of the lens. “That was dumb luck,” Robbins admits. “We actually put a KOMODO directly underneath the car and blew up a stack of TVs in a huge explosion you could feel 200 yards away. Those are all real TVs, all real glass, and one went about 80 feet in the air and just happened to land directly in front of a KOMODO.”

Robbins adds, “I can also use multiple different RED bodies and know that they will be matched in post. That is a primary reason why RED is superior. That flexibility is something that no other camera offers. I don’t feel as if anything with RED is a compromise.”

The visual consistency extended to shooting the movie pastiches for each ad on anamorphic and switching to spherical for the film set reveal. Robbins selected Blazar anamorphics after using a set over the Christmas holidays to shoot home movies.

“The difficult thing about shooting action on anamorphics is once you get wider than a 50mm you start getting crazy distortion,” Robbins explains. “When I tried the Blazars with RAPTOR I couldn't believe how good the image quality was, particularly using the wides.

“It really blew me away that the wides were even usable because these lenses cost a fraction of others that we could have used. Budget was no issue here – I just loved the combination of lens and RAPTOR. The Samsung fight is almost entirely shot on a 1.5x anamorphic from that set.”

He shot R3D using the MQ setting using a base LUT that he built himself from work on music videos and commercials.

“The LUT is where I’ll start from, and then I'll tweak it per job. Each of the spots had their own version of that LUT but the base light is the same which keeps everything in a safe range that I know I can expose and light to. I don’t want to feel handcuffed to an approach and that’s what I love about shooting RED RAW. I can see the world how I want to see it with tons of flexibility to tweak it later.”

Robbins notes that the condensed timeline was a challenge. “It’s a testament to the skill of the stunt performers – some 75 of them across the production – that they were able to design, rig and pull-off the entire project in little more than 25 days.”

This marketing campaign was part of a movement in the entertainment industry to elevate the craft of stunt performers to be more widely recognized. The campaign was effective because it was recently announced it will be an Oscar category, beginning in 2028.

“Personally, I think it's well deserved,” Robbins says. “These people are legends. What they do is what makes movies great in the first place. They have been underappreciated for too long.”

The biocomputing revolution

IEC Tech

article here

The announcement of the world’s first commercialized “biological computer” earlier this year is the latest breakthrough in the emerging field of biocomputing which, it is claimed, will not only dramatically reduce energy consumption for artificial intelligence (AI) processing but could also give birth to a superior form of intelligence over silicon-based machines.

Biocomputing fuses living biological matter grown in a lab from proteins or DNA with electronics hardware. This creates processing systems “that use less energy and learn from smaller datasets than conventional computers” outlines the Australian company behind the breakthrough.

“We are going to create a new industry,” says Dr Fred Jordan, co-CEO of a Swiss-based biocomputing developer that rents its electrophysiological system to private companies for experiments. “It is going to totally revolutionize the way we perform computation.”

Back to the origins of biocomputing

A key stepping stone on this path was the discovery (by John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka, who were jointly awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize) that mature human cells can be reprogrammed to develop tissues for any other part of the body, including the brain. Since then, neuroscientists have grown human cells to study brain diseases and to better understand how the brain works. Now, researchers are able to use the same technology for computations.

“[Gurdon and Yamanaka] invented a way to create neural stem cells directly from your skin,” explains Jordan. “Because of that, we are able to create as many human brain neurons as we want. Our objective is non-medical, purely engineering, which is to construct a new type of computer processor.” Its biocomputing platform is composed of brain organoids about 0,5 mm in diameter built from 10 000 living neurons, but scalability is potentially infinite.

Jordan says, “When we create neurons in the lab, we have to stop the multiplication not to get too many of them. Potentially, we could create nervous tissue of one billion neurons, 100 billion neurons or 1 000 billion neurons without major issues and also without major cost.” In a paper he co-wrote, Jordan explains that the core concept involves using living neurons to perform computations, similar to how artificial neural networks (ANNs) are used today.

If perfected, this training could eventually allow organoids to mimic silicon-based AI and serve as processing units with functions similar to today’s CPUs (central processing units) and GPUs (graphics processing units), the company says. “If you want to do biocomputing, you first have to solve the problem of training,” Jordan explains. “Training means modifying the synaptic connections [between cells] in order to get the output that you need. It is exactly the same problem we had with ANNs 30 years ago. However, the solution that was found for ANNs that gave birth to modern AI and ChatGPT is not applicable to biocomputers. We have to find a new way to tune these synaptic connections.”

Scientists think they have achieved this by stimulating living lab grown cells with electronic pulses or chemicals (such as dopamine) in order to switch them on or off. This sends signals to the next cell in line forming new pathways and triggering responses in the same way that the human brain learns. “You can reward neurons when they do what you want and punish them when they don't do what you expect. This reconfigures the neural network to produce the right behaviour,” Jordan explains.

Environmentally sustainable AI

But why invest in biocomputing at all? The principal area of interest is the potentially huge energy efficiency it could provide compared to existing hardware-based AI processing. The Swiss company claims biocomputing is one billion times more energy efficient than current computing hardware and states its principal goal is to develop a biocomputing system that would use 100 000 times less energy than what is required to train generative AI today.

“The reason is that the [brain’s] nervous tissues are the result of 300 million years of evolution in order to optimize the use of energy for processing information,” Jordan explains. “[Our technology] is the result of this optimization. So, from an energy efficient perspective, biocomputing is going to be superior because it's been developed over millennia to work like this.”

Instead of powering and cooling stacks of GPUs in data centres, companies would eventually build data centres comprised of nervous tissue, Jordan suggests. “10 centimetres by 100 metres by 100 metres and millions of electrodes that do exactly the same thing but with thousands of times less energy,” he describes. “At this point computation becomes totally cheap [because of lower energy costs] and without environmental impact.”

Maybe a way of solving this conundrum: how can AI possibly help to reduce emissions when it uses so much energy to simply function? Biocomputing could be one of the solutions.

Smarter than classical computing

Since it uses the same neurons as the human brain networked in a similar manner, a synthetic biological intelligence could also be smarter at solving certain types of problems than traditional silicon-based AI. “Synthetic biological intelligence is inherently more natural than AI [with] the potential to create systems that exhibit more organic and natural forms of intelligence,” states the Australian developer. It cites learning capabilities like generalization and learning efficiency, “that AI can only simulate”.

Some researchers believe that biocomputers built using human cells can better replicate the function of the human brain and therefore for accelerated discovery of cures for neurological diseases like Alzheimer's. A Forbes columnist suggests: “In the future, these cells could be programmed to scan for biomarkers that indicate the presence of disease. The same cells could mass-produce proteins that could help treat the disease.”

Others theorize that forms of cellular computers, perhaps built from bacteria or mycelium, could be used to test changes in the natural environment and provide better solutions to restoring damaged ecosystems. “That’s a domain where conventional computers can basically do nothing,” says a researcher at Spain’s National Centre for Biotechnology. “You can’t just throw a computer into a lake and have it tell you the state of the environment.”

Jordan stresses that none of this proven. “Any computation related to cryptography and big data number crunching is not good with biocomputers,” he says. “However, many of the things which are done with AI can be done as well, if not better, with biocomputers, for the very simple reason that these are neurons, and AI is only a simulation of neurons. Biocomputers can do the same, and probably much better.”

Limits and challenges, including ethical

Of course, the fact that biological intelligence systems are alive (sustained on life support systems controlling temperature, and other factors) means they can also decay and die. In theory, brain matter could survive as long as the cerebrum in human bodies, which maxes out around 120 years, but in practice it is much shorter. The Swiss company has managed to evolve its organoids to survive for around 200 days and says even a few hours are enough for most experiments. The Australian developer claims its units survive around six months.

Another challenge confronting early developers of biocomputing systems is an ethical one. To the extent that the systems are alive and learning, questions of consciousness arise. Scientists tend to take an agnostic view. While acknowledging that the technology raises concerns about the need for regulation, the Australian company also questions whether it can ever be sentient and is of the opinion that biocomputing creates a different life form to animal or human. “We think of it as a mechanical and engineering approach to intelligence,” says the company’s Chief Scientific Officer. “We're using the substrate of intelligence, which is biological neurons, but we're assembling them in a new way.”

Jordan says his company is open to discussing the concept with ethical committees and expert academics and holds a similar view. “We present the science and they think about the ethical impact in the long run. How is [a biocomputer] with a 1 000 billion neuron nervous tissue going to behave? Can it develop consciousness? I have absolutely no clue because I don't know exactly what consciousness means.”

What standards can help?

Existing standards for AI and machine learning (ML) in IT are useful starting points. ISO/IEC 5259 handles aspects of data quality for analytics and ML. ISO/IEC TS 4213 is an assessment of machine learning classification performance. ISO/IEC 15938 - Part 18 concerns conformance and reference software for compression of neural networks. ISO/IEC 24029 documents the robustness of neural networks.

In the future, ethical considerations could be taken on board. The IEC and ISO have recently formed a joint systems committee on bio-digital convergence, IEC/ISO JSyC BDC, which will be tackling such issues. It is working on a series of landscape bio-digital standards dealing with life systems and bioengineering, including bioprocessing.

Biocomputing is still in very nascent stages but huge progress is anticipated. “The next big leap we predict is to succeed in training,” says Jordan. “We bet it will take 10 years before the ability to train [biocomputers] is cracked. It is going to happen and once we succeed it will change a lot of things. It is going to be an alternative way of computing,” he concludes.

Sport and short-form keys to accelerating Europe’s FAST growth, say Wurl

Streaming Media

Sports are an “accelerator” for ad-supported streaming in Europe with short-form sports content emerging as a key driver of engagement, says Keith Bedford, GM EMEA at CTV data company Wurl.

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“As studios and sports broadcasters struggle to tie in major upfront deals and connect with younger audiences, new models for revenue and content discovery will be required,” he says. “Short-form video could be one way we start to see sports content companies garner interest and boost engagement for their long-form and TVOD (transactional video on demand) businesses.”

Wurl enables content companies to distribute streaming video content to more than 300 million TVs and reach 30 million users globally each month. Its clients include A+E Networks, AMC Networks, Bloomberg and BBC Studios. It also offers an ad product called AdPool, which pairs streaming inventory with differentiated demand for both channels and streaming partners.  The company was bought for $430 million by AppLovin in 2022.

It works with over 25 sports brands notably World Rugby and FIFA with whom it partners to launch their respective OTT services RugbyPass TV and FIFA+ to CTV platforms in different territories. Both are predominantly archive channels with increasing volumes of live content.

According to Bedford RugbyPass TV, which launched in 2023, is gearing up to launch on Amazon Prime and other major streamers. “They are out to grow the market. America is a big market for World Rugby where rugby is a growing sport,” he says.

RugbyPass TV streams World Cup matches to fans in territories where broadcast deals are not in place as well as fixtures from tournaments such as the Women’s World Cup 2025 hosted in England this August, the U20’s championship and women’s international competition, WXV.

In addition, RugbyPass TV has over 1,000 hours of archive including historic matches plus fresh behind-the-scenes footage, documentary and interview content produced by World Rugby Studios.

Similarly, FIFA trying to build a global channel with FIFA+ which launched in 2022 on platforms including Samsung TV Plus, LG Channels, VIDAA, Rakuten and Roku, localized in 6 different languages.

“Where some rights for certain territories were not sold for the 2024 Women’s World Cup they put the games on FAST and the numbers were huge,” Bedford reports.

Short form FAST

For younger viewers, in particular, the rise of short-form and social video is a key trend. Platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels are stealing attention from long-form TV content with mobile-first, bite-sized content. Some 15% of YouTube Shorts content is now viewed on CTV.

“Short form on FAST is early days but brands are looking to tap into that new market,” Bedford says. “It's certainly something we're going to see a shift to in FAST.”

The starting point is putting content onto social media outlets and YouTube to entice fans to view the long form on FAST channels. “I see short form as a driver to the long form content. There are a number of projects we are looking at in this area. When it comes to short form on FAST, the journey is only starting.

“There's any real proposition there yet. Obviously, it's got to have to be built into the user interfaces. The fan is going to have to find shorts very quickly. There's a lot of collaboration needed with companies producing short form to drive consumers to FAST channels. It all has to link up. It’s quite complex to show a short and link to a channel but these are projects we are looking at. It’s a really interesting area.”

Wurl is talking to English Premier League football clubs about how they can better reach fans and  launch DTC services, whether short form or long form. “There's definitely a lot of interest there. Everybody's got to look at a short form to long form proposition.”

Europe catching up FAST

Bedford’s focus is on EMEA where 86% of consumers use CTV, with the highest viewership in Spain, followed by the UK. CTV ad investments are rising, with UK spending projected to reach £2.94 billion ($3.8bn) by 2028, according to IAB UK.

Europe is a little behind the curve of the U.S in rollout of FAST predominantly because Europe is a more fragmented market in terms of rights and language distribution and also because of Europe’s deeper and continuing history of free to air TV.

Nonetheless top markets like UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, and France are leading the way. Over the past year, we saw major platforms and broadcasters launch new FAST initiatives, from Titan OS and Virgin Media TV to UK broadcasters [BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5] with the launch of Freely.  Germany saw a 32% increase in CTV channel volume in 2024, growing from a low base.

“German broadcasters ZDF, WDR and ARD are all looking at FAST and launching channels. Certainly, Europe’s tier one broadcasters are taking FAST very seriously and launching streaming content. It’s just a matter of time before streaming will reach the heights of where we are in the U.S.”

In-stream ad formats

A partnership signed in April with Transmit could propel this change. It is aimed at closing the loop between interactivity and CTV by offering access to in-stream ad formats, such as Picture-in-Picture (PIP), Overlay, and L-bar.

“For example, during a live sports broadcast, viewers might see an ad pop up within the content itself during a break in action, rather than having the entire broadcast cut away for a traditional commercial break.”

Bedford says such non-intrusive ad formats enhances viewer retention and reduces churn.

“By introducing these new in-stream ad formats we’re not only offering advertisers a more engaging way to reach audiences but also creating new inventory for publishers. This is crucial because many FAST publishers struggle with underutilized ad space, which affects their ability to monetize their content effectively.”

This type of in-stream promo is more prominent in the U.S than Europe but Bedford thinks brands and fans will take to it. “That's the beauty of streaming. It can be easily achievable to add extra revenue for the channels during half times or in-game such as when there’s a throw-in.

“The holy grail for everyone is monetization in FAST and for us the future is looking at getting better attribution using performance marketing tools to generate more income for our clients.”

Secret Level: Storyboard to screen without ever picking up a camera

IBC

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Like it or not, we are potentially only months away from the first AI-generated feature film, and Jason Zada of Secret Level could be the one to deliver it.

Towards the end of 2024, a film called The Heist, clocking in at less than two minutes long, re-ignited debate about the potency of AI in Hollywood. 

It was created in just a few days with visuals entirely generated via text-to-video in Google’s Veo 2 platform. Although music and sound design were added, the imagery was raw out of the AI with no colour correction or polish. It is that which impressed many viewers who called it the best AI-generated video yet.

A week later, the same studio followed up with another short test called ‘Fade Out’ that also went viral. It focuses on an ageing rock star’s final years and includes cinematic details – camera moves, lighting, textures and emotion – to craft a story, not just a montage. 

As the punchline to The Heist has it: ‘Looks like we got ourselves a new king of video.’

Jason Zada, the filmmaker behind both projects, thinks we will see feature-length AI movies this year.

“Very soon we're going to start seeing a bunch of them,” he says. “More substantial budgets and resources are being allocated toward generative AI projects.”

The real question, he adds, is are we ready? “I don't think audiences want an AI film. They want a good film, and if it happens to be done in AI, that's cool.”

Zada is a seasoned filmmaker who has been creating with interactive formats since programming his Commodore 64 as a kid in the 1980s. He co-founded interactive advertising agency Evolution Bureau in 2000 to create web-based ‘advertainment’, selling the company to media conglomerate Omnicom eight years later for a reported $18m. In 2011 he won an Emmy for creating Facebook app ‘Take This Lollipop’, which has been seen by over 100 million people and directed 2016 horror film The Forest, which grossed almost $41m globally. 

Last year he set up Secret Level which has quickly been recognised as a leader among a new wave of AI-focused studios – Asteria and the Russo Brothers’ AGBO being others.

To officially launch Secret Level, Zada created the short Dream With Us, which combined live-action, AI, VFX, and animation. The film was completed in just under two weeks, with live-action shot on a small green screen soundstage and a fully generative AI pipeline.

“Basically, this was the lightbulb moment,” Zada says. “We had created something that would have taken months and would have been very expensive — and we did it in a fraction of the time. This pipeline is now at the core of every project we do.”

Pre- is the new post

The film and TV industry has been predicting the collapse of the linear processes of pre-production, production and post for a while and Zada believes AI may finally trigger it.

“We've been talking to a lot of Hollywood Studios and the main thing I explain to them and to any director that we work with is that you're able to see the final frame of what you're ultimately going to produce very, very early on. That is extremely empowering for making bold choices about set pieces or about monster creation. It really does get to the point where you can see exactly what it's going to look like in previz. That’s never been possible before.”

He continues: “The visual fidelity of AI is insane. Since you can previz everything with AI and sometimes it looks so good that you are basically able to look at a final frame but extremely early on, it changes your whole mindset about how to approach production.”

To date, Secret Level has been producing mostly short-form content for commercials and pop promos. This included the generative AI reimagining of Coca-Cola’s The Holidays Are Coming TV commercial from 1995 which launched last November. AI helped storyboard 34 shots and develop 45 unique versions of the campaign tailored for local markets.

“While some responses were polarising, the campaign became one of the most talked-about AI projects of the year. It demonstrated that we could use AI to iterate faster than ever, but it was really our team’s artistic decisions that helped shape every frame.”

A trailer for The Wood Fuzzles, handmade-style characters in a whimsical forest setting, gained significant attention online and became the first project under Secret Level Originals. 

“We’re now actively developing it into a full children’s TV show,” Zada says. “Never in a million years did I think I'd be head of a studio.”

Power to the people

Secret Level is closing its first round of financing and Zada and colleagues, including VP, Content & Production Monica Monique, have a decision to make.  

“Do we want to be a real studio where we make decisions on what content gets funded, but do so from a development standpoint?” he says. “In other words, let's prove if a concept has an audience first before it gets greenlit. In that small way, we should be able to produce some interesting ideas from a very diverse group of storytellers.”

He goes on to note that this upends the traditional hierarchy where only a small group of executives at a handful of studios had the power to vote or veto ideas that made it to screen. 

“It’s like when VHS arrived. Suddenly, you could have your film on a shelf next to Star Wars in a mom and pop store anywhere in the world. To me, that's where we're at with AI. We’re on the verge of shifting the creative and commissioning power of content away from just a few people at studio level. There's going to be so many other people who make those decisions to bring in new voices and new stories.”

Back to his rhetorical question about whether the public wants an AI feature, even though the technology might soon make it possible.

“There's going to be a lot of AI-generated content out there which is why sifting through the good stuff and finding the people who are really good at creating in AI will be key,” he says. “Curators and tastemakers are going to dominate the future. There are already many AI studios and many AI platforms. I like to compare Secret Level to [film producer/distributor] A24 where quality and taste are defining qualities.”

Use prompts to communicate your vision

Zada continues: “A lot of people think AI is more complicated than it is. The way I've been trying to break it down simply is to think about what happens on set now. A director talks to their DoP about what they want. Can you light it like this? Can we colour like that? The DP will talk to their Gaffer about bringing those idea to life. The more I broke it down, the more I started to realise that every single time I'm on set, I'm still having to communicate a sometimes very long series of words that are in fact text prompts. Prompting a computer is not that different. As with anything, there will be people who are really good at this and others that are mediocre and not so good.”

Rather than reducing artistic roles, Zada thinks AI will be additive to total production jobs. “It's just going to be different. There are going to be things that we shoot physically and things that we don't shoot in future. For example, do we need to go out and spend four days capturing a car driving down a road when we could easily create it in AI and it looks the same?”

Combating the haters

Along with other filmmakers using AI, Zada has been criticised mostly by people alarmed at what they perceive to be the unethical abuse of computers to create content at the expense of human jobs. Reaction to his work has been particularly extreme. He even had death threats after releasing The Heist.

“I tend to ignore the trolls on X. On LinkedIn at least you're in a semi-professional environment. I try to always approach it from the standpoint of understanding that hate drives a lot of people. People are just very mean spirited. Even when I publish tests and I’m playing around with technology and just wondering if I could visually tell a story this way, there is a lot of hate.

He adds: “There's a lot of people not working right now in Hollywood but I can tell you it's not because of AI. It’s because of Covid, the fall in the advertising market, the impact of the streamers and the strikes.”

Zada says his daughter is studying 3D animation at college and she’s asked him whether she will end up having a job at all.  “Yes, absolutely she will. I tell her, AI does all the things you don't want to do. Do you want to rig a 3D model? No, you want somebody else to do that.”

Gavin Whelan, a CG artist based in LA, commented on LinkedIn after seeing The Wood Fuzzles: ‘More pretty pictures created completely inauthentically, stolen from actual talented people. Toddlers will love this, but won't be able to tell it took zero artistic talent to create. The creator will likely make a lot of money on Youtube, they just won't have any soul left.’

Australian news site @ScreenBrief wrote on X about The Heist: ‘It’s uncanny to see something steal from so many different great directors and just blatantly destroy the soul of the art you love. It turns homage into insult by making it baseless theft. Disgusting.’

Zada responds: “I understand that a lot of traditional animation people are very threatened. AI could potentially upend what they do, but you can't ignore it. You can embrace it in whatever way you want to or not at all. I'm just saying it's a train that's moving down the tracks and you're either on the train or you're not.”

Live from Eurovision: The greatest show on Earth returns with a focus on enhancing the viewer experience

Streaming Media

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It’s not Glastonbury or Coachella or even Lady Gaga on Copacabana. The biggest music event in the world is Eurovision and it is back in Switzerland, the country where it all began back in 1956.

Launched as a live broadcasting experiment with seven nations competing, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) now attracts contestants from dozens of countries across the EBU membership (that includes Israel, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Australia), and a TV audience that reached 163 million people over the 3 live shows in 2024.

Among youth audiences (15-24 year olds), the viewing share of the 2024 Final was 58.6%, the highest share on record and more than four times the broadcast channels' average with an additional 6.5 billion views of #Eurovision2024 on TikTok – up 1.7 billion compared to 2023.

The 69th edition runs 12 to 17 May at the St. Jakobshalle, Basel, produced by Swiss national broadcaster SRG SSR. Immediately after Nemo’s victory in Malmö last May, an SRG task force began preparing for the 2025 ESC in Switzerland. Reto Peritz from SRF and Moritz Stadler from RTS were announced as the Executive Producers sharing overall responsibility.

One of their first hires was Tobias Åberg as Head of Production. “I represent SRG SSR in the project of ESC 2025,” he says. “The ESC is at the cutting edge of technology with demanding set-ups. For me, it’s always extremely interesting to work in different contexts and countries, as it offers the opportunity to learn from other cultures and people.”

Åberg, a Swede, is an ESC pro: he was Executive in Charge of Production in Malmö and was also a member of the core team for ESC 2013 and 2016. Over the last eight years, he has served as either Head of Production or a technical expert. As Head of Production ESC 2025 he is responsible for technical production, stage construction, infrastructure and IT.

He began by building the production team over the summer, while also travelling around Switzerland to help make the choice of host city and venue.

“Some of the earliest topics included defining the production scope and the responsibilities of the production team. I then began building my core team and engaging the key creatives within the production team - set designer, lighting designer, and senior multi-camera director.

“Once we’d made up our minds and selected the set design and set designer, we continued developing the overall production design, both creatively and technically, while also investigating its practical feasibility. The lighting design, camera plan, rigging concept, and LED specifications were developed. When the framework around the production design - including the technical setup for the broadcast - was in place, we began the tendering process to secure our technical suppliers.

In parallel, they engaged the wider team of technical managers, operators, camera crew and logistics.

A total of nine shows will be held at the 8000 seater St. Jakobshalle – with three aired live: the two Semi-Finals on 13 and 15 May and the Grand Final on 17 May.

Each year, the production tweaks and develop the concept of the show and its execution. “One key learning from previous ESC is that larger LED lighting setups are becoming increasingly complex - both in terms of signal distribution and, when combined with greater amounts of automation. The demands on power distribution are also growing. I always keep a close eye on these aspects.”

“We are always looking to optimise the viewer experience, as well as improve workflows - both during the setup period and throughout rehearsals and live shows,” Åberg says. “The camera positions are adjusted to best capture the specific production design, although we often return to some proven ideas, such as cranes on either side of the stage. Rail cameras and aerial cameras vary depending on the design.”

The camera plan for ESC 2025 includes 7 wireless, 9 on stands (8 with 90x-122x zoom lenses) and 10 block cameras plus 5 PTZ cams.  All are Sony.

A total of 300 audio streams are being managed from a system that includes 100 wireless microphones and 250 In-Ear wireless receivers

“We have DANTE out of the RF Receivers, Optocore in two redundant loops connecting all consoles in the venue, MADI for interconnecting with the broadcast world (OB vans) and AVB to address all amplifiers,” he says.

NEP once again is the main services supplier for galleries and vision this time working with Ukrainian special cameras team OperTec and links providers 2Sat (SNG) and Swisscom (IT).

Creative Technology are leading on supply and install of LED and projection kit. Set Stage and construction is handled by Unbranded Productions. Lighting rig and control is in the care of Neg Earth Lights. Rigging and Automation is handled by Germany’s Malecon. The Automated Camera Script (ACS) is LiveEdit.

The EBU’s tech partner Riedel are in charge of intercom, internal signal distributing and commentary tech. On-screen graphics are by Sweden’s VXO Design and LED content is led by Luke Halls Studio..

“VXO is the supplier and they work closely with our art director, our multicamera director, and our end of show producer to achieve the right look and feel,” says Åberg.

The short video ‘postcards’ introducing each act and screened while the stage is being prepared for the next entry, were filmed between January and April 2025 and directed by Luca Zurfluh of Zurich-based production company Dynamic Frame.

The activation sequence for the postcards are produced through a collaboration between Luke Halls Studio, VXO design, and Art Director Artur Deyneuve.  “For this, we also plan to use AR to place the graphics in a visually appealing way within our set design,” says Åberg.

The World Feed remains in 1080 50 SDR after an assessment by the EBU after 2023 in Liverpool found there was not sufficient demand for a 4K UHD HDR (or even a HD HDR) production among its public service broadcaster community.

To accommodate as many requests as possible for each act, rehearsals are essential and extensive, he says. There’s a significant amount of pre-programming too “to ensure we are as prepared as possible when we begin the live stage performance.”

This included pre-programming all lights, creating all LED content and pre-programming the ACS system. The team hold camera briefings with all the camera operators and rehearse with stand-ins before artists arrive on site.

“Lighting Designer Tim Routledge receives a look and brief for each act, some of which include very detailed lighting requests. His lighting team works to facilitate these as best as possible; however, it is ultimately our responsibility (as host broadcast producers), in collaboration with EBU, to make the final decision about the overall look.”

The production is using a QLab system for this year’s floor marking with Disguise as the playout system for all LED and projector surfaces.

RTCG of Montenegro return to the competition after last competing in 2022. And 36 of the 37 countries that took part at Malmö 2024 will be participating once again.

Eurovision Services provide distribution of the produced World Feed and is producer of the live voting element of the final.

Deyneuve has sprinkled the audio identity to the show with traditional Swiss elements: yodelling, a Basel drum corps, and alphorns. The stage design was also inspired by Switzerland's mountains by Production Designer Florian Wieder (Wieder Design), and highlighted by a central extension that extends into the standing audience area and surrounded by an LED arch.

The multicamera directors are led by Robin Hofwander with Myriam von Necker and Fredrik Bäcklund. Head of Show is SRF’s Yves Schifferle who last year helped Nemo to victory as Switzerland’s Head of Delegation at the ESC. He is responsible for creating and realising the content for all three ESC shows (including moderating the shows, the opening and interval acts, the flag parade, postcards and voting procedure). Head of Contest is Swedish TV producer Christer Björkman, who had the same role over the past decade.

Director of the Eurovision Song Contest is Martin Green. He joined in November from entertainment company TAIT where he was VO of live events. Green has been executive producer of major events includes the ceremonies of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022 and the BAFTA-winning ESC in Liverpool in 2023 on behalf of Ukraine.

The current favourite to win Eurovision 2025 is Sweden, represented by band KAJ, with their song Bara Bada Bastu, with France and Austria also in the early running.