News from the Broadcasting World

Earlier in the week at Savoy Place - it's a year since the last IBC review (I nearly booked in with my 2016 ticket) and as always the news is exciting and frightening.

The eye candy (for the women) was supplied by Nick \Lodge

First thing to note is that women are in the ascendency - the event was produced by the redoubtable Terry Marsh (a woman) and of the 5 people on stage only one was a man (Nick Lodge formerly at ITC) - this is not the usual situation at IET events as far as I can recall.

Savoy Place - Just a Short walk from Embankment 

When the RTS are hosted by IET it's very civilised the Savoy Place (the first London home to the BBC I think) there's snacks and drinks -- I got chatting to a woman from INMARSAT who was telling me about developments aimed at delivering services to inflight travellers (which I'd not realised was practical).


What you always get from things like this is an idea where an industry is heading and the acronym that I noted down was FAMGA which reflects the growth of the Facebook/Amazon/Google Hegemony.


Having said that the exciting technological advances are coming from startups - the one that I was really knocked out by was mentioned by Muki Kulhan (who has been around social media in the broadcast space for something like 20 years) was the 'City Producer' app which is pretty much a studio in a 'phone'  - I recall a similar phenomenon with a studio/Post production platform based on a PC known as a Toaster but this didn't do the Acquisition.


Of course Facebook was on the hot issues list with it's Live Facebook 360 but I can't help feeling we've been here before and that TV is something it's very easy to get wrong - Apple have certainly been plugging away at it for quite a few years.


Something that did slightly bring the stage enthusiasts back to earth was an audience question on mmonetization - not too much intelligence on how it might be achieved but I was reminded of when I was at Discovery how it's a challenge to be able to find a way to sell direct to viewers when the rights have already been sold to platform owners.

RTS/IET IBC report back and Red 19

Sorry for the three letter acronyms (TLA's) but yesterday evening I attended a review of what some of the Broadcast 'players had seen at the International Broadcast Convention (IBC) - it's held annualy in Amsterdam and not so many years ago I would have tried to make it out there.

IET HQ Savoy Place - after the talk - more talk

The event was organised by the Royal Television Society (RTS for many years I was a member) and it was held at the   IET HQ (Institute of Engineering Technology) in Savoy Place (a former home for the BBC) .

In fact it's a great way to find out what's happening without using the shoe leather of adding more CO2.

The panel had some good people
led by the chair Nigel Walley (of Decipher Media Group) - seems Nigel is the expert on the Beach bar!

The panel was

Tom Marshall  Tom producer a daily 'What Caught My Eye at the show and is  Creative Director, captive north 

Stephanie Scheller - Head of Business Development, APPINESS - Stephanie focused on Metadata and we saw how it can be sued to enhance the TV viewing experience to enable us to buy clothes and ephemera as we watch 'Big Bang' or get all the ingredients for a recipe on one of the many cooking shows.  

Craig Buckland - Business Development Lead, Media, Gaming and Technology, Vodafone - 

Graham Turner - Chairman, Multimedia Communications Network, IET  spoke about 'piracy' and the lag in discovering breaches typically 200 days and then the content can be all over the web

As far as I could extrapolate   TV is changing - our big (UK) players (even the BBC) are minnows with major players being North American or Asian.

TV is fast becoming owned by Facebook, Apple and Amazon - data is invincible - there's talk of Disney and Netflix coming together and in Europe there have been hints around a possible Havas Vivendi deal

Funny to think Lego is now a 'media asset'

What I liked was the point one of the panel made about how we overestimate short term impact (say one year) and underestimate the long term (say 10 years) I recall how Ampex then Sony and Avid dominated broadcasting with their  hardware - now  it's about social media and search - content may be king but leveraging it is all important too.

Some amusement (for me) from a punter attending who proclaimed he had no need of the BBC (And a TV licence) he was supremely satisfied with all that YouTube provided him with.

Just in

Oh yes great News about Nobel prize winner Bob Dylan - Fantastic.

Red 19

At Tate Britain yesterday and took a look at the four Turner Prize Nominees - I liked them all this Red scale model part of the work of Josephine Pryde - more on Josephine and the other nominees in the next few days.

Short train running