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.