10 minute read
SHOW WRAP-UP
IBC2022 WRAPS UP WITH 37,071 VISITORS IN ATTENDANCE
IBC concluded its first live and in-person show in nearly three years, attracting 37,071 visitors from 170 countries to the RAI Amsterdam from September 9-12 to see over a thousand exhibitors and celebrate innovation, learning and collaboration. Michael Crimp, IBC’s CEO, said: “It was great to see, feel and hear the buzz of a live IBC once more. The quality of visitors has been outstanding and there was a real sense of positivity. We are stronger together.”
IBC2022 offered a world-class line-up of headline speakers, with over 250 speaking at the IBC Conference, centred on the theme ‘What’s next? Designing the future together’. The show’s brand new Changemaker programme focused on the people side of the business; the IBC Accelerator Media Innovation programme led proof-of-concept demonstrations on the Innovation Stage, which was also home to other cutting-edge sessions. There were also IBC Owner sessions, thought leadership presentations, panels, masterclasses, demos and case studies on the Content Everywhere Stage, and in the Showcase Theatre leading technology brands demonstrated how they are paving the way forward.
One of the many highlights was the packed IBC2022 Show Keynote by immersive journalism pioneer Nonny de la Peña, hailed as the ‘Godmother of Virtual Reality’. In an open session, she addressed the topic ‘What’s Next: How immersive tech will create new narratives and transform entertainment’.
The industry-leading line-up of exhibitors at this year’s show included major media, entertainment and technology players Adobe, Amazon Web Services (AWS), ARRI, Avid, Blackmagic Design, Canon, Comcast, Edgio, EVS, Fraunhofer, Google, Grass Valley, Hewlett Packard, Imagine Communications, Lawo, LTN, MediaKind, Microsoft, Nagra, NEP Group, Net Insight, Red Bee Media, RED Digital Cinema, Riedel, Ross
Video, Sony, Synamedia and Telstra. Companies making their IBC debut included Ad Insertion Platform, Ai-Media, Blitz micro, Ceeblue, Castify.ai, Castr Live Streaming, Green Streams, Igalia, LiveAPI, PikoTV, Planetcast International, Riverside.fm and XroadMedia.
IBC Director Steve Connolly said: “The excitement across the industry to return to IBC has been tremendous. There was a real sense of purpose and of business being done. On the second day, stand rebooking for next year’s show was already in such heavy demand that we’ve expanded the show footprint for IBC2023 to include an additional hall not used this year.”
Many exhibitors and speakers voiced their enthusiasm for the return of the live and in-person show, with many interviewed on camera for the IBC video channel.
Simon Westland, Channel Marketing Director at Blackmagic Design EMEA, said: “It is great to be back at IBC – it makes you realise how much we have missed the opportunity to engage with customers.”
Jeff Rosica, Avid CEO, welcomed the show’s return. “IBC for me and my company has always been very important. This show brings together, like no other, attendees across broadcast media and digital online. It’s just a really important place for our industry to come together to network and show new products and technologies. It’s also a really important time to listen.”
Dave Duvall, Chief Information Officer of Warner Bros. Discovery, noted: “The return to in-person and to be able to shake hands with people and say hello and have the show floor experience is just really great.”
Said Bacho, Chief Revenue Officer, Edishare, remarked: “IBC has been great. We have seen a lot of customers from the Middle East here and are delighted to have won a couple of big deals in the region. It was also a great opportunity to meet with all our channel partners from across the world. We had a meeting with our channel partners a day before IBC and we have had a lot of positive feedback.”
Chris Smeeton, Director – Argosy, said: “We were pleasantly surprised. We didn't know what to expect. We booked the stands three years ago so we were always going to be here, but we had no real idea of how many people would travel in from the UK and the Middle East. The Middle East especially has really looked up for us with lots of orders in the last three months. It looks like a lot of projects were on hold and have now restarted and that’s good news for us.”
Katrina King, Worldwide Strategy Leader/Content Production, AWS, commented: “Just the sheer
Said Bacho, Chief Revenue Officer, Editshare.
Chris Smeeton, Director – Argosy.
amount of innovation that’s on the floor this year is incredible.”
Purminder Gandhu, Lead, BBC Edge Group, underlined the importance IBC plays for industry players in terms of “being able to talk to people, find out what’s in development, find out what kinds of projects are being worked on, and which technology is there or is close to being there”.
Andrew Cross, Grass Valley CEO, put the return of IBC in a wider perspective: “IBC is where all of the vendors who make TV possible come together. And so in many ways IBC is far more important than just a bunch of vendors, because it is what is enabling everybody.”
Anil Jain, Global Managing Director for Media and Entertainment, Google, had a similar take on the show’s importance. “IBC has always been a great forum bringing media executives together, bringing technologies together, a place to discuss and exchange new ideas.”
IBC2023 will begin on September 15, 2023. PRO
We are very focused on the digital transformation within companies not only from a technology perspective, but from an organisational point of view and from a people perspective. With the overall technology landscapes changing so quickly, people also need to be able to keep pace. You cannot put new technology in front of people and expect them to just adapt. You need to take them with you on that journey of digital transformation.
Another important topic for Qvest is sustainability, which has become a subject for all organisations, regardless where they are located and Philipp Glänzel (l) and Ahmad Hadi Al Kayal, GM, Qvest
operating in the world.
With our Qvest experts, we can help with the actual execution of the projects and take care that products and technologies are sustainable and also fulfil the individual customer requirements. And we can guide our customers along the full process and recommend what changes they can make within their organisation to help with their sustainability goals. In the Middle East region, we are executing a lot of projects and we are happy to continue to do so. In this region, we want to be as close as possible to the customers, understand them better, understand their needs better so that we can design solutions or offer services that help them in their actual needs. We don't just want to be the company that responds to a tender, but we want to be the company that helps to define the requirements and align more with the needs of our customers, and then come up with solutions that help their business.
Rohde & Schwarz unveiled the first in a new generation of transmitters at IBC. The R&S TH1 is a liquid-cooled high-power transmitter with software-defined operation and the ability to work across all bands of UHF transmission. It is designed to support the three critical challenges and opportunities for broadcast network operators: to reduce energy costs and carbon footprint; to increase operational efficiency and resilience; and to unlock new broadcast applications, thereby creating new revenue opportunities for the operator. It is designed to deliver new services that are best handled by broadcast rather than mobile streaming.
The improved power amplifier design delivers a dramatic increase in energy efficiency, with a 15% reduction in power consumption over even the most efficient of current designs and a consequent reduction in carbon emissions. The liquid cooling concept, allowing more than 90% of all heat generated to be dispersed to the outside atmosphere, further reduces the energy requirements and total cost of ownership of an installation.
Internally, the design eliminates all single points of failure, making the transmitter highly resilient, and enables self-repairing and remote monitoring, reducing the cost of routine maintenance, another significant saving in cost as well as boosting reliability.
Arabsat signs deal with Profen to launch TV bouquet on Badr-4 satellite
Satellite operator Arabsat signed a strategic partnership agreement at IBC with Turkish firm Profen Communications Technologies, a system integrator operating globally across all communication areas. The agreement will see the launch of a TV bouquet that includes various Arabic and Turkish channels on the Badr-4 satellite.
Al-Hamidi Al-Enezi, Arabsat’s newly appointed CEO, said: “We are pleased to cooperate with Profen to provide high-quality TV broadcasting services within the coverage area of our satellite From left: Önder Havuzlu, CEO of Profen, and AlHamidi Al-Enezi, CEO of Arabsat, ink the deal at IBC.
fleet, in accordance with the latest international standards.”
Önder Havuzlu, CEO of Profen, added: “Profen Teleport’s best-in-class infrastructure and facilities, including both ISO9001 and ISO27001 certifications, is well-equipped to actively provide data centre hosting and telecommunication services to prime operators while addressing the significant growth in global data consumption, and expand network convergence over 5G wireless, terrestrial fibre and GEO, MEO, LEO satellites. We are pleased to be taking a significant lead in the telecommunications market with cooperation with Arabsat. Our operation of the satellite Earth station will ensure the provision of highly secure, quality video distribution to the Middle East and multiple regions of Asia, Europe and Africa.”
James Arnold, Chief Commercial Officer, Red Bee Media
Red Bee Media is a managed services company. We're in that space between customer groups, the broadcasters, platform operators and the vendor community, and what we are really good at is understanding what our media customers are trying to achieve and bringing together a range of skills and services to meet their specific needs. So Red Bee has a very sophisticated managed playout solution.
We also have a very good OTT proposition, but more than that, we have a managed service layer, which means Red Bee can offer end-to-end solutions or offer various service layers depending on what the customer wants. We are very much about delivering outputs for our customers.
We have operations in London, Amsterdam and Paris and are very strong in these markets as well as the Nordics. We've always had a very strong heritage in our relationship with broadcasters like the BBC and Channel Four, but equally we've got a view to the future, which is around streaming services, OTT services and increasing use of automation.
Red Bee has invested heavily over the last few years in its platform technologies, so there is no need to have big physical infrastructure in local markets. In fact, it makes us more agile to be able to deliver services remotely using the cloud and using our softwaredefined products.
The Middle East is an area we would like to develop further and we've got some very good people on the ground there to help nurture long-term relationships with clients. Houssam Khaled, Head of Operations and Sales at Red Bee Media, is leading our new business activities there.
We were previously providing playout services in that market, but that’s now come to an end. Red Bee is moving to its new premises at Yas Island in Abu Dhabi and all our operations have moved mostly to the cloud. That's how we intend to provide support for our Middle East businesses. This is quite consistent with our strategy in most of our markets.
We provide access services to the market, and have developed software products and tools to do that. So the business is becoming lighter in many ways, and Red Bee can approach the market in a far more modular way. We will take this same approach in the Middle East as well.
