Driving business outcomes with a media partnership approach

By James Arnold, Chief Execu ve Officer, Red Bee Media

The pace of change in media has never been faster, and the very nature of the change has never been more complex.

International markets are accelerating as media companies find new ways of bringing live video experiences to consumers at an unprecedented scale. But with market opportunity often comes complexity and risk.

Global macroeconomic conditions in 2023 are challenging and increasingly unpredictable amid rapid shifts in consumer spending, supply chains, labour markets, and access to investment. Today, media brands are required to execute a globalised and coherent distribution strategy while excelling in multiple new disciplines across brand positioning, commercial pricing strategies, and subscriber acquisition and retention. Businesses must be strategically agile to tackle all these factors and succeed. Faced with endless complexities, inflationary pressures, and rising costs, media companies already have enough to contend with. Adding the burden of building and running a high-availability playout environment makes that one headache too many. In this fast-evolving, competitive marketplace, a ‘build it yourself’ approach can’t keep up with the speed of transformation in media — and it’s a strategy that incurs considerable cost and risk.

Broadcasters, streaming services, and content providers are increasingly focused on the core elements of their business, looking to maximise operational efficiencies and achieve sustainable commercial growth. As a result, world-leading organisations are trusting proven expert partners in playout services to take care of technology and operations and allow them to focus on content and creativity. Playout partnerships built around economies of scale, goldstandard technology, and industry-leading talent are helping media brands navigate a path to the future with reliability and cost-predictability.

Operational challenges in a multi-platform world

The media landscape is converging faster than ever before. Media businesses are operating in a hybrid environment across an ever-expanding set of frontiers, delivering highquality content experiences to diverse global audiences across both traditional and newer digital viewing platforms — simultaneously and round the clock. All while content owners deploy revenue strategies encompassing a mix of advertising, subscription, and pay-per-view models. Organisations with longestablished and successful business models in domestic markets are experimenting with hybrid models as they take their business across borders and continents — for example, BBC Worldwide, DAZN or WWE. In the race to reach fast-growing digital audiences with tailored, high-value programming, content owners are launching free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels — and they want to do it quickly. Industry analyst

Omdia forecasts global FAST revenues will hit $12 billion by 2027, doubling in market size over the next four years. In a rapidly exploding FAST market, the clue is really in the name — media owners need to act now to get ahead of the competition.

Doing it alone and undertaking complex, expensive and capital intensive infrastructure projects to harness new digital opportunities doesn’t make sense for broadcasters that need to secure business agility, efficiency and cost assurances. And in 2023, that means everyone. Through a media partnership approach, organisations can harness economies of scale and unlock critical efficiencies through sharing assets such as data centres, networks, and Master Control Rooms (MCRs), with shared teams deployed across multiple flavours of services and business models. It also addresses the increasing challenge of maintaining talent with the necessary and future-proof skill sets.

Reduce business risk with a flexible approach

Whether you label it agility, flexibility, or responsiveness, the ability to try new things is at the core of our industry — it’s media DNA. From pop-up channels, new subscription models, one-off live events, new interfaces, or a myriad of potential changes to how content is delivered, technology and skills are often the only limiting factor. Leading European broadcasters like TV5MONDE have favoured a media partnership approach to launch global OTT services seamlessly and efficiently, bringing high-quality content to viewers across continents. Media services partnerships overcome the inherent risk of placing ‘big bets’ on the future of our market. Gaining access to best-in-breed playout infrastructure and skilled expertise that can deliver outcomes based on deep technical capability reduces risk while enabling the innovation that powers the next generation of breakout services. These risks are best managed by media services partners for whom this is core business and who can diversify them across a broad customer base.

Show me the outcome

While it is still possible to rationalise building in-house based on arguments of competitive differentiation or where the transition to alternative business models is too difficult to contemplate, progressive organisations are embracing a media services partner approach that is outcome focused. Ultimately, business leaders don’t want to be trapped in continual refresh cycles for in-house technologies to meet constantly evolving requirements. Instead, they want to trust proven partners that can deliver a whole host of non-core activities as a service while allowing creative minds to free up focus on content, subscriber acquisition, and achieving business goals.

A media partnership model isn’t just about simplifying playout complexities in a fragmented market; it’s about playing where it counts and driving business value and sustainable growth. In a media industry undergoing considerable upheaval, world-leading broadcasters should no longer gamble on an uncertain future. 