Pay-TV reconfigures as super-curator

CSI

p12 September https://www.csimagazine.com/eblast/Digital_Editions/September2020/CSI-DigitalEdition-September2020.pdf

The TV industry is still fragmenting as consumers desert linear and pay-TV in favour of SVOD stacking but there’s a wind of change blowing toward consolidation.

“What has been disaggregated will ultimately be reaggregated albeit not in quite the same fashion,” says Gideon Gilboa is the EVP of Product, Marketing, and Solutions at Kaltura.

“I’m very bullish on aggregation,” says Paul Pastor, part of the exec team for Disney ABC’s stake in Hulu now Chief Business Officer for OTT platform provider Firstlight Media. “We haven’t yet seen the full cycle of aggregation happen… there is a lot of opportunity in the market right now.”

Pay-TV companies are prioritising service/channel bundles and looking to SVOD aggregation, agrees Guy Bisson, Research Director, Ampere Analysis; “Aggregation is the next battle ground.”

“There is clear movement in this direction,” confirms Adam Davies, Senior Manager Product Marketing at Synamedia. “Service providers are adding their own OTT services, developing more flexible pricing and commercial models and creating partnerships with pure OTT players to create the new pay-TV bundle.”

They are doing this, he adds, because it is what consumers have proven they want time and time again.

Deloitte’s latest Digital Media Trends study finds the average U.S. consumer paying for four streaming-video services, up from three before the pandemic.  As more media providers join the SVOD fray, it’s putting pressure on content and pricing.

“Consumers are increasingly frustrated in trying to navigate the flood of streaming options, all while trying to manage costs,” says Deloitte vice chair Kevin Westcott.

Now they’ve got the choice, it seems consumers do not want to do their own aggregation. “They want the flexibility and choice, but having so many fragmented content silos and subscriptions creates friction and frustration, particularly at the point of wanting to be entertained,” says Peter Docherty, Founder and CTO, ThinkAnalytics. “The discovery experience across multiple SVODs and pay-TV makes the viewers’ job even more difficult and time consuming.”

“Content owners and platform operators should always follow the end consumer and what they are generally looking for is to get as much specific content for their needs as easily as possible,” underlines Metrological CEO, Jeroen Ghijsen.

Service complexity

“Multiple services mean a certain amount of complexity for viewers who ultimately want to switch the TV on and find something to watch,” says Alex Wilkinson, Head of Sales and Marketing, EMEA & LatAm, Accedo. “This will likely be more apparent as the global climate returns to some level of normality and consumers get back to much busier lives. It also means that often consumers gravitate to whichever service has the most choice and either leave the others mostly unused or unsubscribe.”

In theory, offering up more content drives more opportunities for engagement, generating greater data sets and improving the likelihood that investments in technology and content will drive revenue.

“For operators, the aggregator model means having more data on what the consumer is watching and how they are interacting with different video services within a bundle,” Wilkinson says. “It shifts control to the pay-TV provider and gives them access to much more intricate viewing data, which can be used to ensure stickiness and reduce churn.”

Content providers also want to have better insights into how their content is being consumed. “They can then make better decisions from a content production point of view, making it easier to know what type of content to green-light,” says Erik Ramberg, VP, Head of Global Business Development, MediaKind. “If they own the service themselves, they are going to have clear brand association and massive amounts of data into how their consumers behave.”

The service provider needs to bring solutions that solves problems for the content provider and the consumer. “From the consumer perspective, this means they are able to offer more than just every episode of a series (such as sneak previews, recaps and director commentaries), therefore leading to a far richer space that is still appropriate to the brand,” shares Ramberg. “By incorporating the branded DTC experience into the service providers’ platform, consumers can better engage with the content providers’ brand.”

The pay-TV opportunity

Application platform vendors and UI developers understandably believe operators are in a unique position to deliver aggregated video experiences that provide reach and engagement—where their TV App Stores and UIs act as the super aggregator. These reduce barriers to entry for new viewers; surface content and apps with integrated search and discovery and provide enhanced monetisation opportunities.

“The easiest way for SVODs to get onto the big screen is through the STB,” says Ghijsen. “The single remote control remains of primary importance. It is operators who are in pole position to assume the role of super aggregator.”

He compares the super-aggregator model to that of a warehouse. “You don’t mind what is in your warehouse – it could be niche and specialist. As long as somebody interested, you can sell it.”

Cloud-based technologies of course make the shelf-space of the ‘warehouse’ virtual and unlimited. At the same time, having billing all in one location makes it easier for consumers to monitor spend and to add and remove packages at will.

Amino says its pay-TV customers see super aggregation as key to remaining relevant to their consumers.

“If you’re a large dominant national or regional pay-TV operator, you already have a collection of channel bundles that are popular with consumers, you’re already offering multiscreen and you’re merging OTT with your broadcast or IPTV services,” explains Jamie Mackinlay, SVP Global Sales and Marketing.

Amino’s prescription for Tier 1 operators is to maintain the quality of content bundles combined with niche OTT and multiscreen bundles and to ‘super aggregate’ with as many of the top-tier SVOD services as possible.

“If you’re a Tier-2 operator, you’re probably in a similar but weaker position,” he says. “For these, aggressively following a super aggregation strategy is a way of competing with the dominant player in your market and defending your position relative to a vMVPD and other streaming providers.”

For Tier-3 pay-TV operators, super aggregation is even more important. With content costs rising and access to it diminishing as content makers go direct to consumer, super aggregation is a matter of survival – “without it you may become less and less relevant to the consumer,” Mackinlay says.

Content owners, like a Discovery or A&E, which built their business on the low carriage cost of super distribution on cable need to fundamentally change their operating model, believes Pastor.

“The reality is those business are maturing and declining in terms of losing pay-TV subs as people have switched to DTC,” he says. “Many of these companies are just treading water because of the fixed costs (of infrastructure, content, organisation) required to run the business. For those looking to transition to digital it is not enough simply to change the narrative of their company. They are trading what used to be a 50% margin business for one that barely eeks out 10%.”

Consequently, Pastor predicts a wave of aggregation driven by M&A activity, especially in the post-Covid era, and from joint ventures. “Like Hulu, these JVs will bring together niche brands on one platform where they can take advantage of ripping out some of their cost structures, generate more robust data sets and offer a more expensive, high margin proposition to subscribers.”

Operators themselves have by and large transitioned to high margin, high revenue predictability against broadband delivery, he says. “They need to broaden the number of use cases they can provide their consumers against that pipe and make it unbelievably sticky so that you can upscale the opportunity within any individual household. There’s a huge opportunity in the telco space in delivering these services over 5G and home networks since for the first time telcos and mobile operators have a competitive offering to Docsis 3.1.”

Wilkinson observes that mobile operators have seen aggregation as “a simpler solution” to offering a rich content bundle “that retains users with the telco rather than the full overhead of trying to be a OTT broadcaster.”

 

Super aggregation vs universal syndication

Vodafone, for example, is rolling out its TV service that aggregates linear, VOD and OTT content across markets including Greece, Romania, Portugal, Spain and Italy. It is doing so using Kaltura’s Cloud TV technology which speeds deployment to as little as seven months.

“We are providing out of the box scale for operators and broadcasters who cannot afford to invest billions of dollars to build a platform feature set to compete with a Disney or Netflix,” says Gilboa.

Kaltura says its tools and services offer a “white label Netflix” for both super aggregators and “universal syndicators” where content providers want to push their content everywhere.

“Every media company we work with are looking for a way to distribute direct to consumer and also to syndicate their content from the same DTC stream into the super aggregator's experience,” he says. [for more on Kaltura’s model see https://www.csimagazine.com/csi/Kaltura-close-to-powering-100m-users.php]

 

New payTV bundle, same as the old?

While there are some consumers who will continue to fulfil the role of aggregator themselves, the vast majority of us are thought to prefer the simplicity of getting content delivered in one bundle by an operator.

“This is especially true if they are already a subscriber,” Wilkinson says. “Bundled services often deliver price savings for consumers, which makes it all the more attractive.”

It is increasingly apparent that the relatively cheap price of SVOD subs are rising. The MIDiA Index https://www.midiaresearch.com/blog/is-streaming-making-it-harder-and-more-expensive-for-consumers-to-access-video-content reveals that that the most in demand TV shows of June this year remain siloed behind three to four differing services with a combined monthly price point of U$78.96. Not only is the price point higher than for a traditional pay-TV skinny bundle, but it also requires signing up to up to four different subscriptions, managing those billing relationships and the associated differing user experiences on the various services.  The result, says the analyst’s Tim Mulligan, is a “suboptimal” viewing experience.

Amid intensifying competition from Disney+, HBO Max, Apple TV+ and others, Netflix has seen its pricing power grow over the five months to May 2020.

According to a study of American consumers published by analyst Cowen & Co. Netflix customers who said they would be willing to pay more than they currently do rose from 47% in December 2019 to 55% in May. Among respondents who stream more than seven hours per week of Netflix content willingness to pay more rose from 52% to 60% over the same period.

Netflix last raised prices in Q1 2019 and the question is when, not if, it will do so again.

Meanwhile vMVPDs such as Sling TV and YouTube.tv are subject to the same rising content costs as pay-TV providers

“The risk that many of the services will simply take up the bad habits of the old cable/satellite providers is real, an example being Youtube.tv and its pricing/channel changes which look all too similar to a cable TV company,” says Wilkinson. “The biggest change now is that customers are willing and now able to move if they find the offering and pricing no longer suits them.”

Ramberg blames content providers who forced pay bundles to get fatter and fatter. “People have been unfairly pointing the finger at service providers and operators, who are not the sole source of the unsatisfactory, bloated pay-TV bundle. When an operator bought one channel, they were also forced to buy six or seven other channels. More recently, this also includes the acquisition of SVOD library content, as well as some transactional VOD offerings.”

Mackinlay also thinks channel bundling “an over-maligned” content model; “The pay-TV mega-bundle is the worst form of video delivery, except for all those others that have been tried,” he says, paraphrasing Winston Churchill.

Winning platforms, he insists, must provide a combination of price, choice and quality and developments in content discovery techniques will remove many of the issues with the bundle model. “The goal is not for super aggregation to result in bigger, more complex bundles, but to provide flexibility and convenience in accessing a wide variety of content.”

 

Evolution of aggregation

Super aggregation is only in its infancy and likely to evolve in different ways. Gilboa suggests a further unbundling of SVOD content to enable aggregators to offer subsets of content. He explains, “HBO or Netflix, for example, could offer aggregators different pieces of their libraries inside an app tailored for a super aggregator. An app could bundle the best original content from a variety of SVODs related to political drama, for example. Instead of subscribing to three services to view the content they love, the consumer pays for one as part of a super aggregation bundle.”

Kai-Christian Borchers, MD, 3 Screen Solutions agrees: “We’re inching toward a trend where some traditional pay-TV providers are becoming resellers. In future, they may even seek to select certain elements of Netflix, or Prime Video or HBO and package these, for instance, along with very targeted genre-based SVOD services, to create a customised service that truly appeals to the viewer.

“TV content thus becomes more of a marketplace, but the operator can again become the subscriber’s best friend and helpful curator. Subscribers gets exactly what they want, and only has to pay one simple bill to get it all. Unsubscribing is easy too, but the customer also knows that by cancelling, all of their preferences, profile and personalisation disappears, so they’ll think twice.”

Another emerging trend is that of the operator as an app, whereby the aggregation model will move onto other platforms. “Consumers are increasingly looking to move away from the STB,” says Wilkinson. “If operators are able to create a service on a mobile device or connected TV that aggregates all of the content, and includes bills and everything else a consumer needs, it is likely to be an attractive proposition.  It becomes much more of a proposition for people that don’t want to subscribe to a £50 per month pay-TV contract. That may seem less appealing for the pay TV providers, but it will be extremely interesting for consumers.”

Borchers points to the phenomenon of “co-watching” which has rocketed during lockdown on services such Twitch, mimicked by operators BT Sport around live sport.

“People’s natural appetite for watching the same content, perhaps together, is predominantly going completely unsatisfied. This new co-watching viewing experience, whereby your friends and family are sharing an experience with you, and interacting with you even though physically separated, will grow significantly in the next few years. Services offering this type of experience will pop up more and more.”

Nonetheless the basics of success for pay-TV remain the same: “The viewer shouldn’t need to know exactly where the content came from or the specific controls a particular SVOD app might want them to use – they just want to watch the content,” says Docherty. “Having this seamless experience gives consumers the choice they want. Pay-TV providers ensure they reap the benefits of providing the end user experience, being the first point of contact, and importantly, of capturing the data to better understand consumer preferences.”

The Devil All The Time: 35mm film makes a comeback on Netflix

RedShark

You can eulogise about digital all you want but I defy anyone to get as close to the colour, detail and texture of 1950s Americana as British cinematographer Lol Crawley BSC does with 35mm on The Devil All The Time.

https://www.redsharknews.com/the-devil-all-the-time-35mm-film-makes-a-comeback-on-netflix

The new movie landing on Netflix this month is gorgeous to look at and a reminder of the quality of good old-fashioned celluloid.

It helps that the psychological thriller, adapted from the novel by Donald Ray Pollock, is a more than decent pot boiler. Starring Tom Holland, Mia Wasikowska, Bill Skarsgard and Robert Pattinson this is a brooding, bloody tale of twisted family and religious nuttery set in the backwoods of the American South spanning the time between World War II and the Vietnam war.

Director Antonio Campos, who previously made crime series The Sinner, settled on 35mm as the most appropriate media for this period piece. Crawley’s experience shooting film included lensing period flicks Childhood of a Leader and Vox Lux.

He explains why he deliberately under exposed the film to achieve greater detail in the shadows of what is a largely exterior location shoot.

Building up the shadows

“I have this theory that cinema tends to take its lead from photographic art in terms of rich blacks being a benchmark to aim at. Conversely, if you are painting you generally don’t tend to use black in its purest form. What you do is build up shadows with purples and browns and put colour in the shadows. That’s what I wanted for this story. Shooting film gives you this painterly quality.”

Crawley underexposed and used a push process during developing to trick the negative into thinking it has a higher ISO. The result gave him greater versatility in filming in various low and natural light conditions.

“To get a true black you would of course expose correctly,” he elaborates. “But if you underexpose and then push process by one or two stops you end up distressing the film - abusing it slightly - in order to drag that extra information and different colours back out of the shadows.”

Kodak no longer makes the range of stock it did in the 1950s and ‘60s when The Devil is set. Crawley used Vision3 500T (Tungsten) 5219 and 250D (daylight) 5207 stocks and push processed them where possible to obtain the look.

“I push processed more earlier on in the story to draw out more grain and in later periods of the film I was a little cleaner in my exposure to deliver a sense of modernity.”

He shot on ARRICAM LT and ST 35mm film cameras. With a 2.40:1 aspect ratio, Crawley considered using anamorphic but the extent of the location photography led him to select a set of Cooke S4 primes.

“Since we had a lot of real locations as opposed to sets I felt anamorphic would have distorted the image too much when what I was seeking was an authenticity to the story.”

The opening shot for, instance, establishes the rural home of one of the story’s main protagonists. It’s a locked off shot giving the eye freedom to explore great colour and detail in the trees and leaves, the dirt yard and wood frame building.

Single light composition

A little later in the film, corrupt sheriff Bodecker (Sebastian Stan) enters a bar. It’s a superbly lit composition with a single light over a bar and another light over the green baize of a pool table reminiscent of the mood of an Edward Hopper painting.

Crawley researched 1940s and ‘50s documentary photographers like Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Robert Frank who tracked across America taking portraits of people on the breadline.

“Those, along with the painting of Andrew Wyatt, helped to inform the composition and the honesty to the rural environment. As we progress through the story, we looked at contrasting that with a certain sense of modernity. The colour photography of William Eggleston was a reference here.”

Crawley, production designer Craig Lathrop and costume designer Emma Potter certainly evoke the period with alternatively sunlit and rain sodden exteriors, the reds, whites and yellows of gas stations and advertising.

“The later scenes move away from natural dyes and into acrylic, vinyl and more artificial colours. We try to pop those colours and saturate them but the trick was not to go too far and risk becoming too stylised and cartoony which would undermine the drama.”

Dailies were processed in Atlanta and viewed by Crawley on-set digitally. “The images are just very compressed so if you’re being bold in exposure and you have a compressed image to monitor you do lose detail and hope what you captured is on the neg.”

Another seemingly simple shot showcases just what he achieved. It’s taken at late dusk from the viewpoint of one car following another up a dirt track. The red rear lamps are picked out in the deep gloom.

“That’s definitely one of the happy accidents. It was never intended to be that late. We just grabbed it filming from a follow vehicle with an arm. It was literally the last grab of the day. With film you can be constantly surprised in terms of these happy accidents. You think something is a big mistake at the time and then you are proved wrong when you see it.”

The idea of approaching a film ready to accept what happens in the moment rather than seeking total control is something Crawley applies to all his work. It’s not just a digital versus film argument but a global philosophy of filmmaking.

He quotes legendary cinematographer Christopher Doyle as saying that ‘In the West filmmakers say here’s my frame how do I fill it?’ Whereas in Asia they say here’s my world, how do I frame it?’

“One is about imposing yourself on the scene and imposing control, the other is more open to what the environment is telling you,” he says. “There’s something interesting about being open to a certain call and response rather than trying to strictly superimpose your vision on events.”

Sky: "It's All Digital Now"

StreamingMedia

The distinction between pay TV and OTT has blurred even further during since the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in various levels of lockdown and shelter-in-place. Executives from Roku, YouTube, Sky Studios, and ViacomCBS agreed that the pandemic had rocketed video streaming habits with no going back.

https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Sky-Its-All-Digital-Now-142799.aspx

"This is not a linear versus digital war," said Jane Millichip, chief content officer at Sky Studios, a Comcast company. "It is all digital now."

She was speaking on a Variety-hosted virtual panel, "Succeeding in the Global Streaming Economy" part of the IBC edition of Bitmovin's Bitmovin Live webinar series.

Noting that linear TV viewing was also in high demand the past 6 months, Millichip argued that it will be a hybrid world for some time.

"Sky saw a 240% increase in viewing across the board. Content is still king. During lockdown, news broadcasts and event programming really brought the nation together. On-demand is part of our evolution, but we do need to be mindful of the full viewership of all our customers and get relatable content to them in the most digestible, affordable form."

"We host Netflix, Disney+, Spotify on our platform," she added. "Where we differentiate is we offer a frictionless environment for the consumer. We aggregate great content from multiple sources, and we originate great content too."

ViacomCBS has a slightly different approach to aggregation. "The whole streaming industry was once forced into subscription on-demand but now you see AVOD, AVOD lean-back, free, some paid only," said Olivier Jollet, SVP of emerging business for ViacomCBS EMEA. "There's a variety of business models. We are trying to offer services for all those user cases."

The media giant is expanding its international streaming service into a "super service" streamer to launch in Nordics, Australia and LatAm in 2021. Priced to take on Netflix and Amazon it will combine content from its brands including CBS, MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, its Paramount film studio and current SVODs Showtime and CBS All Access.

Google's VP, YouTube and Video Global Solutions, Debbie Weinstein argued that YouTube's notion of primetime is personal. "The focus is on the user and how the user wants to spend time and the data we see is that we're serving content which is just right for them."

She cited music fans turning to the platform to find virtual music venues in lockdown and the huge following that fitness instructor Joe Wicks gained in the UK this summer; plus huge interest in how-to content (such as how to cut your hair).

"Brands are finding it hard to get to the users they want with traditional broadcast," she claimed. "If you're looking for urban demographics in Asia, for example, then marketers are spending more of their time with us alongside their traditional TV investment."

Bitmovin CEO Stefan Lederer claimed that the initial spike in traffic earlier this year put a stress on networks. Governments, he said, required streaming service providers to dial down their bitrates to free up bandwidth.

"We had a customer tasked with streaming live educational classes and this was gaining more impressions in minutes than the biggest U.S. news outlets. Similar examples apply to commercial services. What happened after the initial spike was that numbers [demand] plateaued at higher level than before, and the focus now has to be on making online streaming work from an economic perspective. The clear problem identified by CTOs of media companies that we surveyed is the cost of streaming."

Yulia Poltorak, head of international content distribution, Roku, said, "We anticipated that 2020 was going to be the start of the streaming decade. What we didn't expect was that it would accelerate so much with COVID. We saw 65% growth YoY in Q2. Not only were streaming hours and engagement up, but so was the rise in active accounts being registered. What it signals to us is that there's no reverse."

Interview: Bob De Haven, Microsoft

IBC

The cloud had already reached a tipping point for the media industry before Covid-19. Now the pandemic has sent it into over-drive. That’s the message from Microsoft which has put media and entertainment (M&E) at the top of its agenda.

https://www.ibc.org/interviews/interview-bob-de-haven-microsoft/6675.article

“The media and entertainment industry is changing faster than before,” says Bob De Haven GM of worldwide media & communications at Microsoft. “OTT and the ability to reach consumers directly is making all content producers more powerful. We want to help accelerate that transformation by giving all content creators a chance to express their views regardless of location or resources. For creatives to have these resources at their fingertips no matter where they are, enabled by the cloud, will be game-changing.”

Microsoft is a late entrant into a space in which Amazon, Google and Apple have all made headway but unlike these tech giants, Microsoft has an ace up its sleeve.

“We don’t have content so we don’t compete,” De Haven says. “We are a platform company. We are not in the business of content creation.”

Aside from Xbox, Microsoft has no direct to consumer business in media. That puts it at a competitive advantage when talking to major content owners about innovating in the cloud.

And it clearly makes a very compelling argument.

A year ago, Microsoft announced a five-year innovation partnership with The Walt Disney Studios to pilot new ways to create, produce and distribute content on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Through The Walt Disney Studios’ StudioLAB, the companies pledged to deliver cloud-based solutions to help accelerate innovation for production and postproduction processes, or from ‘scene to screen.’

Microsoft is also working with global production company Technicolor to empower creatives with new ways to work in the cloud.

Those pacts were followed up last month with partnerships to bring Universal and DreamWorks Animation into the future of cloud-based live-action and animation productions. Universal plans to use this new capability on Azure to enable easy remote production collaboration, asset reuse, and ubiquitous compute and storage to empower its creatives to do their best work.

“IBC was critical in framing the discussion,” says De Haven. “At IBC2019, IBC set up a session with Movielabs and the CTOs of the major studios and they pushed the dialogue between the studios and the global cloud providers. I sat in the audience with members of the Azure engineering team listening to how the industry needed to evolve. The partnership with Dreamworks and NBCUniversal is a direct result of that session and the innovation it outlined.”

Movielabs itself believes the timeframe for parts of the 2030 Vision has been accelerated in recent months but issues remain. The Sony Pictures hack of 2014 continues to prey on the minds of executives in Hollywood.

“High level security in the cloud has created hesitation but this is changing,” says De Haven. “The lack of a standards body in media has also been a hindrance to adoption which is why Movielabs’ data protection initiative is key. What the film and TV business needs is the flexibility to share with multiple clouds. That requires standards which is where Movielabs can lead.”

De Haven’s colleague, Jennifer Cooper, Global Head, Media and Communications Industry Strategy and Solutions, says the need to build up IT skills is a critical hurdle to overcome. “The movie business has been doing the same thing the same way for over a century. Production and distribution processes are still largely linear. When you host data in the cloud it opens up new opportunities to streamline workflows and to edit, color or mix content with talent located anywhere across the globe.”

Super-charged fan engagement

Another super-charged trend identified by De Haven and Cooper is a fundamental shift in a brand’s relationship with its fans.

A reference case in this regard is the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) use of a new Together Mode in Microsoft Teams to place basketball fans courtside in a virtual experience during live games. The technology uses AI to segment the face and shoulders of fans and place them together with other people in a virtual space.

The NBA is using this new Microsoft Teams mode combined with 17-foot tall LED screens that wrap around basketball arenas to put fans back next to players. More than 300 fans are able to react in real time in these virtual stands, and players are able to see and hear the reactions.

“This new experience is the first to go live as a result of a new NBA / Microsoft partnership which will see Microsoft leverage AI and cloud to deliver enriched experiences not just suitable for safe distancing under Covid but which will be engrained in how we experience live events going forward,” says De Haven.

He observes that media companies are rethinking their direct relationship with their audiences using a whole array of channels. From screens on your home washing machine to a hotel elevator, sensors in the IoT will identify you and bespoke video can be sent directly to the screen bringing closer engagement with brands.

Looking further out, De Haven and Cooper predict more and more interaction in storytelling. It’s a future where everyone is digitally bound to one or more device and where content creators will conjure narratives with the consumer as part of the story.

“We’ve already seen pioneering content originals giving the viewer the choice of alternative story branches. With every screen, a TV in your hand, and an ultra low latency high bandwidth always-on connections, only the imagination is the limit” said Cooper.

These types of applications presuppose that the infrastructure needed to support it is rolled out. To reduce latency the compute resources need to move closer to the sensors, to the data origin, to the users - to the Edge.

“This is the holy grail for all service providers and there’s a massive race to create the Multi-access edge computing (MEC) infrastructure,” De Haven says. “However, what the Edge means differs from person to person. It could be a hospital or a production studio or sports stadium. It could be your phone or even a camera on a studio lot.”

As an example, a carrier like AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon or CenturyLink could put a 5G device in a production studio. It has AAA security. It has AI. It can transcode rushes. All of that compute power does not have to go back to the cloud but is performed locally with Azure, smashing production times and leading to more intuitive creative decision making.

Ubiquitous video and emerging applications like VR/AR are not just limited to M&E of course. They are being adopted by companies in all sectors as the mainstay of corporate communications and the most direct interaction or personal voice that brands have with consumers and vice versa.

“We think the Studios will be a huge influence on the enterprise space,” De Haven says. ““Workers in industries like health and government are able to see the power of tech driving transformation in media and in turn they will influence change in their industries.”

M&E is 10 figure dollars in business per year in revenue to Microsoft, a fraction when compared to the record breaking $125 billion in total revenue delivered in 2019. Nonetheless, the sector is increasingly important to the company.

“We made M&E a priority industry two years ago and it remains absolutely front of mind for Satya [Nadella, Microsoft CEO] and the senior leadership because it is so influential to how the world is evolving. We think it is the enabler to digital transformation across many industries”

Taking the temperature of live sport under Covid

IBC

The return of live sports to broadcasting provides a critical opportunity to re-evaluate the business. A Red Bee Media panel asked whether sports broadcasters had missed an opportunity during lockdown to bring more direct to consumer offerings to fans.

https://www.ibc.org/news/taking-the-temperature-of-live-sport-under-covid/6663.article

“Once the major leagues got up and running did they miss the chance, where stadiums are empty, to provide a DTC proposition or some kind of pay-per-view option for season ticket holders?” posed Jonathan Wilson, key account lead, UK & Ireland, Red Bee Media.

He suggested that the EPL could have collaborated with BT Sport or Sky to deliver as close to an experience as possible to a Saturday afternoon live experience.

BT Sport’s head of business development & broadcast partnering, Louisa Clark disagreed. “Yes, we have a set of rights which we paid a lot for but our consumers also expect value for money. We offered access to BT Sport’s matchday coverage for football season ticket holders in the UK (Sky offered similar access via Now TV). There wasn’t a huge take-up but I think fans appreciate that clubs were trying to give them something. The point is that we are all in this together. It’s not about who is in the strongest negotiating position. Sports need to feel like they have a broadcast partner not a broadcast who just bought some rights.”

Max Metral senior analytics manager, F1 argued that DTC and broadcast were complementary although this differed between sports in different countries. “F1 is an international sport in almost every continent and crossing diff time zones. We are live at least one a year live everywhere. Local football leagues on the other hand derive most of their revenue from one TV broadcaster. If your main client tells you not to launch DTC then you are at risk if you do so.”

The entire sports industry from teams to technical suppliers worked very hard to ensure safety under quarantine and then to plan for resumption of live production. In the meantime, creative ways had to be found to fill the schedule.

“There are a lot of great content ideas not related to live,” said Clark. “People want engaging content. The optimum engagement time on YouTube is 6 minutes. You can make a really well thought out creative production at that length. Luckily, we have sports personalities who can create content without you needing to send a crew. Tyson Fury creates a whirlwind of content all on his own!”

The panel also noted that if there’s one positive above and beyond the new ways of working it’s how to be more sustainable.

“We have proven as an industry we can make it work and do live remote without having to transport kit and crew on an airplane,” said Wilson. “That can save rights holders and broadcasters money too as well as the positive effect on the planet.”

Clark said the pandemic has shaken up business culture. “If you applied for an operational job with us last year and said you couldn’t work in Stratford (BT Sport’s HQ) we probably marked that person down. If I’m honest, our attitude was that if it was an operational job you physically needed to be at base most of the time including weekends. Now, we’ve moved the majority of operations to people’s houses. We should no longer look at mobility or disability issues and say you can’t work for us - because we’ve just proved that we can do it all remotely.”

Metral wondered about the long-lasting effect of the shuttering of live sport to spectators. “We don’t know yet if any sport will achieve 100 percent capacity again. Will fans pay what they did pre-Covid? Are they willing to pay premiums to be Covid-safe?”

The drain on sports cash flow has also yet to play out. “More and more private investment will come into sport,” he predicted. “CVC has invested in rugby and is looking now at WSL. Hopefully private investment will be a positive outcome for sport.”

ARC EDIT Keeps Long Distance Storytelling In-House With FileRunner and ClearView Flex

Sohonet

ARC EDIT is a boutique storytelling practice with the rare distinction of cutting creative advertising as well as long-form feature and TV projects in house.

https://www.sohonet.com/2020/09/08/arc-edit-keeps-long-distance-storytelling-in-house-with-filerunner-and-clearview-flex/

Launched in 2016 by Joseph Perkins, Peter Sciberras and Drew Thompson, ARC EDIT connects its post-production facilities in Sydney and Melbourne with clients in Australia and the rest of the world over Sohonet Media Network. It has serviced blue-chip brands Telstra, Toyota, VW, Foxtel and Qantas and the features The Nightingale, Little Monsters, Buoyancy and FX series Mr InBetween, to name but a few.

“Our talent and client roster are at the top end of the industry and ARCs outlook must live up to these expectations. We approach everything we do, whether a 30-second commercial, a feature or a documentary, as storytellers,” explains MD, Perkins.

“That was our philosophy from inception and a reason we based our infrastructure on Sohonet. When you’re setting up a business, who you align yourself with is incredibly important in terms of branding and putting a marker down in the industry. We wanted to show that our facility was going to be as high end as our clients and roster. Sohonet has a high level of respect within the industry and the technical support to keep up with our ambition.”

ARC EDIT benefits from Sohonet’s accelerated file transfer service, FileRunner, to manage data travelling directly between its facilities and to clients internationally. When agencies in North America are shooting in Australia—something happening more often recently with Sydney’s current restrictions due to Covid less than those in L.A. – ARC can transfer dailies as camera RAW or transcoded media fast over Sohonet to the client.

“Sohonet FileRunner is in constant use ferrying data all day, every day,” says EP, Daniel Fry. “Even before COVID, this gave us great flexibility in being able to shoot and post at whichever location was more convenient for the director, production house or agency. 

“Melbourne has quite strict lockdown measures in place right now which means Sydney is the focus of a number of shoots; under normal circumstances we can prep footage at either office, edit in either office, assist from either and send back media for sessions and presentations. Sohonet enables ARC to operate as one single transparent office.”

Perkins says that investing in technology is more than securing a solid foundation. “We wanted to be as fast and agile as possible without ever having to worry about the infrastructure. We need to be able to juggle jobs and move files around at will. What’s the point in having something you can’t trust?”

The same sentiment lies behind investment in a third piece of Sohonet technology. The facility had ClearView Flex installed in both Melbourne and Sydney as an aid to remote frame-accurate offline/colour/online workflows long before COVID-19 hit town.

“When the pandemic happened, we were ready to go,” says Perkins. “We had ClearView Flex set-up in both locations as several of our closest collaborators are based overseas and we wanted to give them the option of using us from anywhere in the world. Those who have used it have come away extremely happy. What is strange is that it has taken a pandemic to get people onboard with the idea of this way of working.”

In one of many recent scenarios, ARC facilitated a working session between a director based in ARC Sydney whilst editor Johanna Scott was in ARC Melbourne. They communicated via Zoom which was set up on an iPad Pro below the client monitor. Scott was working in the AVID in Melbourne whilst the director was viewing the ClearView stream live on the client monitor from Sydney.

“Honestly, it’s the closest thing to a normal session you can get in these times.” reports Fry. “The director was able to get his choice of editor even though current restrictions and locations were against them. The director/editor relationship is so important for bouncing ideas back and forth and trying different things on-the-fly. Being able to do that with ClearView during Covid has been a lifesaver.”

Nonetheless, ARC emphasise that there is no substitute for the physical one on one creative discussion with a client.

“The editor/director relationship is what drives our entire business,” Perkins says. “It’s different to many other relationships in the production process. The level of trust between them during the editing process, how they read each other’s emotions and the nuances in the room can never quite be replicated, it’s like playing music with someone. However, in situations where someone is too busy on location—or there’s a global pandemic—ClearView, we believe is quite literally the next best thing.”

The response to remote editorial using ClearView Flex has been overwhelmingly positive, ARC report. So much so, that it will become an integral part of future workflows.

Fry says, “A number of our jobs span Sydney and Melbourne where the shoot may be in Sydney and the agency in Melbourne or vice versa and the agency and client would typically travel to the edit. People are now seeing how easy it is to stay put in the comfort of their own home or office, saving time and therefore budget, so I think we’ll see a lot more of this type of workflow post-pandemic.”

He adds, “The ability to try a different take or to move minute elements of an edit around as if editor and client are in the same space is proven to be extremely effective.”

ProAV in Canada: Optimism in the extremes

AV Magazine

Canada is far from alone in experiencing the socio-economic shock of the pandemic, but the innovative nature of its culture and AV sector in particular are grounds for optimism.

Canada is about a tenth the market size of the US but its geographic spread and dispersed population centres mean the country has always been quick to adopt new communication technologies.

https://www.avinteractive.com/features/territory-features/optimism-in-the-extremes-27-08-2020/

“We are known as a pioneer and an early adopter,” says Mustafa Zaidi, executive director, Canada at Crestron. “When a new technology comes out into the world, Canada is very welcoming to try and use it to help gain efficiencies for its citizens.”

“The pre-disposition for working with performance media at a distance has been baked in for years,” says Samuel Recine, vice-president, sales (AV/IT Group, Americas & Asia Pacific), Matrox. “It’s a very diversified economy, has a strong educated workforce, and a climate where government directly encourages technological innovation.”

This is now being put to the test. By all reports the pro-AV business pre-Covid was strong and rising. “There were a number of pending installations including retrofitting government buildings, new builds in recreational centres, and we saw strong growth potential in restaurant installations,” says Tim Marshall, division manager, Erikson Audio (a Powersoft distributor).

“Pre-Covid, we were on a great trajectory,” agrees Zaidi. “We’d passed the phase where all we talked about was digital transformation and how companies could achieve the most favourable digital footprint. Now the focus has shifted to data and analytics and people are starting to push the limits of what AV can do.”

The pandemic is devastating many verticals. “Houses of Worship and entertainment venue business is likely to be virtually non-existent for the remainder of 2020 and well into 2021,” says Marshall. “Businesses have taken such a huge hit and are slow to reopen under strict conditions which is crushing their cashflow.
“Some integrators and contractor customers are not likely to survive the current state of business, and probably disappear, or perhaps re-emerge as smaller businesses, single-owner operator businesses or not come back at all. That is going to shake up the whole sales channel,” he adds.

The sheer number of closing venues is also putting an unprecedented amount of used inventory into the market. “There will be very little, if any, AV budget or renovations and installations in restaurants, hotels, fitness centres, theatres, nightclubs, bars and sports venues well into 2021 and beyond.”

Off the menu
Touring and live sound is “non-existent” for new product and sales opportunities until well into 2022, Marshall forecasts. “Even then there is going to be so much used inventory in the market from closed venues, liquidated touring companies and downsized touring systems that the market will likely need to reinvent itself.”

Even if the ability to present live events starts to come back in a reduced form, the number of companies and teams available to support and provide for those events heavily exceeds demand.

In Quebec over 100,000 jobs are directly or indirectly connected to the live event market meaning that over 100,000 people are currently unemployed, reports Andrew Hope, managing director of Canadian distributor, AVL Media Group (which is currently involved in supplying audio equipment to integrator TG Baker for the new Toronto Light Transit System). “This sad reality has led us to shift our short-term focus and reduce our reliance on live events,” he says.

Steve Curran of Broadcast Pix reseller Videolink believes the AV market is in “major trouble” with boardrooms and huddle room installs non-existent. What has been created is a business need for live streaming through PTZ cameras and cloud recording.

“Demand for live production systems with encoding and streaming capabilities have quadrupled for our company,” he says. “We are so overwhelmed we’ve hired another salesperson and contracted IT and service technicians to help with troubleshooting and servicing clients.”

Record demand
Lockdown has seen a surge in live streaming communications tools. Videolink highlights major demand for higher resolution PTZ cameras, live production switchers and recording equipment for use with live call video platforms, such as Zoom.

“Houses of Worship seem to be leading the need to promote their services online,” Curran says. “We’ve seen a steady increase in SRT streaming through point-to-point locations and distant studios. Toronto has seen increased activity in remote production studios using SRT and NDI technology to use video transport systems to operate additional camera studios from other cities and locations.”

From an integration point of view, more customers are looking for solutions that can be based on standard IT-type wiring. “Essentially people are looking into simplifying installation and looking much more at remote monitoring and control,” says Hope.

It’s a global trend that Covid has accelerated. “Pro-AV has been gradually migrating away from proprietary hardwired AV infrastructure and towards open standards-based media that works on IP,” says Recine. “Work-from-home and shifts from international travel towards large multi-group meetings online have all greatly reinforced what we’ve been advocating all along.

“The thing that Covid has put a spotlight on is that not all IP solutions are created equal and true standards are required to handle corporate and government AV requirements when people and equipment are not co-located.”

Matrox reports an immediate surge in March and April for solutions to capture, encode, live stream, and record for on-demand streaming later. But the focus in these months was “speed” including ease-of-installation.

“Now that we’re in the middle of summer, the need for speed has been replaced by high quality long-term discussions about how to build pro-AV environments that can more flexibly handle exceptional experiences in facilities as well as on the internet,” Recine says.

There has been “record setting” demand for some product as a result of Covid as AV/IT budgets originally allocated to the fiscal cycle are reallocated for getting back to the office. Two-channel audio interfaces, inexpensive studio microphones, headphones, USB microphones and anything related to those product groups are selling “at record pace” according to Marshall.

“There is increased demand for targeted messaging and content using existing audio and visual infrastructure with integration to security and life safety systems,” says Vince Schuster, vice-president, sales, Americas at MediaStar Systems. “For example, the human resources department or facilities management teams need to update signage to communicate social distancing or health standards. Remote workers need to have the same level of network security and access as if they were in the office. The needs of companies and organisations are now expanded beyond the walls of the traditional office space.”

Post-pandemic design
Zaidi says customers are now looking for more UC-based solutions, as these allow for a better remote or virtual working experience. “The need for meeting room solutions is still present, but the AV designs are changing. We see a rise in non-traditional meeting spaces, such as offices, cafeteria and hallways being outfitted with technology. The demand for digital signage solutions and people-counting sensors or occupancy readers is also growing. This technology was already available, but the adoption rate has increased tremendously.”

He cites as “groundbreaking” the CIBC Square in Toronto. This will house the Canadian HQ of Microsoft. Almost a thousand meeting spaces of different types from multiple vendors will be equipped with technology, the backbone of it all being Crestron’s XiO Cloud. “This will give the client insight into the management, monitoring and utilisation of their spaces,” he says. Phase 1 was due to be completed this year with the whole project by 2024.

There is lower demand in non-essential high-ticket items like large LED videowalls and projection mapping, although AVL reports supplying new LED videowalls in recent weeks into applications, including a casino and horse racing track. “We’ve also noticed that decision-making for traditional technology refresh cycles is going from three to five years as budget allocations are shifted,” says Schuster.

Regardless of Covid, the biggest challenge for contractors in Canada is tackling population density versus the sheer size of the country. “In the US, contractors can do most of their work within an hour drive of their home base and have enough customers in their immediate area to survive,” Marshall says. “Canadians may routinely have customers that are several hours from their office, and from a major city. In that case, the contractor’s product priorities are very different.

They never want to have to make a service call several hours from home, so they choose brands that are ultra-reliable, easy to troubleshoot remotely and easy to operate. They are less price conscious, more value conscious.”

The majority of AV business is done on the Eastern seaboard due to greater population density (Ontario represents around 40 per cent of the business in the country) but spanning five time zones, Canada’s provinces have different business cultures.

“British Columbia has a very laid-back approach – they are much more casual,” says Zaidi. “The further you go East, you’re in that ‘New York minute’ mode where everything moves faster and life is very, very quick.”

As a major resource economy “pro-AV serving industrial is very strong, including extreme environments,” says Recine. This is particularly the case in the west. Quebec has lumber and hydro, Ontario – manufacturing and finance, Ottawa and Waterloo are innovation hubs (although Google recently cancelled its smart city project in Toronto).

“In most large cities, AV companies tend to have more specialisation,” says Tom Murray, vice-president, Backman Vidcom (a PSNI Global Alliance member). “In Toronto, for instance, certain companies are known to be really good at a certain vertical, whether it is large construction projects, or broadcast AV, or digital signage. There seems to be a niche available for each AV company to pursue, while in less populated areas, companies tend to be good at many verticals, because they are forced to be as a result of the market demands.”

Quebec is an exception. The province is both unique and different in terms of culture, language, and conducting business. “For instance, Quebec actually has specific language laws that make it very difficult for AV companies from other provinces to conduct business there,” says Murray.

“More so than the other hubs, success in Quebec requires a well localised business strategy to embrace language and culture,” says Frank Gerstein, CEO at Toronto-based Westbury National (also an PSNI Global Alliance member).

French speaking
Montreal is a global hub for experts in science and technology and a world leader in artificial intelligence, says Recine. “Canada punches above its weight in AV/IT.”

One approach, says Schuster, is to have representatives in Canada who are bilingual in French and English with local support and warehousing in the eastern and western provinces.

“Many Canadian organisations maintain some level of US dollar accounts to protect them from adverse currency exchange events. If this is not the case, another approach is to have pricing set in Canadian dollars on a quarterly basis due to currency fluctuation and/or lock quotation pricing in Canada for a three-month period or a reasonable time for the project to be funded.”

The real unknown is what form the re- emergence back to ‘normal’ will take. “Those companies who believe that things will return back to normal, and that there is no need to adapt to new market conditions, are likely to be those that won’t survive,” says Murray. “There will definitely be opportunities associated with this change. We need to explore what those opportunities will be and what kind of leadership role the AV industry will have with this change, whether it’s a shift in new service, product, or experience.”

Gerstein believes massive change will lead to equally massive opportunities. “In retail, we see the need for more digital signage to support wayfinding and safety messaging. In museums, art galleries, and exhibit spaces there has been a sudden shift away from interactivity to passive engagement,” he says. “Although the new norms around human connectivity means less intimacy for the foreseeable future, this is an incredible opportunity for pro-AV to reinvent and solve the greatest challenges around how we work, learn, play and live, physically and virtually.”