IBC 2011 Daily Executive Summary

theibcdaily summary The IBC Leaders’ Summit Sir David Attenborough IBC International Honour for Excellence Cameron Pace Evangelising 3D

Joanna Shields: All TV will be social

www.ibc.org

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theibcdaily inside

The debate that matters

I

BC not only reflects the rapidly changing nature of the electronic media business but, we hope, stays one step ahead and helps set the industry’s agenda for the next 12 months. Core to that endeavour is the IBC Conference, the essential context which puts each one of the thousands of innovations on the Exhibition showfloor into the bigger picture. With 1300+ exhibitors, each with dozens of stories to communicate to IBC’s 50,000 attendees and an international audience, competition for breathing space is intense. The IBC Conference puts those stories into focus.

We have purposefully balanced the IBC Conference around the streams of technology advancements, content creation and innovation and the business of broadcasting and then played those debates out among a variety of panel discussions, masterclasses, keynotes and tutorials with speakers carefully chosen for their authority and inspiration in a particular field.

Underlying much of this discussion is the increasing role that the consumer has in driving the professional industry.

We created The Connected World as a special section at the show to illustrate how mobile and IPTV technologies are connecting content everywhere.

Augmenting both Exhibition and Conference, we were delighted this year to launch the IBC Leaders’ Summit, a unique two day event for Europe’s broadcasting elite to mix and share insights with some of the most talismanic figures in world media.

Whereas IBC’s agenda was firmly about broadcast engineering and aimed at a core broadcast engineering market, we are in the process of delivering a richer international constituency of opinion formers. This is in response to a feeling that the industry is moving toward a more strategic view of the business benefits that technology may bring to an organisation.

We are in the process of delivering a richer international constituency of opinion formers Michael Crimp IBC CEO

We also anticipate that conversations will ferment around how consumer behaviour will impact business models and have sought to bring together leaders from different parts of the industry and supervising content creation, management and distribution to exchange ideas.

A glance at the IBC Conference 2011 programme then reveals a Who’s Who of leaders spanning the breadth of electronic media. They include representatives from leading public service and subscription-based broadcasters as you might expect but also major film studios, TV production companies and social network pioneers. They range from the giants of IT and commanders of global advertising to ambassadors from the fast converging world of computer gaming.

They also include entrepreneurs of venture capital, and mavericks like James Cameron whose work epitomises creativity through technology as well as individuals who have single-handedly defined a genre – Sir David Attenborough is the distinguished winner of the IBC International Honour for Excellence.

A selection of their views are contained in this special IBC Executive Daily edition.

We also know that a great many people value IBC for the fantastic formal and informal networking opportunities it provides in such an attractive and vibrant business environment.

Thank you to everyone who shared their time and inspiration as speaker or as delegate. We can and we will improve – but only by listening to you can we help set the industry’s agenda.

Mascha Driessen, Google 4 Steve Plunkett, Red Bee Media 5 Romulo Pontual, DirecTV 5 Ralf Schaefer, Fraunhofer HHI 7 Nick Piggott, Global Radio UK 7 Leonid Stavnitser, Oracle 8 Sir David Attenborough 8 Arran Green, The Mill 11 Simon Bucks, Sky News 11 Joanna Shields, Facebook 13 Michael Comish, Blinkbox 14 Daniel Danker, BBC 16 Charlie Boswell, AMD 17 John Smith, BBC Worldwide 19 Joshua Danovitz, Tivo 19 Richard Feasey, Vodafone 20 Ingrid Deltenre, EBU 20 Bernard Pauchon, BNE 21 Daniel Sauvet-Goichon, DVB 23 Gabrielle Gauthey, Alcatel-Lucent 23 Mainardo De Nardis, OMD Worldwide 25 Vince Pace, CPG 26 Sascha van Holt, Seven Ventures 26 IBC Leaders’ Summit 28 Julian Wheeler, Tata Communications 32 Naomi Climer, Sony Europe 32 Fru Hazlitt, ITV 33 Howard Lukk, Walt Disney Studios 35 William H. Roedy, (former) MTV Networks Intl 36 Mike Fries, Liberty Global 37 Gina Nieri, Mediaset 37 Richard Thomson, Wall to Wall 38 Spencer Stephens, Sony Pictures Technologies 39 Neil Gaydon, Pace 39 Rob Hummel, Legend3D 41 Steven Poster, ICG 41 Luke Johnson, Risk Capital Ventures 42 Thomas Hoegh, Arts Alliance 43 Lesley Mackenzie, LoveFilm 43 Ghislaine Le Rhun, Orange TV 44 Anthony Rose, ZeeTV 45 Martin Weiss, Solon Management Consulting 45 Niclas Ericson, FIFA TV 47 Markus Hoevel, TEAM Marketing 47 Mark Silver, CTV 47 Luc Doneux, EVS 48 Francis Tellier, HBS 48 Simon Derry, Snell 49 Claire Tavernier, Fremantle Media 49 James Cameron 50

EDITORIAL Director Fergal Ringrose, Editor Adrian Pennington, Reporters Kate Bulkley, Ann-Marie Corvin, Chris Forrester, Carolyn Giardina, George Jarrett Photography Richard Ecclestone ART & PRODUCTION Group Production Editor Dawn Boultwood, Design Paul Aarons Production Manager Stephen Miller SALES Group Sales Director Steve Connolly Tel: +44 (0)20 7 226 7246 Email: steve.connolly@intentmedia.co.uk Business Development Manager Ben Ewles Email: Ben.Ewles@intentmedia.co.uk US Sales Michael Mitchell Tel: +1 (631) 673 3199 Email: mjmitchell@broadcast-media.tv IBC Chief Executive Officer Michael Crimp Publisher Joe Hosken Managing Director Stuart Dinsey Printed by Headley Brothers The Invicta Press, Queens Road, Ashford, Kent TN24 8HH Published on behalf of the IBC Partnership by Intent Media Ltd, Suncourt House, 18-26 Essex Road, London N1 8LN © The International Broadcasting Convention 2011. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without the express prior written consent of the publisher.

4 executive summary theibcdaily

Mascha Driessen

Head of YouTube & Display Benelux Region: Netherlands & Belgium Interview by Kate Bulkley

A media catalyst W hen you talk to Mascha Driessen, she is quick to reel off a lot of numbers about advertising on YouTube: revenue for content partners has grown three times year-on-year (although she won’t give an exact number); some 20,000 advertisers now run campaigns on YouTube, (that is 100% more than in 2010); and 3 billion video views are monestised with ads on YouTube every week.

From its origins as a user generated content destination, there are now some 20,000 professional content providers monetising their video and very often their content is uploaded by users. A YouTube service called Content ID (that is being used by 1,000 content owners) identifies it and allows the owners to decide if they want to monetise it, or ask YouTube to take it down off the site.

Driessen says that two-thirds of the professional content being monetised in this way is uploaded to the site by the users, not the rights holders themselves.

For Driessen, who heads up display advertising for YouTube in the Benelux, the point is to use the new interactive nature of the web as opposed to trying to fight against it. “A couple of years ago content owners had the idea of putting their content only on their own platforms as a way to protect it,” says Driessen.

“Now they see that consumers are everywhere and there are big parts of the community that they can’t reach with their own platforms so they need others like YouTube.”

Driessen is a longtime TV hand having worked for RTL Group and Endemol before joining YouTube two and a half years ago. She says that advertisers are starting to realise that they can “monetise more on YouTube than they can on TV.” She explains that the future for advertising is about cost per effect

The future for advertising is about cost per effect versus the cost per reach approach of traditional TV ad sales versus cost per reach, which is the traditional TV approach to selling advertising.

In that vein, earlier this year YouTube took an ambitious step, launching skippable pre-roll adverts where the advertiser only pays if the user watches the entire advert. “It’s a risk because if everyone skipped the ads then you don’t earn any money but we are very pleased by the results so far.”

Driessen believes the future for advertising is about being relevant and having good creative execution. Boring ads, she says, are not going to work in this interactive world. She cites the creative approach of white-out product Tipp-Ex which last year launched an interactive ad called Hunter Shoots a Bear on YouTube where users could choose what the hunter did to the bear besides shooting him, ie using white out to change the words ‘shoot’ to something else.

The ad has had 48 million views and sales of Tipp-Ex went up 30% year on year. “YouTube is kind of a media catalyst,” says Driessen. “But to make this kind of advertising work you have to make it fun and not boring. You have to engage people by tapping into their interests.”

20,000 YouTube advertisers

theibcdaily executive summary 5

Q&A

Romulo C. Pontual Executive VP and CTO DirecTV Region: US

Steve Plunkett

Director of Technology & Innovation, Red Bee Media Region: UK

How is TV going to be consumed in 2015?

Time agnostic viewing is going to be a standard. We expect to have much faster navigation of several tools for finding shows, even though the amount of choice is staggering. We expect consumers to be able to watch on several different screens. Everywhere there is glass that can be used to display video, it can be used for television viewing.

What does the industry need to do to prepare for this scenario?

The industry has to work on a set of standards to ensure consumers have a seamless experience. The level of complexity – technically speaking – is very high. For the consumer, it has to be transparent. We need standards that are well defined, that are flexible for evolution but also ensure interoperability.

in a new standard. We need to lay down rules that tell us exactly how a file is created. Service providers can then offer some sort of validation service so that producers can ascertain whether they are creating compliant assets.

How would you characterise changes in playout technology?

We see a continued move away from speciality hardware, for areas like graphics, into more integrated solutions alongside automation. There’s a trend for those discrete components to be combined as software and on common IT infrastructure on a smaller number of systems.

The nature of a particular channel will dictate whether it’s possible to move to software systems. A movie channel, for example, with very predictable, non-live content or continuity is easier to migrate to a more IT based platform than perhaps regional opt in opt out channels which require a more traditional broadcast architecture.

We are also moving toward adaptive bitrate technology in which you might have six to eight files from a single master source which are adapted to the different qualities of the client device.

How would you describe the demands clients are placing on managed service provision?

Distribution is starting to be more of a blend between online and broadcast technology. On the business side broadcasters are looking to service providers who can offer playout integrated with other forms of distribution rather than treating TV and online as discrete platforms. There are obvious efficiencies to be had when handling one common asset and making it available for rendition to other platforms.

Is The Cloud of practical benefit to managing media?

We are testing and analysing the Cloud, in particular the relationship between high performance disks required for production and post and lesser performance disk storage used for media preparation and transcoding – for content which is not accessed as frequently. As long as we find a level of security and bandwidth to move assets between in-house and external locations we can take advantage of Cloud computing.

Service Provider

By Adrian Pennington

When will we see a total end to tape?

It is very difficult to put a specific deadline on that but we have some way to go. Tape-based systems have the advantage of a common and predictable format carried from camera to production, post and distribution. With files you are no longer working with an end-to-end proprietary format which guarantees a level of interoperability across the entire supply chain.

Instead when we receive an MXF wrapped file – which by its nature offers quite a degree of customisation – we have a much higher degree of uncertainty that it will play on our system.

This matters because if we receive a file shortly before a transmission window we suffer significantly if that file is not as accessible as anticipated. It is in everyone’s interest to come up with some common file format that is genuinely interoperable.

If MXF is considered a valiant failure, is a new universal file format achievable?

Definitely. It is being addressed by the Digital Production Partnership (DPP), a vocal coalition driven by UK broadcasters with the support of post facilities, manufacturers and service providers.

DPP is trying to understand what metadata would be included or not included

It is in everyone’s interest to come up with some common file format that is genuinely interoperable

What are you currently working on at DirecTV? We are developing a new concept for distribution to the home based on a hybrid satellite and cloud system. The core idea is a single ‘smart box’ in the home that distributes DirecTV to multiple screens. To develop this system called RVU we are leading an alliance of 36 major players including Broadcom, Verizon, Cisco and Samsung. DirecTV will launch this to consumers in Q4. This is part of a roadmap that culminates in another two-three years.

What is your vision for 3DTV? The adoption of passive glasses and autostereoscopic displays will increase.

The first thing we are going to see is that all mobile devices — smartphones, tablets -are going to become glasses free 3D devices. That will be very easy to do within a short time frame. TV will take a bit longer. CG

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theibcdaily executive summary 7

Ralf Schaefer

Head of the Image Processing Department, Fraunhofer HHI Region: Germany

Tomorrow’s world Ralf Schaefer leads a group of 75 research engineers, 20 of whom concentrate on issues to do with stereoscopic 3D. One of the best ways to find pointers towards our 3D future is to check through the European FP7 projects that Fraunhofer HHI supports. Schaefer selects some of them: MOBILE 3DTV is a pooling of technologies to create a working system for capturing and coding 3D content. It will comprise: suitable stereo-video content creation techniques; efficient, scalable and flexible stereo-video encoders with error resilience and error-concealment capabilities, tailored for robust transmission over DVB-H; and, the corresponding stereo-video decoders and players working on a portable terminal device equipped with a stereoscopic display.

3D4YOU will develop the key elements of a practical 3DTV system. This concerns the definition of a 3D delivery format and guidelines for a 3D content creation process. It is developing 3D capture techniques, conversion for captured content for broadcasting, and developing 3D coding for delivery via broadcast.

3DPHONE is a Turkish-led project to develop an all-3D imaging mobile. We expect that all fundamental functions of the phone – media display, UI, and PIM applications will be realised in 3D. We will develop techniques for an all-3D phone experience: mobile stereoscopic video, 3D UIs, 3D capture/content creation, compression, rendering, and 3D display. Algorithms for 3D AV applications like personal communication,

3D visualisation and content management will be developed.

3DPRESENCE is a multi-party, high-end videoconferencing concept built round 3D tele-presence technology, and 2020 3DMEDIA, the development of novel technologies to support the acquisition, coding, editing, networked distribution, and display of stereoscopic and immersive AV content.

HIGH EFFICIENCY VIDEO CODING or (HEVC) will become the next key standard, and its finalisation being planned for spring 2013.

The goal is to double the coding efficiency compared to H.264. The main application areas will be video beyond HD (4K, 8K, UHD) and (auto-stereoscopic) 3D, for which it is necessary to transmit three or four views plus corresponding depth maps. This will increase the bandwidth requirements significantly.

Fraunhofer HHI’s teams are also partnering on other interesting projects including MUSCADE which looks to create major innovations in the fields of production tools, transmission, and coding formats; and 3D@SAT, which is led by telecoms group ESA investigating the potential of future 3D multi-view/free viewpoint video technologies, and building a simulation system for 3D services over satellite. The rest of Europe will also want to keep an eye on the German government-sponsored project PRIME which is a consortium developing trend-setting techniques and business models for the implementation of 3D media into cinema, TV and videogames. GJ

Nick Piggott Head of Creative Technology, Global Radio UK Region: UK

Tune in to radio Digital Radio

By Chris Forrester

G

lobal Radio is the UK’s largest commercial radio group which runs among others Capital FM, Classic FM and Heart.

Nick Piggott has led the development of DAB Digital Radio since 1998 at Global and is an active participant in WorldDAB. “We are already on satellite, and Freeview, and had you asked our audience 15 years ago whether they’d be listening to our channels via a TV set – they would have laughed. It may have once seemed crazy for radio broadcasters to be part of digital television but it now represents a huge slice of our listening audience. Indeed recent [UK measurement] data shows that more people listen to digital radio via their TV sets than listen via the internet.

“However, as an industry we should be doing much more. We would like to see radio tuners put in far more of the devices that we use every day. This is also one of the key drivers for our move into hybrid radio [RadioDNS, a collaborative project to enable the convergence of radio broadcasting and IP-delivered services]. We want to be present on connected and wireless devices within the home.

“It looks like we are asking for companies to invest a fortune in enabling devices to receive radio signals, but we believe that for anyone developing a complex device like a mobile phone, MP3 player, or even a set-top box, the extra cost of a radio tuner is tiny, nor is it a technical challenge.

“And this isn’t just about the UK, or even Europe.

Equipment manufacturers worldwide, should be thinking radio as part of their offering.

What’s even crazier is that some devices already have radio hardware inside, but no interface to control its use.

“The radio industry itself, of course, needs to do more.

It isn’t enough to have an App that says ‘87.5’ on a smartphone. Radio needs to innovate something that’s better and more animated.

What we are not hearing is a unified voice from across Europe saying that we want Samsung, Sony and Apple – and the rest – to make radio look interesting on their devices.

“There is no reason why the App on a mobile phone cannot be a portal to a wider world of broadcast radio.

What we need is integration and coordination, and the Radio DNS scheme is a key part of that strategy.”

As an industry we should be doing much more. We would like to see radio tuners being put in far more of the devices that we use every day

8 executive summary theibcdaily

Sir David Attenborough explains the vital role technology has played in the evolution of natural history filmmaking

Intelligent

Leonid Stavnitser

Senior Director of Security Solutions, Oracle On Demand Region: US

As the model of mass publication is being challenged by direct-to-consumer content via the internet media companies, for the first time, there is a need to create direct relationships with the end-user. This is great news for broadcasters, as access to users opens up new opportunities to generate previously untapped revenues.

However, to make content and services valuable enough and individually tailored to the consumer, media companies are beginning to recognise that they need user data. This challenge brings new technology requirements, as user data needs to be managed with the utmost care, to maintain consumer trust as well as ensure full compliance with data protection and privacy regulations.

The collection, management and use of detailed customer data has historically not been the media companies’ strength, and getting it wrong can have a far-reaching – and even irreversible – negative impact on a brand.

As content and audience data is stored and delivered from the Cloud, broadcasters will need to know how and where it is physically to ensure that it remains secure and legislatively compliant. Therefore a strategy for using and safeguarding consumer data should be a priority.

Watching time lapse photography of flower buds opening is marvellous in 2D but in 3D it really is transcendental,” says Sir David Attenborough. “You experience the sensation of being able to touch the plant.”

Technology has come a long way since Attenborough’s first foray into filmmaking in the 1950’s but his relationship with innovative recording equipment has been almost as intimate as it has with some of his subjects.

While the 85-year-old is among other things a world respected broadcaster and iconic presenter, synonymous with the natural history genre he has helped define, his success has in part been built on a natural affinity and enthusiasm for new storytelling tools.

“In 1952 TV was regarded by the BBC’s governors as essentially electronic,” says the distinguished recipient of IBC’s International Honour for Excellence. “The serious business of broadcasting took place in TV studios – or on radio – and when you asked for extra money to make a film the reaction was ‘what for?’. It was extremely difficult to get funding.

“TV was 405-line monochrome and the telecine machines only had one gauge – 35mm – for reels which cost a fortune and weighed a ton,” he recalls.

“It simply wasn’t possible to make the sort of film I wanted to make in Africa in 35mm so I asked to use 16mm and was told in no uncertain terms that 16mm was for amateurs.

“I persisted and put my case to the head of TV who finally agreed to allow me to take 16mm on location (for Zoo Quest) and I became the first user of that format at the BBC. The difficulties didn’t end there because the standard that BBC staff cameramen worked to was also 35mm and most wouldn’t touch 16 with a barge pole so I had to employ freelancers.”

Attenborough recalls that the Cine Special he took on his first expeditions used a side-loading

Sir David Attenborough Broadcaster

Interview by Adrian Pennington

reel running 2 minutes 40 seconds, that it operated for just 40 second bursts and only then by winding it up.

“As you can imagine it was extremely difficult to film any kind of continuity of animal behaviour and there was no way of synchronising sound with picture so I couldn’t talk to camera,” he says.

In the mid 1960s Attenborough was appointed Controller of BBC2, during which time he also helped usher in colour transmissions. But programme making and the natural world was too big a draw and after resigning in 1973 he spent three years planning and filming Life

different times of the year where previously a trip to Australia to film a three-minute sequence of some owls was just not practical. Cheaper, faster flights made 13 hour long series economical.

“Every series that followed was a response to a technical advance,” he says. “The Private Life of Plants was a direct response to the introduction of servers which allowed you to film continuously over long periods, to generate amazing time lapse footage. Infra-red cameras enabled us to film the nocturnal behaviour of mammals (The Life of Mammals) that had not been possible

Every series I made was a response to a technical advance on Earth which debuted in 1979 to universal acclaim. It was the most ambitious project yet achieved by the BBC Natural History Unit.

“Natural history is full of marvellous opportunities for colour and showing birds of paradise in black and white was a very frustrating thing to have to do,” he says. “Colour meant natural history could be so much more visually exciting and Life on Earth was expressly designed to take advantage of this.”

Another major technical advance, crucial to the evolution of the genre, was the commercial jet plane.

“Suddenly you could schedule round-the-world trips to capture environments at

before. Cool lighting systems and highly light-sensitive cameras allowed us to film insects on a macro scale whereas previously the poor things had been scared by the light and heat and had exhibited abnormal behaviour.

“Digital of course made a huge difference with cameras that can operate soundlessly without scaring wildlife, that you record hours of footage on just waiting for something to happen, and also miniaturised so you can put them in hides.”

The last big technical change, he suggests, was the introduction of gyro-mounted helicopters which enabled aerial shots of wildlife activity, of wolves hunting buffalo for example, that had never been seen before.

theibcdaily executive summary 9

by design More recently Attenborough has been pioneering 3DTV documentaries, closely involved in the production of Flying Monsters 3D (Atlantic Productions for Sky) which was the first of its kind to win a BAFTA. “3D works under certain circumstances and depends on how you produce it,” he says.

“Right now the technology is limiting although the results can be liberating. It takes four-to-five people to lift the cameras and 30 minutes to change a lens, which is no way to react to fast moving animal behaviour. The systems are very temperamental which means you could be sitting around for an hour and half while the cameras are aligned.

“Frankly it’s a nightmare to anyone accustomed to crawling through the bushes trying to get close to nervous animals with a small camera capable of capturing sound and vision.

You can’t do it with 3D – at the moment.”

The restrictions on the use of long lenses, which tend to create a flat, cardboard-like effect, are equally limiting.

“If you ask a cameraman to go to South America and film landscapes in 3D but they are not allowed to use lenses longer than 75mm then they are simply not going to be able to bring back content as good as it would be in 2D. Audience’s expectations will be let down and that is to be avoided at all costs.

“That’s why you have to choose your subjects carefully to exploit the value of 3D. I chose to work with fossils (for Flying Monsters 3D) and deliberately that of a creature which moved in three dimensions so that its 40ft wing span can fly over the audience if you wish it to.”

Atlantic Productions’ followup is Bachelor King, a 3D narrative documentary currently in post production about penguins on the island of South Georgia. Again, it was Attenborough’s choice.

“The thing about 150,000 penguins on a beach is that they look identical so that when they move or you lose track of them during filming you can simply construct the story from another one,” he says. “The beach’s other inhabitants included seals, and they don’t move too fast either.”

He believes that the future for 3D depends on technical development. “At the moment the big problem with 3DTV is that you have to wear glasses which occlude light. That means you can’t see the person next to you, read a newspaper or do anything you would normally do other than watch the TV and that means you have to have event programming.”

Although he has just completed another landmark production Frozen Planet, following the cycle of the polar seasons, which took three years to film and saw him film at the north pole for the first time, Attenborough continues to search for new worlds to explore.

“We still know remarkably little about the deep ocean because our technology is limited by pressure at depth – but that would make for an incredible subject,” he says.

“As for the next thing after 3D, that could be holograms.

Imagine that – creatures popping out of your TV and appearing in your living room.”

theibcdaily executive summary 11

Q&A Games development is like the 1920s of Hollywood – a bit of a Wild West

Arran Green

Head of Gaming, The Mill Region: UK Games & Interactive Media

By Adrian Pennington

Are computer games and filmmaking skillsets merging?

Yes, both use animators, scriptwriters, lighting directors, editors and the core skills are transferable. I am a case in point. Before joining The Mill I was senior video designer for Sony PlayStation creating internal trailers, intros and full motion video sequences using game elements. At The Mill I am performing an essentially similar role backed by The Mill’s 20-year expertise in creating the very best visuals.

The main difference is that the two media are using technology in a different way to tell a story. Games and interactive media allow you to tell a more immersive story than film.

While the TV industry is very mature, games development is like the 1920s of Hollywood – a bit of a wild west. Creatives can have a bit of fun and experiment.

This innovative culture is a big draw to creative people which is why filmmakers the calibre of JJ Abrams and Steven Spielberg have expressed interest.

What does this mean for games creation?

Historically there has been a real separation between games and film. Games have been split between goal-oriented ones like Super Mario which are never intended to be a film, and those with aspirations to a more cinematic style, like Gears of War.

Whereas the aspiration previously manifested itself as – at best – an homage to film when cinematic language was mimicked and ideas almost appropriated out of context, games companies have realised that their product is much more powerful if they can marry narrative storylines with the immersive qualities of computer games.

Games are now being cast with triple A actors, with scriptwriters drawn from Hollywood. As a result the production values and character development are much more in line with network TV shows.

Will we see a new form of interactive media emerge?

There is a strange focus on realism and the ability for computer-generated content to achieve it. Yet Hollywood movies and TV aren’t real, they are stylised. Even when technology enables things to look perfectly realistic there will still be a creative need to stylise and provide a certain look to art design or characterisation.

People don’t want to be immersed in Eastenders, they want to be carried away to another world.

The essential difference is that people who watch a film expect a definitive version of a story but gaming offers the user a level of authorship that film can never give.

Reshaping reportage Newsgathering Landscape

By Kate Bulkley

T

Twitter has completely transformed the way news is reported

elevision news organisations are being transformed by social media and the two screen experience, but warns Sky News Associate Editor Simon Bucks, implementation isn’t always easy.

“We have a thriving digital development department so philosophically and from a leadership perspective adding social media (like Twitter) wasn’t difficult, but logistically we have had to convert many of our journalists from an old school way of thinking and some of that has been easy and some less so depending on the mindset of those involved,” says Bucks.

Sky has also added cross-social media platform application TweetDeck (recently purchased by Twitter) to every Sky News desktop. “Twitter is a particularly astonishing news gathering tool, If you think of it as a massively expanded and infinite contacts book which allows you to find

Simon Bucks

Associate Editor, Sky News Region: UK

people who can help you do your story, it has completely transformed the way news is reported.”

Certainly the impact of social media on TV news organisations has been vast, most visibly and recently in reporting the Arab Spring of uprisings across the Middle East this year. “The whole way that social media allows people who are witnesses to events to post their material and send it, makes everyone a potential contributor of news,” says Bucks. “From some countries social media and the images on YouTube were the only material available. Syria would have been pretty much unreportable without YouTube pictures.”

Twitter has also changed the way a rolling news TV channel like Sky integrates with other distribution platforms. “Twitter is the fastest and most efficient way of breaking news to large numbers of people and because of the restrictions on the number of characters (140) it forces journalists to write concisely and effectively.”

Bucks is now looking toward more integration between social media applications like the recently launched Sky News iPad app and the rolling TV news programme. “Anyone who does live events is interested in two screens because it’s a great way of providing added value and getting more user interactivity,” he says.

“I think that eventually in news the technology people will have to also think like journalists. They may have technical skills but they also need journalistic nous to understand what we’re trying to achieve as well as figure out how to implement it.”

theibcdaily executive summary 13

Joanna Shields Vice President & Managing Director EMEA, Facebook Region: Global

TV will be social

Social Network

By Adrian Pennington

“I truly believe that whether it is how a show is created, experienced or promoted, all TV will be social in the future,” Joanna Shields boldly predicted during her IBC Conference-defining keynote. “TV has given us some of the most powerful moments of our lives and it is often said that TV was the first social network. But the truth is that TV is better when it is social.”

She explained: “Social is about making the viewing experience better, making the discovery of new programmes better and about making the creation of new revenue streams easier,” she said. “Social plus TV represents a period of renaissance for the TV industry to define new ways of engaging audiences and telling great stories. Facebook represents the biggest opportunity the TV industry has ever faced – the potential to tap into that global audience.

The last time Shields keynoted IBC was 12 years ago when she was CEO of interactive video company Veon.

“I tried to convince everyone that the digital revolution was here to stay.

Looking back I was more than a bit naïve. Clearly digital has transformed how content is produced, delivered and consumed but when we look at what has truly changed our lives and transformed industries, it’s not the technology itself but rather its what the technology enables us to do.”

Facebook, of which Shields is European VP and managing director, is a prime example. Its technology and concept may be brilliant, but without the 750+ million people who use it, the application is irrelevant.

Shields’ message was that if Facebook’s strength comes from giving people the power to share the things they care about the most – then media partners could share in that power.

“Last year the mood at IBC was uncertain,” she said. “The rise of social networks and the amount of time people spend online seemed like it was going to come at the expense of TV. But the interesting thing is that time online isn’t coming at the expense of TV. “It was important to me to come to IBC and demystify Facebook and show how media partners can use the platform to deliver great results. Every person makes Facebook their own and the

750m+ Facebook users

Social plus TV represents a period of renaissance for the TV industry

same goes for a TV show or brand. It is entirely up to the TV industry to embrace this and make it their own.”

To underscore the point she stated: “Facebook is not going to create its own content. We enable people to do that by facilitating the ability for content to reach the audience and for content owners to work with our ad teams to monetise that relationship.”

“What we are seeing is the growth of a new medium, one that is personally unique to every individual,” she explained.

“It connects people to every other medium – print, radio or television – which is why it is unique and complementary.

“It is a form of social discovery, where technology is finally catching up with human behavior – social discovery guided by the people whose opinions matter most to us.

The average FB user has 130 friends, she revealed, so that when they share

a message that matters to them then 16,900 friends of friends can be reached or 2.1 million friends of friends of friends.

“It is word of mouth marketing done at scale. You are not simply broadcasting but making an authentic connection with people that in turn inspires them to do the talking [for brands].

“This journey is only one percent finished,” she said. “When we look back a decade from now we’ll be able to trace where future industry leaders made their first steps.

She concluded: “We want to work with you on figuring out the best way to build amazing relationships with your audience and help you make TV social again. We want to be your partner in unlocking the potential of 750 million friends.”

14 executive summary theibcdaily

Michael Comish CEO, Blinkbox Region: UK

Landgrab for viewers Online content delivery, and that of movies in particular, is a fiercely competitive business in which only those with the right strategy and muscle will survive

W

ith the introduction of connected TV products, a multi-dimensional battle is breaking out for the attention of the TV viewer.

The battleground is the default screen on the consumer’s primary TV and the role of all the secondary screens that will hang off of it.

Not quite how Michael Comish sees it. “It’s less a battle and more of a landgrab, in the UK at least where payTV is in 50% of homes,” he says.

“The opportunity for OTT service providers is to reach those people who previously didn’t have access to great movies on demand and other services in the home as well as existing payTV customers who are looking for better value for money.”

Landgrab or battleground, Comish is in the thick of things as chief executive of movies on demand service Blinkbox. A former senior executive at broadcaster Channel 4, he co-founded Blinkbox in 2006 building it to 2 million customers a month before selling to retail giant Tesco to grow the business.

Refreshingly for a CEO, Comish is frank in his assessment of the market.

“The hype about the connected home exceeds the reality on the ground,” he believes. “People are talking about where we will be in two

years as opposed to where the market is today. The vast majority of views for premium OTT services is currently through games consoles (in the UK there are around 10 million Xbox and PS3 owners). However, in two-to-three year’s time the number of connected TV devices will be around 20 million.

The tipping point for take-up is 2012 partly because of the Olympics, and the launch of [BBC-backed IPTV project] YouView, and improved broadband, but also because of the breadth of devices on which consumers can access services such as Blinkbox.”

The cost and technical complexity of building a service across different devices remains a substantial barrier to claiming market share.

“If anything the cost and complexity has gone up; distinct DRMs, operating environments, players and the need to develop a unique service per device means that only a small number of key providers have the skills or capital to offer these services,” Comish reports.

“The costs and complexity associated with a successful digital retail business are so significant that small players cannot survive.”

Once that became clear he began looking for a partner. “Tesco serves 10 million people a week in its stores, all of whom I have an opportunity to sell to. It has 17 million Clubcard

Movies On Demand

By Adrian Pennington

The costs and complexity associated with a successful digital retail business are so significant that small players cannot survive

customers that they know a lot of information about, it is the second largest DVD retailer in the UK and the third largest consumer electronics retailer – so in terms of a partner with synergy and clout there was none better.”

Blinkbox’s clients, the Hollywood majors, also want to see content on a myriad of different devices but they are also concerned to retain profit margins from the DVD window.

“One of the biggest challenges we face is getting the partners you work with to embrace change,” says Comish.

“A big challenge is trying to help studios better understand the fundamental change that is occurring in the way people will consume media online.”

He elaborates: “Whereas consumers used to value ownership they now value access. There will always be people who purchase but a much greater percentage will rent.

Consumers want immediate access across multiple devices with a picture quality they’d expect from a DVD. They don’t care how – they just want immediate access to the films they love on the device they have at hand. The trick for content owners and service providers is to create enough value in the proposition that consumers rent online, en masse, and avoid the ‘free’ option that has crippled the music industry.”

16 executive summary theibcdaily

Daniel Danker

General Manager, Products On Demand, BBC Region: UK

Five ways technology is...

impacting audience behaviour and audience behaviour is impacting technology Broadcast Behaviour

By Adrian Pennington Control and choice. Despite years experimenting, only a small number of changes have truly impacted the way consumers experience TV, those that give audiences control and choice. Television has been a roaring success because it’s dead simple to use.

It’s easy to control, informative and educational, and entertaining.

TV’s evolution will improve on its strengths rather than replace them with new ones.

1

Timeshifting. Last year, over 1.7 billion programmes were viewed with BBC iPlayer; people love the liberty of watching programmes on their own schedule. But the rate of iPlayer growth on TVs and mobile/tablet devices has overtaken PC growth several times over. This is not surprising — TV is best enjoyed on TV, mobile is a great alternative on the road, and the tablet’s simplicity makes it more like a personal version of the screen on the wall.

As content providers, the question is how we build on this success to give audiences more choice and control?

2

Connected. Content providers can increasingly directly connect with audiences in television’s most natural habitat. Already, 10% of televisions in the UK can be connected to the internet. But just because TVs have been upgraded doesn’t mean that audience needs have changed.

The most successful experiences will seamlessly transition from broadcast to connected, requiring no greater skill than flipping through channels. There is much work to do to simplify the connected part of today’s TVs.

3

Curated. The shift from broadcast to connected also creates new opportunities in curation. No longer do broadcasters define one schedule for an entire audience. Online, curation takes three forms: Professional – storytelling through the eyes of

4

New technologies are making TV better, but a lack of elegant integration means that TV has never been more difficult to use editorial teams; Algorithmic – using personal activity, popularity data, and collaborative filtering and; Social – surfacing programmes shared by a community of friends Online, the BBC combines all three forms to create an experience seen through an individual lens but which expresses our professional voice.

We recently launched a BBC News app for TV in which users curate their own newscast. This is just the beginning. During the 2012 Olympics, we will serve an entire library of live channels and catch-up will only be available in a connected world.

Immersed. Using dual screen experiences on a mobile or tablet, audiences will soon immerse in programmes without covering up the TV screen.

With news or nature programmes, dual screen experiences provide depth and immersion into a story or a new world. With drama, audiences might find dual screen experiences distracting. Rather than take a one-size-fits-all approach, we’re looking at formats where the companion experience actually enhances the programme.

New technologies are making TV a great deal better, but a lack of elegant integration also means that TV has never been more difficult to use. While technology enthusiasts relish change, mainstream audiences have yet to really benefit. TV manufacturers, operators, platform providers, and programmers have a terrific opportunity to create simple yet enriching experiences that give audiences greater choice and control while maintaining TV’s promise of simplicity and delight.

5

theibcdaily executive summary 17

Charlie Boswell Director of Digital Entertainment, AMD Region: Global

Refocus on storytelling

A

musician, film director and engineer Charlie Boswell founded AMD’s digital media and entertainment team in 2001, affording him a unique perspective watching some of the top creative minds in the world embrace technology.

As director of the division his main interest is in using technology to inform the creative process. Here are some of his observations: “Historically, technology has gone hand in hand with content creation and most of the time with innovation being driven by the demands of the content or

the director’s vision. Certain cataclysmic shifts are occurring in the industry where users are being enabled to focus on the tasks and not the technology – this benefits both the creator and the consumer.

“New processing power at a hardware level and in the cloud is enabling filmmakers on a budget to punch far above their weight, especially in terms of VFX. That same technology is finally permitting the consumer to have the freedom they have always wanted – it is freedom from the limitations of technology itself. This will create a spike in demand for content from the gaming community, TV networks and studios.

Technology is finally freeing the consumer from the limitations of technology itself

“The GPU that revolutionised the PC platform is now being promoted into the cloud serving up far greater computational power. Since the GPU’s natural language is graphics this can deliver incredible creative tools to a director.

They can refocus on storytelling and not on the technology.

“In films such as Avatar we are already moving away from the idea of VFX as a background action. Instead the rendering of complex animated CG sequences can be performed live on-set. Instead of performing against a green screen and the notion of their virtual surroundings, actors might be able to interact live with

virtual objects. Instead of having to wait until post for scenes to render, directors can make creative decisions at the speed of thought.

“Technology has been a very domineering force in content creation but that balance is shifting to the creatives and the end user. The realtime, personal and interactive nature of devices brings creatives much closer together with their audience in ways that have barely begun to be explored.

“It is a shift in power. Where technology was once controlled by the studios, helping to keep content at arm’s length from the consumer, that gap is closing all the time.” AP

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theibcdaily executive summary 19

Q&A

John Smith

CEO, BBC Worldwide Region: UK

A global player Content Monetisation

By George Jarrett

L

ast year BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the UK’s public service broadcaster, generated a record £160 million on revenues of £1.16 billion – the third successive year it has surpassed the £1 billion mark. The money is pumped back into the BBC to make more hit shows such as Doctor Who, Top Gear and Human Planet.

“The BBC relies a lot on our return to them,” says the division’s CEO, John Smith who has spearheaded moves to market BBC content to international audiences online, on mobile and through social media.

“We are spread around the media value chain, and I just see an amazing world of opportunities,” says Smith, the former BBC COO who took the helm of Worldwide in 2004. “For example, who would have seen, three years ago, that an entirely new market called ‘Apps’ would

just appear from nowhere and yet become a profitable source of growth for us? We have sold 14 million iPhone and iPad apps already.”

Revenues at the digital media division, which includes bbc.com, investments in two digital start-ups and a games unit, increased 87% year on year to £27 million.

Total digital sales rose 31.5% to £82 million and account for 8.1% of total net income. Smith says he is aiming to get that figure to 10% by the end of March 2012.

“We would not have thought of getting into online games if it was not for the fact that the whole digital revolution created a market. And now we have sold nearly 2 million games to online and mobile users.”

BBC Worldwide sells 50 DVDs every minute, but 4%, is now accounted for by digital download-to-own – almost triple the previous year. The migration to streaming suggests a finite future for packaged media.

“It is going to decline in terms of volume and price,” he agrees. “The important thing for anybody like us is to get into streaming and downloading. We have been doing this for a long time.

“If you go onto Facebook, where we have 14 million fans, and you want the latest Dr Who episode, you can download it from your fan page via an app that we’ve loaded up onto Facebook. If you go onto iTunes you will find BBC Worldwide is the number one supplier of television shows in the UK, and in the top 10 in America.”

The Global iPlayer, a different streaming service to the UK version that holds content for only seven days, is a major plank of Smith’s growth strategy.

“You can download it onto your iPad, provided you continue to pay monthly subscriptions,” he says. “You can watch content whenever, and wherever you are.”

Smith believes the Cloud will benefit media organisations looking for efficient digital distribution.

“Ultimately everything will be available in the Cloud. With the development of Ultraviolet as a standard to enable people to share their material and hold it in the Cloud, literally everything will be up there,” he says. “And then the question is whether you have permission to access content or not.

“For BBC Worldwide the important thing is to provide ways in which people

The important thing for anybody like us is to get into streaming and downloading. We have been doing this for a long time

BBCWW

£1.16 billion revenue 2009-10

can have permission, so something like the Global iPlayer presents us with a great opportunity,” he adds. “There are some issues to overcome; for a start a standard file type needs to be adopted. There also needs to be security so it cannot be hacked into, but I think cloud computing will be cracked eventually.

“It is much better to have all the stuff sitting on somebody else’s file servers in Texas than it is for everyone to have a great big box in their living room, with lots of hard drives,” he continues.

Smith keeps in close touch with hundreds of new technology companies, “We are interested in virtual reality and image recognition,” he says. “I also follow how consumer behaviour is changing.

Any development is an opportunity.”

Joshua Danovitz

Vice President and General Manager, Tivo Region: Global

How much pressure is there on payTV operators from over the top content?

Anyone who doesn’t feel pressure has their head in the sand.

Trying to stop people from getting content from other sources is ridiculous because you just can’t. The opportunity it getting them to understand that if I get this through my service provider, then my quality of service is higher.

Won’t people be accessing OTT content directly on their TV sets?

As content choices grow there are two approaches: the connected TV strategy which has a bunch of widgets and little value and the one portal approach, which is the Tivo strategy, of bringing everything together, linear and live with OTT and on-demand.

The former is the US shopping mall analogy: all the stores look different, they feel different and they take different payments. It’s quite frustrating when you want to have a consistent experience.

We think the TV and living room experience should be altogether.

What is Tivo’s approach to search?

It’s about relevancy. We provide shows that are similar to what people have watched and backhauled all the usage data so one search across all these libraries brings up content that people may not have known about, of where it comes from. KB

20 executive summary theibcdaily

Spectrum management & digital dividend

Policing slow and Richard Feasey

Public Policy Director, Vodafone Region: Europe

Getting spectrum policy right

By George Jarrett

“Nothing else policy makers do will have as big an influence on the longterm prospects for our sector as spectrum strategy. The biggest single challenge is the way we manage spectrum and adapt to rapidly changing demands.

Thanks to important changes, European mobile operators can use the latest technologies in their existing spectrum. We have also been able to release new spectrum, both in the 2.6GHz band for additional capacity and in the UHF band for much better broadband coverage.

Many people thought that the reallocation of UHF spectrum from broadcasting to mobile would be particularly difficult and disruptive, but in fact Europe has been able to move more quickly than the US. This has enabled us to begin rolling out 4G networks.

Mobile operators face a challenge as the move to IP networks disengages the services from the underlying network infrastructure.

Broadcasters face a similar challenge as content creation and distribution is increasingly

disengaged from the traditional terrestrial platform.

Everybody will have to adapt their business models and the successful ones are likely to be those who understand and embrace the opportunities provided by new technologies and new platforms.

We need to safeguard important cultural and social values during this transition, but we will not do so by resisting innovation.

Mobile will play a central role in the EU’s Digital Agenda but getting spectrum policy right is vital. This includes government’s resisting the temptation to overtax the industry during this difficult fiscal period.

We should begin to think about a second digital dividend, but I also accept that the mobile industry needs first to deliver benefits from the first dividend.

If we can find a way to make unlicensed technologies work on an industrial basis without compromising the interests of other spectrum users then it’s hard to see how that would not be to the benefit of society. But we still have some hoops to jump before we get to that point and policymakers should resist the temptation to pick winners in the meantime.”

We need to safeguard important cultural and social values during this transition, but we will not do so by resisting innovation

Ingrid Deltenre

EBU Director General Region: Europe

theibcdaily executive summary 21

Optimisation not compromise

fast lanes

I

ngrid Deltenre has one of the world’s most intriguing media leadership roles – serving a mix of slow lane public service broadcasters that have yet to fully adopt HD, and fast lane organisations that already stream floods of content, have budgeted 3D productions, and have plans for exploiting cloud computing.

The EBU Director General is convinced that public service media has a positive future.

"We need to follow technology to provide what the public wants, but our mission is unchanged,” she says. “Public service media providers produce content with professionalism, and there will always be a demand for this, no matter how many amateur video clips are watched for their novelty value.”

Another of the debates surrounding public broadcasting is what role it can afford to play in delivering 3D services, especially given the huge advantage that pay-TV enjoys.

“PSBs are cautious about starting 3DTV channels, because there is still much to be learnt about how to make 3D programmes, and about public acceptance,” she says. “We applaud pathfinders, and we are very active in 3DTV standards discussions, but we are spending what is often public money, so we need to be sure that a 3DTV service can be established without viewer eye discomfort. And we need to understand how to make consistently good 3DTV content, before any services are started."

Broadcasting exists as a massive ‘B-movie’ experience with ‘A-movie’ content and reality TV keeping different viewer groups hooked or hoodwinked. Where does Deltenre believe content budgets are heading?

“PSBs have finite budgets," she notes. "The name of the game is to make the best content possible, and to make maximum use of technology to do so. The purpose of 'IT program' production is to make better content at lower cost.

There will be challenges ahead concerning how much it is reasonable to spend on the auxiliary content that could be valuable for second screen devices. Spend always needs to be proportionate to use - and as yet no-one knows how far second screens will go with consumers."

Deltenre highlighted the joint research project with SMPTE (Project Fair Exchange) which is intended to help EBU supporters make the best decisions in future planning. "The Forum we are planning for next May with SMPTE is intended to help managements look five, 10, and 15 years ahead. The EBU is always looking to re-position itself for a better future."

The EBU's main message regarding spectrum is that conventional wireless broadband alone will never have the capacity to deliver the high bit rate media that the public will demand. “In other words, wireless broadband will never be a substitute for broadcasting, no matter how much of the broadcast bands are given over to it. We will need broadcast networks for the foreseeable future. Imagining that wireless broadband can do everything is an illusion,” she adds. GJ

We need to understand how to make consistently good 3DTV content, before any services are started

A second dividend is not realistic before 2020

B

ernard Pauchon is convinced that the right solution for spectrum management lies in cooperation between different networks.

As chairman of Broadcast Networks Europe (BNE), the Brussels-based association dedicated to maintaining an efficient and fair regulatory environment for terrestrial broadcasters, Pauchon is well placed to explain what triggered the first digital dividend of a probable two.

“The first digital dividend relates to the re-farming of the UHF spectrum made possible by the digitisation of TV broadcasting,” he says. “It made it possible to use about six times less spectrum compared to analogue transmission. But to make it successful, that requires the vast majority of consumers to invest in digital receivers.

The number of channels has multiplied by at least four. In addition HD means extra spectrum consumption.

However, HD has the benefit of the better compression efficiency given by MPEG-4, and there is the better modulation given by DVB-T2.

“Even with these additional needs within broadcasting, it has been possible to make available the upper part of the UHF band (over 792MHz) to the broadband industry, and this precisely is the digital dividend,” he says.

“A second dividend is not realistically achievable before 2020,” he says. “The DTT business is a combination of public services, commercial services, and payTV. The relative weight of these three categories varies quite significantly among

Bernard Pauchon Chairman, Broadcast Networks Europe Region: Europe

different countries. Not just EBU broadcasters have to be considered.”

BNE members offer services for all these different categories of broadcast services, and most also offer important services to telecom operators.

“The request by some parties for a further digital dividend, typically in the 700MHz band, comes from the exponential growth of mobile broadband data traffic, and some vendors would wish to have more spectrum for LTE to cope with this fact.

“While most of the traffic increase is due to TV and

video content, but it has to be noted that TV is subscription based. Although an excellently designed system, LTE is far from being the right tool, in terms of spectrum optimisation, quality of service, and economical efficiency.”

The right solution he insists, is cooperation, which could include Wi-Fi in 5GHz band, as promoted by Cisco, L Band as promoted by Qualcomm, or DVB NGH, hopefully developed in cooperation with 3GPP. “Optimisation of spectrum management, taking into account technical, economical and social aspects will be the right approach.” GJ

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theibcdaily executive summary 23

Spectrum management & digital dividend Daniel Sauvet-Goichon

Vice-chairman, DVB Technical Module Region: Europe

Balancing demands on a scarce resource

By George Jarrett Daniel Sauvet-Goichon, who chaired the IBC Conference session on broadcast spectrum, is the ideal technical guide for ‘Doing More With Less’ when it comes to apportioning frequency spectrum.

Chairman of the EBU Technical Committee from 1998 to 2006, and currently vice-chairman of the DVB Technical Module, he is also a member of the French frequency agency board, and chairman of DigiTAG. “The frequency spectrum situation seems to be rather simpler and clearer than a few years ago,” he says. “The digitisation of broadcasting led to considerable benefits for broadcasters, multiplying their content capacity and introducing better technical quality. This opened space for new types of application such as mobile broadband and mobile communications extensions.”

Sauvet-Goichon does not like the word ‘battle’ or expressions such as ‘the broadcasters’ spectrum’ because they do not correspond to the real situation.

“I don’t reason in terms of old versus new schools,” he says. “There are steps of evolution that alternate within the ITU world. Spectrum is a natural resource that we must use for all our needs, and these have increased so much that any bit of spectrum has to be shared efficiently while checking carefully that this does not harm existing applications.

“Therefore the topic is two-fold,” he adds. “The first aspect is a political one.

What needs do governments want to satisfy? And how do we balance worldwide markets, which are best for manufacturers and people’s needs?

These may differ between continents, and from country to country. The technical aspect concerns how to transmit more and more while protecting those existing users adequately.”

Spectrum shuffling has to be assessed within a time domain of about 20 years.

In the short term, the interesting issue will be the digital dividend, and the consequent freeing of spectrum.

“Discussion on a future digital dividend may wait a few years. Longer-term topics such as the real use of White space technology have to be studied now, but drawing conclusions would be too early, and may depend on where you are in the world,” he says.

He is a bigger fan of White spaces than he is of L-Band. “For a given frequency, a White space is where you could use spectrum, possibly without any license, on the condition that you do not interfere with any existing radio service, and provided you accept potential interference,” he explains.

“This is a complicated topic, which will involve databases and maps of existing frequency usages. It raises a lot of complicated questions and will also need intelligent radio devices, able to be informed of the frequency situation around them,” he adds. “L-Band is different, starting over 30 years ago when digitisation of sound signals became possible. In my mind it is not a story waiting for a successful outcome.

But let’s see.”

Gabrielle Gauthey

SVP, public affairs, Alcatel-Lucent Region: France

We face truly disruptive challenges over the coming years because of the explosion in data demand. The demand for capacity is absolutely not standing still, and we have reached the limits of technological efficiency. Having seen the explosion in demand in the fixedline sector, we stand at the eve of an explosion in mobile internet. We have never experienced this demand before, nor the phenomenally rapid adoption of smartphones, tablets and the like.

It is wonderful for companies like Apple to be making attractive products but they don’t have to worry about where the spectrum is coming from! Over the next five years 80% of these phones will be internet enabled, and just about everyone will own one. Moreover, about 80% of mobile traffic will be video. This equates to a 30-fold growth in data traffic by 2015,

and the density of web-enabled phones and connected devices per square kilometre is going to grow to about 13,000 phones and devices per kilometre. How will we cope?

We face some serious challenges, and it needs a huge investment. It needs not just new spectrum but new ways of allocating that spectrum. And who is going to pay for this? We need to identify new business models, and create new end-to-end standards which is not the case today.

We are not alone in seeking access to spectrum. Broadcasters want access, but so do police, ambulance and defence forces. The appeal to us is in the 700-800MHz bands, because they penetrate buildings, cover a region and rural areas well. The challenge is to resolve this by spectrum sharing.

CF

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theibcdaily executive summary 25

Mainardo de Nardis

CEO, OMD Worldwide Region: Global

Q&A

Advertising Spend

By Kate Bulkley

How healthy is the 30-second TV spot dead?

As Mark Twain said, “reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” We have been talking about the death of the 30-second spot for 15 years but it’s still there and very successful. We have also had a rebound after the recession, where not just global ad spend grew but television grew more than other media in most markets. There are difficulties but overall the trend is extremely positive.

Events like the Olympics help and having it in Western Europe will be a boost. If we had a choice where we wanted the Olympics we would say London.

Is internet advertising taking over traditional TV advertising?

The mistake we make as an industry is to look at it as starting from a broadcast communication, moving to a more targeted message. I think if we look at it from the consumer side then we see two trends. One is that consumers do not make a difference between where they have seen a piece of communication. It doesn’t matter if it is on the internet, on TV, in print or guerrilla marketing in the middle of the street. Overall consumers capture and absorb messages and don’t remember where it comes from unless there is an inconsistency in the message or in how it fits their life and values. From this point of view I don’t see the internet as disruption.

Secondly, we are seeing a convergence of messages so we need to ensure the messages are consistent and follow the consumer through 24 hours of the day and most importantly to keep the storytelling going.

How do you think connected devices impact or change advertising?

Connected devices generate millions of extra opportunities. As long as we get the user experience to support the consumer moving from one platform to another, then we can create opportunities. We can move from a programme to a spot, to another piece of content in order to deepen the information using the Web and then back to the original programme. We are connecting with a customer and building so much around it from sponsorship to gaming, and moving it across platform – this is dream territory for us.

How important are social media like Facebook and Twitter?

I always struggle with the word social media. I’m not sure it is a media that needs to be put in a box. I think social engagement is about the opportunity for people to participate, to explore specific interests and to connect it to the world of content on one side and the world of brands on the other. This is not so different from the old word of mouth of 20 years ago. It’s just faster, uncontrollable and not directable by us because the consumer decides. This new world is really word of mouth on steroids.

Facebook and Twitter are places where consumers spend time and there are opportunities where our brands can play a role but the effort is in how to make the relationship relevant and how to participate without imposing.

The biggest change over the last 5 to 10 years is that finally we are putting the consumer at the centre of everything that we do

How successful is the advertising industry at integrating these social media opportunities?

The industry is learning incredibly fast and we are probably doing better than we expected. We are moving from a world where we knew where people were, to one where they are on the move. The big change is that Facebook is being used on the move and as an industry we have not yet learned what that means or the best way of exploiting it. We have to ask: are we as relevant in a world on the move as we were in a more static one?

What advice do you have for TV broadcasters about how to deal with advertisers in the VoD and online space?

The key question is why can’t we see convergence as a series of opportunities rather than threats? The relationship that broadcasters have with agencies and clients doesn’t always have to be around negotiation. Whereas 10 or 20 years ago you could say that the table was square, it is now getting rounder and this means everybody has a role and we need to work in partnership with clients, all kinds of agencies and media owners as well as content and technology providers. There is so much more value to be created that media owners in general, including broadcasters, are extremely valuable partners and should be part of the equation from earlier on.

26 executive summary theibcdaily

Vince Pace

Co-Chairman, Cameron Pace Group Region: Global

Time to globalise 3D

Seven Ventures, run

by Sascha van Holt, holds equity in over 20 companies and is in turn 100% owned

by ProSiebenSat.1 Media

3D pioneer

By Adrian Pennington & Carolyn Giardina

hen director James Cameron and technology pioneer Vince Pace formalised their decade long collaboration earlier this year by launching the Cameron-Pace Group (CPG), they boldly declared that the future for 3D lay in TV. Cameron of course is the phenomenally successful director who made the benchmark 3D blockbuster Avatar. Pace is the inventor and cinematographer who, with Cameron, devised the Fusion camera system which made Cameron’s vision possible. Their partnership began in 2001 when Cameron challenged Pace to create a 3D camera to shoot the wreck of the Titanic – underwater – for the 2003 documentary Ghosts of the Abyss.

While the duo are planning Avatar 2 they are also intent on bringing their technology into television production, in particular into live sports, and in a manner which directly combats the high costs of current methods.

“We want to raise the level of 3D production by delivering a business model which elevates the quality and reduces the cost,” said Pace. “We have had tremendous success domestically serving up to 140 live 3D sports productions to date based on the Shadow system. It is time to globalise that model.”

There is some debate, particularly among producers of football matches, about the desirability of shooting productions simultaneously in 2D and 3D. “There is no future associated with two separate feeds,” he stressed. “The solution is taking shape at the US Open right now where there are twice the amount of cameras (than CPG’s Emmy-award winning coverage in 2010) with the exact

Sascha van Holt

W

on...

...Online advertising has the great advantage of being directly measurable.

Thus it is the premier choice if the aim of a campaign is direct conversion. However, due to zero switching costs, consumers in the online space will move to other providers as soon as companies start to decrease their online marketing budget, or other companies increase their spend.

We want to raise the level of 3D production with a model which elevates the quality and reduces the cost

same crew we used in 2010 and at the exact same cost for twice the net value (two courts are being covered).

“We are on track to increase the number of 3D cameras that capture sport but it has got to work from a financial standpoint or we are not doing it at all.”

Reducing the cost of 3D for Pace does not however mean compromising by resorting to realtime 2D-3D conversions or poor quality post conversions.

“There are those arguing that where shots can’t be taken in native 3D then it is ok for push button technology to be used,” said Pace. “That is not quality 3D

– especially when there is no technical reason why you cannot get that shot in 3D in the first place. If we asking viewers to pay extra for 3DTV then we have to be showing them a substantial difference in quality.”

The same argument holds true for 3D productions of theatre, opera or music events and for series TV. “We will never dictate the technology route for any project but we are intent on reducing the crew, reducing the technology and reducing the impact on the whole production of working in 2D and 3D. We will get there, because it has to.”

...Brand building through TV media prolongs customer retention and long-term awareness. Secondly, in a market where online performance marketing is the predominant model, TV media campaigns and therefore brand awareness are a USP for companies. ...Our venture programme is not a substitute for traditional TV commercials. It is an extension of our advertising sales to companies in high-growth markets that would not be able to purchase TV commercials in cash. After all, these companies do pay the same or even a higher price – but only in a back-loaded model.

...Internet advertising and TV advertising are no substitutes. They are different tools for different purposes and most effective if tailored to the specific needs of the company.

WORLD WIDE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

We cover the whole range Dan Technologies Group is one of Europeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading suppliers of audio, video, transmission products and digital media solutions. The Group operates internationally from offices in Scandinavia, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

We have the experience www.dantechnologies.com Dan Technologies is the parent company of ATG Broadcast, Danmon Systems Group, Danmon Denmark, Danmon Norge, Danmon Svenska, Hiltron, NTP Technology, Soundware Danmark, Soundware Norge and Soundware Sweden.

28 executive summary theibcdaily

You have to embrace digital more aggressively and experiment. You have to risk cannibalising your own business and make investments. The simple fact of the matter is that legacy broadcast businesses don’t move fast enough

Giorgio Stock

Sir Martin Sorrell

Gary Shapiro

The IBC Leaders’ Summit

Leadership in a digital age The IBC Leaders’ Summit, with supporting partners Deloitte, the City of Amsterdam and AIB and sponsored by Sony and Microsoft, saw inspirational and influential leaders from electronic media share their vision and experiences with Europe’s broadcasting elite.

How should business leaders adapt to the changing pressures of a digital age and help set the agenda for future strategy

Gary Shapiro President and CEO, Consumer Electronics Association Media organisations have to be flexible and move at light—or internet—speed.

They have to figure out how to combine the old style entertainment and reporting with the fact that consumers get information and education and entertainment on numerous screens, several times a day.

They have to leverage their strengths and be flexible in dealing with multiple screens at realtime. And they have to do it without letting costs get in the way.

The good news is that the same technologies that cause challenges also provide opportunities and allow them to repurpose strong content in multiple

ways. For example, they can get something hot out to all customers, but give more in-depth coverage to paying, premium customers.

Too often strategies are made by either copying competitors or assuming competitors are going to be doing the same thing a year from now. What strategists often forget is that this is a simultaneous equation and everyone is trying new things. The smart thing to do is figure out what new things are working in other industries.

In terms of dramatic change, there is so much going on. Obviously the use of social media continues to expand … but consumers are increasingly concerned

about privacy and there may be a push back against social media because of its lack of return compared to intrusiveness.

Sir Martin Sorrell CEO, WPP

It is very, very difficult to understand the technological and geographical shifts, so you must continuously keep your eyes and ears open to your clients’ behaviour, and try and in that way to keep abreast of technology.

However, if you have legacy businesses and I think most of the businesses at IBC are in that category, there are things you also need to do: You have to embrace digital more aggressively and you have to experiment. I think you have

to risk cannibalising your own business and make investments. The simple fact of the matter is that legacy businesses don’t move fast enough.

There is a resistance to change. Big companies tend to be corporate bureaucracies that restrict movement. You have to change the engines while the aeroplane is still flying and it’s incredibly difficult to do, especially when you are being threatened by upstarts who insist on charging nothing for everything.

Yet you have to be prepared to invest in models that threaten and to dismantle the established practices that have been making you money for years.

I would encourage people to speculate to accumulate, to take on risk. Unfortunately people don’t like to make mistakes so they don’t take risks and they don’t gain the experience. The important thing is to have very short lines of communication and be able to move and shift quickly

This means content companies have to change the way they are organised and breakdown the traditional siloes of production, distribution and audience relationship. We have brought our content Giorgio Stock engines much more closely together so at EVP and MD, The Walt Disney the creation of a new concept we can Company EMEA articulate how that storyworld would exist We must be careful not to exaggerate the on different platforms. impact that technology has had, at the This transmedia approach means same time as recognising that families conceiving of stories relevant to a particand children - our main audience - have a ular platform at the same time as multiple choice of content all of the time connecting them in such a way that we and expect to consume it on whatever expand the universe of that story. device they want.

It’s important to then measure the As a content company our main atten- results so you don’t just speculate but tion is on producing characters and story- validate whether the choices made are the worlds which resonate and which are right ones. That’s a challenge given the relevant. That hasn’t changed from 20th inter-dependent nature of modern media to 21st century. What has changed is that but you have to try. when fans find something relevant they Of course you also need to monetise expect to consume it across multiple plat- what you produce in order to invest in forms and to interact with it. new content but the good news is that

in these times. The world is changing so quickly, particularly in the broadcasting businesses, that you better do something. Don’t sit there thinking about it.

Mike Darcey

William H. Roedy

Caroline Thomson

theibcdaily executive summary 29

there are a multitude of business models from free to freemium, micro-payments to subscription to play with and achieve the balance that works for you.

William H. Roedy Former Chairman and Chief Executive, MTV Networks Int. I am a big believer in the consumer.

Whatever the consumer wants they should get, rather than being force fed.

Bundling is an issue now because increasingly the consumer wants choice – that single and not the whole album, and that show and not the whole channel.

Media companies must be smart about how they navigate these waters, and they have to be there on smart TVs and on the internet. This is closer to a revolution than the technical evolutions over previous decades.

‘Every thing you want any time, anywhere’ is great for the consumer, >>

30 executive summary theibcdaily

The IBC Leaders’ Summit >> but it creates uncertainty for current

Joanna Shields

business models, most notably cable TV channels because they bundle.

Nobody wants or even thinks that the TV business as it is defined will follow print and recorded music, which have seen big, tough challenges, but there are so many uncertainties. You must protect your margins and revenue streams, but not to the point where you turn off the consumer.

I am most frequently asked about the future of TV. And I would say, when someone says they know, that’s when you stop listening, because no-one really does.

Chief Operating Officer, BBC The BBC keeps a close eye on the changing media environment and teams from across the corporation have recently produced a vision of what this environment may look like in the future.

The key challenge for us is to balance the likely impact of new technologies and developments with the desire of some sections of our audiences for traditional linear services. We must be careful not to over-estimate the size and speed of change, but at the same time we must not under-estimate the changes we are going to experience looking further ahead.

Existing technologies such as HD and 3D are likely to reach a wider audience, and developments such as multitasking (audiences consuming two or more media at the same time) and seamless viewing (audiences changing seamlessly from one device to another) have the potential to enrich and deepen the viewing experience. Our analysis suggests that these changes will be incremental, not radical. Evolution rather than revolution.

We anticipate a world in which some audiences will stick closely to old media habits, whilst the behaviour of others will have evolved considerably. We must be ready to serve all of our audiences.

Mike Darcey Chief Operating Officer, BSkyB As digital distribution continues to evolve - with broadcast, broadband, mobile and Wi-Fi all providing new flexibility in content delivery - media companies are increasingly well equipped to deliver highquality entertainment experiences in the living room or on the move.

This is just as well, as customers increasingly expect to access content when and where they want. Although we’re seeing lots of innovation in distribution technologies, what’s not always immediately clear is whether revenue models are evolving at a similar pace.

Rich Riley

Caroline Thomson

One of the biggest challenges for media companies today is driving user engagement

Although infrastructure developments often make the biggest headlines, content remains the lifeblood of what we do as an industry. That’s why Sky invests more than £2 billion a year onscreen. With such big investments being made, the challenge is to make them pay in a multi-platform world.

Of course the payTV model has an inbuilt incentive to provide flexible access to content – creating, as it does, even more value in a customer’s subscription.

The business model supports fragmentation of viewing, with the incremental value it generates enabling payTV operators to reinvest in yet more content and innovation. And so a virtuous circle is created. But for many, particularly in the free-to-air world, making money from online and mobile is a nut yet to be cracked.

There are other challenges that need to be addressed. We specifically spend a lot of time thinking about how to secure our content in a digital world, how we can deliver the best possible experience across all screens, and how to ensure our customers enjoy a genuinely joined experience across all platforms and devices.

The driving force behind all this is straightforward: for those who meet

these kinds of challenges head on, the prizes potentially on offer are enormous.

Rich Riley Senior Vice President and Managing Director EMEA, Yahoo!

One of the biggest challenges for media companies today is driving user engagement. As the premier digital media company, Yahoo! knows that the solution is to provide content so compelling, engaging and relevant that visitors keep coming back.

Visitors to the Yahoo! homepage have known for a long time how addictive is our ‘Today’ module. This box at the top of the page, contains news stories that, according to the Wall Street Journal, ‘always seems to relate to a story that you cannot resist clicking.’

This isn’t an accident. Sitting behind the Today module is an engine called CORE (Content Optimisation and Relevance Engine). It generates 45,000 completely unique versions of the module’s news, every five minutes. That’s 13 million different experiences for 13 million people every day. It works: in 2011 the Today module surpassed more than 1 billion user clicks per month.

At Yahoo! we are setting out our vision as the premier digital company. We are

developing media that is personally relevant to our users and that provides advertisers with an incredible opportunity to reach those engaged audiences with advertising in a trusted place.

We know that providing a personal web experience is both a user and a business opportunity. We have the science to create relevant web experiences, the art to create an engaging online world, and the scale to reach audiences in meaningful numbers.

Joanna Shields, Vice President and Managing Director, EMEA, Facebook During the first wave of the internet, we mostly knew what we were looking for and we went online to find it. Instead of just making it easy for people to find information and content, the internet is starting to allow for the same type of serendipitous interactions that we experience every day.

Good programming has always driven people to talk about it with their friends and the most successful stories are those that allow people to identify with and feel close to the characters. By integrating TV into the social graph, these natural conversations about shows and characters can be mirrored in the online world and amplified.

Broadcasters need to rethink their businesses and rebuild their services around people to create a more personalised experience. This is a fundamental shift that’s taking place online from the what to the who. It’s no longer about what content a broadcaster thinks you should watch, or providing so much choice that it becomes too difficult to choose. The way we share and discover information is changing, shifting from search, to discovering content through your friends.

Jolyon Barker Partner and MD, Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications, Deloitte In every part of an organisation you want leaders to innovate, change and monetise. There are some great examples of businesses that have achieved this and created structures that work.

We believe that the technology, media and telecoms industries have been at the forefront of that change and that there are huge lessons for the rest of the commercial and public world to take into account.

The way they set their structures, their communications, the way they create innovative, energised and passionate

teams. The way they encourage their staff to commit and test lots of ideas and to make them work.

There are plenty examples of companies who are doing this. Google runs a programme in its sales team called ‘Brave Penguins’. It’s where someone has really tried something but it hasn’t worked. But they look at the best of those failures and reward them – taking the learnings from that to encourage innovation.

Apple, meanwhile, has sustained innovation through a manic focus on the end goal. It has also achieved it through creating some freedom among its technologists to come up with new ideas. A lot of small businesses do the same, inspired by an entrepreneurial goal.

You also need to focus on leadership right the way through an organisation.

General Electric, for one, insists that every leader in its business needs to ensure that they know who the three people are who are going to replace them. It’s important to know who is going to come in after you.

Chris Dedicoat President of EMEA, Cisco As the internet becomes the foundation for delivering all forms of media and

Chris Dedicoat

Jolyon Barker

theibcdaily executive summary 31

entertainment, the lines that traditionally existed between TV, print, film, music, radio and the online world are disappearing. As these different media elements converge online, video continues its growth as the primary medium for communication and entertainment.

Cisco’s recent Visual Networking Index Study estimates that the sum of all forms of video (TV, VoD, internet, and P2P) will be approximately 90% of global consumer traffic by 2015.

There’s a wealth of opportunity for service providers and media companies to deliver services that are more visual, interactive and social. However, development and delivery of these services will mean new technical, operational and economic challenges.

To compete effectively, organisations must be able to continually innovate, while improving their ability to manage all forms of content and increase their operational efficiency.

Consumers expect to access any content, at any time, using any device with a consistent experience across all screens. Organisations who deliver on that vision will increase revenue, improve customer loyalty, and stand out from the competition.

32 executive summary theibcdaily

Julian Wheeler

VP, Global Media and Entertainment Tata Communications Region: Global

Cloud computing is represented to be largely something that people don’t understand. At IBC I wanted to take away some of the mystique Understanding the Cloud

By George Jarrett

What Cloud means The Cloud can mean less cost, less time and less risk to deliver. It is going to be a massive market and any industry that uses video professionally will adopt it.

But we have to understand whether a Cloud solution has been designed for media in the first place, or whether it is a generic IT service. How are business systems integrated? How do you meet the security requirements? Is it just a different delivery mechanism?

A hybrid of Cloud and local media Cloud is a fantastic opportunity for managing and exploiting content but in some cases there is a requirement to mix Cloud services with local storage and processing. Some of those production workflows require deep understanding and knowledge to create a quality product.

Digital media workflows are inextricably linked with other business systems such as channel management and airtime sales. Certain Cloud applications do not afford the ability to integrate the Cloud service with your business environment. It is critical that Cloud is integrated in more of a traditional enterprise software way.

Problems with retrofitting People are presenting some solutions as being Cloud when they are actually management services because they have not been designed from scratch with the Cloud in mind. They possibly don’t yet understand all of the retrofitting they would have to do because Cloud is new to them. It is important for media companies to ask whether the suppliers of Cloud-based services truly understand our culture, and do they understand our workflows?

Will Cloud computing save archives?

There is a tremendous opportunity with digital archives, but I draw a distinction between archiving and libraries. Archiving is about preservation and a library is for exploitation.

When you look at MAM, a Cloud-based means of storing a library becomes a very attractive option. You can exploit that content, but you still have to understand what is valuable and what is not.

Naomi Climer

Vice President, Sony Professional Solutions Europe Region: Europe

Delivering diversity Corporate Responsibility

By Ann-Marie Corvin f you’re walking up and down the halls or sitting in the conference sessions at IBC one thing soon becomes evident – there are very few female faces, particularly on the engineering side. While this situation isn’t purely the domain of the broadcast industry Naomi Climer, Sony Professional’s European Vice President, is looking at ways that her company can redress the balance.

“I’m convinced that diversity is good for my bottom line,” she argues. “As well as a good balance being natural and comfortable for everyone, you are better able to reflect different types of customers.”

Delivering diversity and trying to encourage new and fresh talent into the organisation has become a long-term strategy at Sony which has launched the

I

50:50 Framework to help achieve these goals.

“It’s both a recruitment and a retention drive,” Climer explains. “Internal research told us that women are leaving much more than men – particularly in more junior roles. While it’s easy to put this down to maternity I’m not sure it’s as simple as that – it’s about treating people appropriately.”

According to Climer, measures to stem the female brain drain at Sony include the introduction of flexible working hours, addressing training needs as well as running workshops on how to apply for promotion and networking.

“Without meaning to generalise, women are not as good as PRing themselves as men,” she adds.

On the recruitment side Climer – a BBC-trained broadcast engineer – acknowledged that attracting young women into engineering jobs is tough given the talent shortage that already exists within the industry.

Graduates want to know about corporate social responsibility

There may even be subliminal reasons females are put off applying for technology roles.

“The industry need to look carefully at the ways jobs are advertised and the wording they use,” she suggests.

The lure of Silicon Valley and internet giants offering free gourmet meals in their staff canteens is tempting for the young, gifted and technically minded. However, Climer points out that broadcast tech firms will also need to address the ambitions and values of a new generation if they are to win back talented new recruits.

“The young graduates we talk to want to know about corporate social responsibility.

‘How is what we are doing going to making a difference?’.

That is a generation-wide thing. Being able to offer volunteer days where staff can work for charity really does affect a graduate’s decision now as to which company they are going to join.”

theibcdaily executive summary 33

Fru Hazlitt

MD commercial, online and interactive, ITV Region: UK

Starting a conversation Marketing Platforms

By Kate Bulkley

T

elevision broadcasters moving either quickly or slowly into the next phase of digital media are inevitably going to have to gamble on how to make money in new and innovative ways, including moving online and working ever more closely with advertising partners.

ITV has been a slower mover in terms of adopting internet opportunities than most, but now the company’s new Managing Director of commercial, online and interactive, Fru Hazlitt is highlighting a new gambling gameshow as her primary example of how broadcasting and brands should be working together in future.

Hazlitt moved into her job at ITV in January and has been raising eyebrows and ruffling feathers, replacing the entire ad sales team at the UK’s largest broadcaster and making sure that the commercial side of the business is working ever more closely with online and interactive priorities in mind.

For Hazlitt, all commercial broadcasters have to change their mindset from simply “pushing out content” to looking at programmes as the “start of a conversation with consumers that carries on 24/7 and continues after the show is over.”

“The consumer expects to have a conversation with content through many different platforms, so if you are not trying to involve yourself in that conversation either as the owner of the content or as a commercial partner then you are not understanding the way the whole media interaction should work and is already working,” says Hazlitt.

This month ITV launches Red and Black, a new gameshow in co-production with Simon Cowell’s production company Syco, that the broadcaster hopes will be its next hit. For Hazlitt, the show is also a benchmark for how she thinks co-operation with commercial partners should look: “We have affiliate rights to Red and Black so we can properly integrate it with our commercial partner Dominos on many

ITV has regarded itself as an advertising medium not a marketing platform, yet we are the UK’s most powerful marketing platform so why shouldn’t we be thinking in this way?

platforms. We can integrate it into their retail outlets, their merchandising, into their whole activity and therefore it will mean something special to the consumer. It’s not a sponsorship per se but a properly involved bit of entertainment and this is the kind of thing we need to be doing.”

Hazlitt’s background spans both traditional media, including CEO of GCap Media, the largest commercial radio company in the UK, as well as six years at Yahoo! where she was European sales director and then managing director of Yahoo! UK & Ireland. She describes herself as speaking both the language of traditional media and of the dotcom world.

“I don’t have a fear of either,” says Hazlitt. “I don’t sit around thinking, ‘Oh my God, all these terrifying dot.com people! What are they talking about!?’ because I know quite a lot of them don’t know what they are talking about even though they sound good! And I don’t look at traditional media and think it’s all over because they are creating content that the dotcom aggregators would kill for. That is important to remember.”

Hazlitt certainly promotes a fresh approach to selling ITV as both a commercial partner and as a multiplatform broadcaster and is intent on changing ITV’s thought process about how to work with advertisers. “ITV has regarded itself as an advertising medium not a marketing platform, yet we are the UK’s most powerful marketing platform so why shouldn’t we be thinking in this way?,” she explains. “You’ll see coming from ITV a whole thought process around advertising, where instead of just booking 30-second spots, we are properly thinking about what else we can do with that spot to create value.”

She is banking on “big, live events” like Red and Black and compelling programmes like ITV’s reality mega-hit The Only Way is Essex, as the key to “starting conversations” with consumers.

“The big broadcast platforms still have that legacy and a good position on the EPG, and are hugely advantaged,” she says. “Of course hand-in-hand with that is that the content has to be good. If it is, then you can regard multiplatform as an opportunity and not a threat and actually you have a pretty good business going forward.”

theibcdaily executive summary 35

Radically rethinking 3D production

W

alt Disney Studio’s esteemed VP of production technology urges industry participants to open their mind to all 3D production possibilities.

“This is not a battle between in-camera 3D and conversion,” he says.

“We should start to ask if there is another method – even combine the two? We really should be looking at all methods to make better quality 3D. In the end, if 3D is not good quality, we are going to kill this stereoscopic industry just as it is re-emerging.”

Lukk contends that 3D camera rigs are not the future of the industry. Instead, he suggests that a hybrid approach will develop, which will be a combination of capturing the volumetric space on set and being able to produce the 3D in a post production environment: “I think that is the way it is going to be in the future,” he says.

Elaborating on this Lukk suggests that a production would supplement a typical 2D camera with smaller ‘witness’ cameras to pick up the 3D volumes, then apply algorithms in the back end at a visual effects house or a conversion company.

Howard Lukk

Vice President, Production Technology, Walt Disney Studios Region: US Interview by Carolyn Giardina

“This will give you much more versatility in manipulating the images,” Lukk suggests. “This idea feeds on the idea of computational cinematography conceived by Marc Levoy (a computer graphics researched at Stanford University) a few years ago. Basically this says that if we capture things in a certain way, we can compute things that we really need in the back end,” Lukk explains. “You can be less accurate on

the front end. Adobe has been doing a lot of work in this area, where you can refocus the image after the event. You can apply this concept to high dynamic range and higher frame rates.”

Disney is currently researching this method, including at Disney Research in Zurich. In addition to the work of Levoy, Lukk says that research in this area is also being conducted at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany. He

added that the BBC has demonstrated this process with football, “putting witness cameras at every end of the pitch.”

As to why he doesn’t think 3D rigs will be a lasting piece of filmmaking gear, Lukk explains: “The problem is that they are so complicated to build and harder still to make them truly accurate. There are enough things for the DoP, director and camera operators to try to track on the set as it is, without having to track interaxial and convergence.

We are making it more complicated on the set, where I think it needs to be less complicated.

“I think eventually we’ll get back to capturing the volumetric space and allowing cinematographers and directors to do what they do best – that is, capturing the performance.”

There are enough things for the DoP, director and camera operators to try to track on the set as it is, without having to track interaxial and convergence

36 executive summary theibcdaily

William H. Roedy

Former Chairman and Chief Executive, MTV Networks Int. Region: Global

Making business rock Television Business

By George Jarrett

S

ince bowing out from MTV in January, after 23 years at the helm, William H Roedy has been fully committed to charitable diplomacy. He sits on eight boards, but most notably perhaps he is an envoy for Bill and Melinda Gates’ largest mission, the GAVI Alliance.

Asked to congest his career he says, “I literally saw it as missiles go to music, and the Iron Curtain goes to red carpet.”

It was the American army that stamped its influence on everything he did and does.

“I went to West Point. From there, I went to the Army Airborne Ranger School, and then Vietnam in combat for one year,” he says. “I then commanded nuclear missile bases, first in the US. Next I was in Italy, defending mountain passes from the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union.

All that consumed seven years.”

Next came a stint at business school (Harvard), and then the start of his television career with HBO. “I was their cable guy, and they had me criss-crossing America. I did that for 10 years, and then agreed (1988) to take MTV first to Europe and then to the rest of the globe. We built the largest collection of channels in the world, with a potential audience of 2 billion people in 175 countries.

And our key thing was ‘local, local, local’ before local was cool.”

It was 1989 when Roedy formally set up MTV. “I designed the operation of MTV networks around the world like a military operation – small fighting units of 50-150 people who knew each other by their first name and kept communication lines open. They could respond to the enemy, in this case the competition,” he explains.

“Have your feet on the soil and be alongside your lieutenant or your

I think you tend to be sorry for what you did not do more than sorry for what you did

channel head – very important when you grow a global business. Be the first on the battlefield, and the last to leave. Be quick to take blame and slow to take credit.”

MTV was blessed in a second way.

“Our role in diplomacy, particularly in the roll up to the Soviet Union changing and the shifts in Eastern Europe, showed we were there in a big way. We broadcast MTV free-toair behind the Iron Curtain before there were any mobile phones or the Internet,” Roedy recalls. “When I started there was a world domination

by Anglo/American music,” he adds.

“We worked very hard over the years to help music to become much more diversified.”

Asked what he had learnt from his executive years at MTV, and how it should be applied today, he said: “Number one is you think entrepreneurially, and by definition when you grown an international business at least it tends to be somewhat entrepreneurial.

“However, you encounter a ‘no’ almost every day so one of my early gospels was to never accept no for an answer, rather like Winston Churchill,” he adds. “It was a sort of guiding light and I tried to ingrain it into the entire operation.”

The second thing Roedy learnt was to break rules.

“When I was in the military I obviously didn’t do that, but in television I break the rules because a subset of that means thinking creatively, taking risk, and having everyone in your organisation on the same sheet of paper – and not afraid to take risk.

“Mistakes will be made, but another subset of that is product innovation.

If you want to be successful, you’ve got to be global and offering more than one product.

The third thing is respecting and reflecting local cultures; this was a key element in the success of MTV’s brands.”

theibcdaily executive summary 37

Gina Nieri

Director of Institutional, Legal Affairs and Strategic Analysis, Mediaset Region: Italy

Avoiding traffic congestion What is the impact of DTT?

Reinventing TV with ‘Horizon’

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he cable industry is under attack from rival pay-TV offerings coming from wired, wireless and DTH players and it knows it needs to respond.

As the CEO of the world’s largest cable operator outside the US, with some 18 million subscribers spread over 14 countries, Mike Fries knows a large part that response rests on his strategy.

In one of the most eagerly anticipated announcements of the year in European consumer electronics, Fries used an IBC keynote to showcase his company’s new Horizon home media gateway. This smart box integrates cable TV, webbased and personal content and distributes those choices throughout the home and to portable devices.

Fries, who last year was named ‘Communications Executive of the Year’, pulled no punches in his presentation, reminding delegates that over the past 20 years the cable TV giant has been at the forefront in the industry.

“We have always driven technological change and innovation for our customers.

In high-speed broadband and interactive television we have strived to improve our customer experience. With Horizon we are reinventing television, setting a new standard in Europe and with an amazing, seamless user interface. This platform is a game changer for us.”

Mike Fries President and Chief Executive Officer Liberty Global Region: Global Interview by Chris Forrester He admitted that it was Apple’s Steve Jobs who inspired a change at Liberty Global. Jobs said that people were no longer prepared to have box upon box upon box to watch TV and use the web.

“We took his advice and threw away the old box. Now we have an elegant media entertainment platform. With just seven buttons on the remote control it is the only equipment you need.”

Fries explained that today’s consumer expected additional online services like social media Apps to be part of the offering, and that some 60 key elements including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter

were already in place and part of the basic TV menu.

Asked if Liberty would add over the top services like Netflix to its Horizon offer, Fries said: “I’m open minded.

The main goal is to keep consumers connected to our networks and our environment. I don’t think we can pretend people aren’t going to want an over the top movie service. If that service has a better deal than we can provide then we ought to be able to strike a deal with those providers over time and facilitate delivery of those services into the home.”

The main goal is to keep consumers connected to our networks and our environment

Any decision to reallocate/ reassign UHF frequencies should not jeopardise the legitimate expectation of a return on these investments. Rather than investing in a single and expensive network, European users can be better served by multinetwork solutions sharing traffic between complementary (mobile/fixed) platforms.

Can LTE replace DTT? LTE cannot replace DTT for broadcasting services. Past experiences (ie, UMTS) should warn us against any rushed initiative based on overestimated consumer demand for 4G data traffic. In other words: let’s assess the market reaction to Digital Dividend 1 before addressing any further reallocation of UHF spectrum.

Is there a digital trade-off?

Besides ensuring the provision of a universal broadcasting service within a reduced spectrum, DSO has enabled a multiplication of TV channels, a diverse and tailored offer, and made a significant contribution to media pluralism and cultural diversity in Europe. There is no trade-off between broadcasting services and wireless broadband. As long as we keep a pragmatic approach, both services can co-exist and flourish.”

38 executive summary theibcdaily

Richard Thomson

Managing Director, Wall to Wall Region: UK

Introducing change without risk Producer Perspective

By Ann-Marie Corvin ccording to Richard Thomson, managing director of UK production company Wall to Wall, part of Shed Media which was recently acquired by Time Warner for €120 million, producers are a nervous breed when it comes to trying out new technology, but usually for good reason.

“Nearly everyone you speak to has a horror story about lost or corrupted data.”

Thomson – who was at IBC this year to discuss cloud computing and going tapeless – admitted that while manufacturers and service providers have long espoused the virtues of tapeless and cloud technology, producers tend to embrace changes “very slowly.”

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In his view people tend not to understand the producer’s perspective and the risks involved in using untried technologies on long-running TV shows such as Endemol’s Big Brother and Talkback Thames’ The Apprentice – the latter of which did not go truly file-based until series six.

“Introducing tapeless technology into the production chain is a massive risk so you do it gradually. You don’t cancel tape stock and order big batches of memory cards straight away.

“You might start with hard disk storage as the back up.

Then maybe digitise tape. And each year take a layer of tape out of the equation and then maybe by the third year you’re using a hard drive for recording/ storage and editing but still playing out onto tape.”

Thomson also argued that the economics of tapeless are still off-putting. “You tend to

need to introduce a new member of the production team to manage the data. The Apprentice could have 10 crews out filming at any one time. So that’s 10 more people you need to add to the process and also a huge amount of data to be created and stored.

Not to mention the cost of then putting it onto tape for final delivery.”

The former head of production added that file-based workflows will pick up speed once tapeless delivery becomes a reality for broadcasters – something he predicted will happen over the next 12 months.

The uptake of the Cloud by

the production community will be similarly slow he argued, because although users have potentially unlimited storage, they are still at the mercy of upload and download speeds.

“Say you are filming a report from a remote location and your edit suit is 100 miles away. You need to transfer files on your laptop via the Cloud.

But full resolution files can take hours. That’s not really helping the process.”

Add to that security issues (“I’m effectively squirting out my rushes into the ether when it feels safer to put it on tape to deliver it to BBC”) and he says at the moment producers are examining whether Cloud is a going to be the game changer it’s hyped up to be – or promise without a practical application.

Introducing tapeless technology into the production chain is a massive risk, so do it gradually

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Powering the World of Digital Entertainment Rovi delivers solutions that enable consumers to intuitively connect to new entertainment from many sources and locations.

rovicorp.com

theibcdaily executive summary 39

Spencer Stephens Executive VP, Sony Pictures Technologies Region: Global

Neil Gaydon

CEO, Pace Region: Global

The payTV responsibility Content Delivery

By Chris Forester

Banking on UltraViolet

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s TV evolves from appointmentbased viewing on linear channels to content on demand models via connected devices, a big question for Sony Pictures – producers of new releases The Amazing Spider-Man and Men in Black 3 – is whether customers want to collect content.

“Sony Pictures is very involved in UltraViolet and we see that as a great way of breaking down the siloed delivery of content and that affects the business model,” explains the studio’s Executive VP of technology, Spencer Stephens.

UltraViolet is an open system that would give each customer a digital rights locker in the cloud, aimed at allowing that customer to purchase content anytime, anywhere, and play it back on any registered device.

Stephens suggests that this would benefit consumers as it would allow them to “trust that the content they purchase is going to be available to them in the future."

UltraViolet was developed by the Digital Entertainment

To get UltraViolet to achieve critical mass will require the commitment of content providers Content Ecosystem (DECE), an open, cross-industry consortium of more than 70 companies with consumers in the US able to purchase select content with UltraViolet rights in the autumn.

Launch in the UK and Canada is expected early 2012.

“To get UltraViolet to achieve critical mass will require the

DECE Consortium

By Carolyn Giardina

commitment of the content providers, and we have seen that,” says Stephens. Lionsgate, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal and Warner Bros. have announced support.

“The other thing is the quest for devices that can support it,” Stephens adds. “Devices that involve software like PCs and tablets are going to be the first to support UltraViolet, but we hope it will propagate to more traditional consumer electronic devices, like TVs and Blu-ray players.”

LG, Microsoft, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony are among manufacturers in the DECE consortium.

However Disney and Apple are two notable absences.

Stephens says that while he hopes that they join, there is already enough industry participation for the effort to succeed.

(If Apple does not participate before the consumer launch, DECE representatives have expressed confidence that Apple devices such as the iPad would still be able to play UltraViolet content, though they don’t yet see iTunes offering UltraViolet content).

Today, payTV operators have full control of the hardware in homes that receives their services. They deploy it, they maintain it and they fix it if it goes wrong. Sounds straightforward. But our industry is about to wake up to a whole new world of pain. Operators will be faced with how to control differently configured software and hardware on multiple devices, from different CE companies, many competing with them to ‘own the home’.

It’s bad enough when the set-top box that the operator controls doesn’t work. How will operators deal with subscriber calls complaining about a device they know nothing about, can’t access and is not working on their network?

Of course, if operators can solve this conundrum, what was a headache becomes a huge opportunity to differentiate. Just as consumers don’t want to fetch water from a river and work out how to purify or heat it, similarly they don’t want to figure out WEP keys and a TV that won’t synch up with their tablet. For the mass market, technology is terrifying.

Consumers want someone to ‘just make it all work’, as simple as turning on a tap.

As complication increases, the need for a managed service to deliver the converged home becomes critical. The payTV operator is ideally placed to

deliver this; however, with this opportunity comes complexity and responsibility. The pill that can take some of this pain away is powerful software that drives sophisticated home network management and remote diagnosis. These solutions make sure that subscribers’ experience is easy at every touch point – from advanced call centre services that can see into the home network to trouble-shoot, to watching what you want, where and when you want it.

As our industry faces an increasingly complex world, operators must differentiate themselves from CE companies and other OTT players who are trying to offer competing services.

The key is to not only deliver fantastic content but a superlative ‘ease of use’ experience.

We believe that payTV operators can lead the market for the converged digital home but only if they get all aspects right. By facing up to the new world, operators can eliminate the headache before it begins, and be a defining part of a whole new era of home entertainment.

Technology for the mass market should be as simple as turning on a tap

theibcdaily executive summary 41

Steven Poster

President, International Cinematographers Guild Region: US

Data as an artistic choice

Rob Hummel

Legend3D and Group 47 President Region: US

Digital media preservation

By Carolyn Giardina

he industry should shout from the rooftops and demand an archiving format that will last a century, urges industry veteran Rob Hummel who is concerned about preservation of media in the digital age.

“We had a vendor (Kodak) that for last century always did the right thing and created a medium (film) that would last, if taken reasonably good care of, for 100 years. Optical disks and hard disks are not accepted as archival media by the archival community and that community recommends migration of magnetic tape archives every five years as standard practice.”

On the popular LTO format, Hummel argues: “LTO is not compatible more than two generations. Now LTO5 is unveiled, and (the players) will read LTO3 tapes but they won’t read LTO2 tapes. It is startling that we are accepting that.”

Hummel is president of Group 47, a start-up in the archival space featured in the IBC Future Zone. It recently acquired from Eastman Kodak a technology dubbed Digital Optical Technology System, or DOTS, which Hummel suggests will last at least 100 years.

He asserts that it is secure, suggesting that it was developed to withstand extreme temperatures, and even exposure to electrical or magnetic fields. And he notes that the DOTS format can simply be stored at room temperature, meaning that it is an option that could be both green and cost effective compared with managed digital storage systems that involve migration.

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With an eye toward ensuring longterm availability, Group 47 wishes to license DOTS to all manufacturers who would be interested in making and selling the format and players.

“The users need to start to build a groundswell of protest and demand that manufacturers need to provide an acceptable digital archival system, whether it is DOTS or something else.”

Hummel is also president of Legend3D, whose 2D-to-3D conversion credits include work on Transformers: Dark of the Moon. He believes the decision of whether to shoot in 3D or to convert from 2D should be treated as a creative choice.

“3D is not the way human beings see the world,” he declares. “The proper term is stereoscopic illusion. One way to create the illusion is with two cameras for a left and right eye and project it on a screen. Another way is to take a 2D image and manipulate it so that it triggers stereo depth cues.

“The images from the two processes can become indistinguishable,” he suggests, relating that “close to 90 minutes of (Transformers 3) was converted from 35mm anamorphic film to 3D, and the balance was shot with stereo native equipment.”

He says both techniques were in some cases used in the same scene.

“It is checkerboarded throughout the film.”

If you are going to do it right, he advises, you must use a stereographer from day one, “to help design the composition of shots and be sure you are not violating positions that make it more difficult to view the 3D images, no matter which way you choose to create them.”

The industry should demand an archiving format that will last a century

n his second term as president of the International Cinematographers Guild – a trade union compared to the fraternal American Society of Cinematographers for which he is co-chair of its technology committee – DoP Steven Poster attended IBC to debate three burning issues; 4K imaging, the arrival of film negative on death row, and the threats to 3D. “The problem with 3D today is not with the crews or the on set ability to capture images, but with the creative intent of story tellers and the lack of knowledge of the language of 3D,” asserts Poster.

“That will change. However one major concern that has the potential of doing great damage to the commercial success of 3D is the quality of 3D projection. Right now it's terrible, and the use of silver screens to boost the apparent luminance of dark images is even screwing up 2D projection. Until that changes we have the clear and present danger of turning off all kinds of audiences. Unless 3D TV is very successful, we might see 3D fade away, like in the 1950's. Making it look better is always the answer to making it commercially successful.”

There was an IBC master class about 4K and its bandwidth and cost issues a dozen years ago, so what has made it fresh again?

“Cameras are now being introduced which are truly capable of

I

capturing 4K of information along with commensurate bit depth and metadata to back it up,” says Poster.

“However, along with that level of data capture we will have to find ways of working with that information and making the images artistic rather than just sharper.

“It won't be long before the market demands 6K and 8K. However, we are finding out it's not necessarily an issue of how many K, but what the colour science is behind all of that information. We have to stop thinking about matching film quality, and develop the look of the images based on the imaging device.”

What is at stake is a clear understanding of the need to simplify the way cinematographers work with images and the paths they must follow along the imaging chain.

“There has been a need to address the idea of an end to end, device independent colour management system that will allow artists and technicians to indicate from the point of exposure – or before that in preparation or in the pre-visualisation phase of a complex project – what the intent of any ‘look’ is for the story, and how to get there,” he argues.

“We have clearly reached a tipping point in the transition where the choice of image acquisition is starting to be an artistic one.

However you can't just get a kid with a computer to do the data management on a project and expect to avoid catastrophic data loss,” Poster insists. “Nor can you have proper viewing and reference monitoring without someone trained in the setup and maintenance of these systems.

The industry needs to address these issues as a matter of urgency, or risk harming quality.” GJ

We have to stop thinking about matching film quality, and develop the look of the images based on the imaging device

42 executive summary theibcdaily

Luke Johnson

Founder and Chairman, Risk Capital Partners Region: UK

The art and science of investment Private Equity

By Ann-Marie Corvin

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he predicament of the free-to-air commercial broadcaster is an unenviable one as Luke Johnson, chair of private equity company Risk Capital Partners, knows.

“There’s no magic bullet,” says Johnson, who, until last January, was chairman of the UK’s commercially funded public service broadcaster Channel 4.

“Replacing spot TV advertising with other models will be a vast challenge and no free-to-air broadcaster has successfully made that transition yet,” he adds.

As for strategies that broadcasters should adopt to tackle diluted ad revenues, the former stockbroker offers up a straightforward survival plan.

“Broadcasters should preserve their

current revenue streams as far as possible while introducing and finding new ones,” he says.

The entrepreneur is not entirely convinced that ad funded programming and product placement will be anything more than a “minor response” to alternative means of funding and added that the “jury for online is still out”.

While this might seem like a pessimistic outlook, on the bright side Johnson points out that broadcasting’s decline has been a slow one. “This has been helped by the fact that production costs are falling and there are other savings to be made. While commercial broadcasters are not enjoying the 20% operational profit margins of their heyday

it’s not as rapid a decline as many commentators have made out.”

As an investor Johnson’s past and present portfolio is varied: books, pizza, bingo, dentistry (to name a few) and he describes making a decision on what to invest in as “part art, part science”.

“You’re looking for a growth business with a sound track record. You examine how the business is financed, how it’s managed. A business without too much customer dependency is preferable.

You’re also looking for characters, brands, patents, copyrights – some other form of dependable assets that will generate a profit. “A company with a good range of products is attractive as is one that has a visibility of income into the future. You take all these factors into account and then you compromise after drawing up the ideal picture.”

Replacing spot TV advertising will be a vast challenge and no free-to-air broadcaster has successfully made that transition

theibcdaily executive summary 43

Lesley MacKenzie

Thomas Hoegh

Director Digital, LoveFilm Region: UK

CEO/founder, Arts Alliance Region: Global

Movies on demand

By Ann-Marie Corvin

Money spinning alternatives Media Venture Capital

By George Jarrett he CEO/founder of venture capital organisation Arts Alliance, unusually has director credits for theatre, TV and multimedia projects, which shaped his career.

“Working in the production field then also running businesses, the one area that I feel I have some degree of insight into is understanding the difference between artistic demand and financial restraints,” says Thomas Hoegh. “Artistic demand can be as much about technology innovation as it can be artistic in the true essence of the word.

“To some extent that is what we do at Arts Alliance – trying to understand how we provide the balance between liberating ideas through rigorous execution, and at the same time instituting appropriate financial restraints around those projects, to make them economically viable,” he explains.

One of Hoegh’s key stake holdings is in the Picture House chain, and he had his first exposure to digital cinema 11 years ago.

“We quickly realised there was a big opportunity there,” he says. “One of the key things in

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Artistic demand can be as much about technology innovation as it can be artistic

cinema experiences going forward is finding projects that expand the revenue potential, and do not hit the main bread and butter – the Hollywood studios.”

He feels the current crop of alternative content projects have been rather cheap and cheerful.

“Our ambition is to offer up content outside of peak. If we look at this over a decade perspective, cinemas will be used a lot more for education in various ways, corporate hires, and for the arts, whether it be theatre, opera, dance or music.”

When people talk about 3D expanding revenues, Hoegh

sees it as charging slightly more for the same show.

“We are talking about extra shows or fuller shows on poor nights. You can get passionate people to show up on a Tuesday if they really want to, and it was no problem getting the heavy metal crowd in to watch Iron Maiden in concert,” he says. “Similarly, we think that other artist genres will work, and jazz is one of them.”

Hoegh’s view of IBC – “For me it’s like being a kid in a candy store” – would resonate with thousands of visitors.

“I always discover new things. I also see the depth of skills and products that can be deployed,” he says. “At IBC it might be innovative broadcast technology. It might be ways of creating efficiencies in codecs.

But also it might be market places to clear rights.”

The Arts Alliance portfolio is unlikely to shift much in terms of the domains it operates in over the next decade, but Hoegh sees one big impact ahead, in marketing technologies.

“This is probably the area that is going to change the most. It is going to have implications for the whole value chain, and that goes for terrestrial broadcasting, satellite providers, and for IP delivered content in various ways into mobile networks,” he adds.

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ften referred to as ‘the Netflix of Europe’ the rapidly expanding subscription movie service LoveFilm is attempting to translate its core business of postal DVD rentals into online on-demand.

Lesley Mackenzie took charge of LoveFilm's digital business in early 2010 after joining from video and TV search engine 123WebTV. Prior to that, she was interim chief executive at Project Kangaroo – the aborted IPTV joint venture between BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 – and spent 11 years at Sky in senior channels and operational roles.

She is currently focusing the company’s digital business in Germany – where it has 200,000 subscribers – and in the UK (boasting 1.6 million subscribers). With a goal of getting LoveFilm onto as many connected devices as possible Mackenzie recently completed distribution deals with Sony and Samsung Electronics.

“You will see us on the majority of mass products that are connectable – tablets, games consoles [such as the PS3] and other devices,” she says. “We’ll see a proliferation of content providers across multiple platforms as well as more platforms developing content. Their strategy will start to become more coherent.”

Last winter online retail giant Amazon bought the company for around €220 million, a deal which will provide LoveFilm with sufficient muscle to compete with the likes of Tescoowned Blinkbox and Netflix, when it makes its expected

move outside of North America in 2012.

“In the UK we are very well known and with Amazon behind us we are well placed to take on competition,” she asserts.

It is tough for any VoD player in the UK to secure rights to premium content for subscription video ondemand (SVoD) because most of the best rights are locked down by BSkyB. That means that currently LoveFilm is unable to instantly offer digital streams of new release movies.

While the Competition Commission investigates these concerns, Mackenzie says LoveFilm is making headways of its own.

“For example, we have a five-year deal with distributor Entertainment One UK (eOne) that allows subscribers exclusive access to a portfolio of movies including The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. In October it will become the first film available to stream online from that distributor and LoveFilm will be the only place to watch eOne films on-demand for the next five years. That is the kind of innovative approach to digital distribution we believe will succeed.”

With Amazon behind us we are well placed to take on the competition

theibcdaily executive summary 45

Anthony Rose Co-founder and CTO, Zeebox Region: Global

Martin Weiss

Partner, Solon Management Consulting Region: Global What he wants to put across Internet companies will need to advertise in the future in a way that is comparable to other companies. They need to get the consumer where he is, and by definition he is hybrid.

They live on the web, but also in front of the TV, and in front of magazines.

Over 40s lead the way Youngsters tend to drive opinion, but the big growth is from the 40+ groups. The reason some youngsters are getting off Facebook is that it is becoming the social web for their parents.

No alternative right now What matters is what free TV can do in the long term, and right now advertisers don’t have any alternative to the 30-second spot. If you want to build reach very quickly, and target a certain audience with 100 percent certainty over the next three weeks, there is no way you can avoid TV. If you are trying to build a mass consumer business, even if it is on the internet, you will eventually need TV to reach all consumers.

Two things to worry about The first is the switch from linear to on-demand. How does changing viewing behaviour take away from the value proposition of the free to air advertising platform? Will they offer advertisers mass reach? The question then becomes, how can you get online video advertising into the bundle with free to air.

Then: how do you make sure that the content guys get their rightful share of the cake. The monetisation of content is becoming ever more difficult because there are problems with piracy, cross border viewing, and a fragmented landscape with multiple channels.

Streaming to drag ad revenues with it Absolutely it will, because consumers do not really care whether they see a piece of video on a one to end platform or on their personal screen. The huge challenge to broadcasters is finding a technical way to ensure that consumers don’t shy away from an Ad, or jump it.

If you ensure that an advertising slot will be watched, then we will definitely see a shift of advertising away from the one to end platforms and over to streaming. It is the fastest growing sector in the industry.

Is film production on Death Row? Absolutely not: the value is still in content production and content creation. The question is how do you monetise your rights? To see that value is still in the content, just look at how all the free-to-air channels are moving back into content production. In a world of interchangeable platforms, quality content is really where the value lies.

Interview: George Jarrett

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self-confessed technologist with a knack for creating disruptive mass-market consumer products in the music and video spaces, Anthony Rose is best known for heading up BBC iPlayer.

He took it from pre-launch in 2007 to become catch-up TV’s major success story before taking up the position of CTO at next-gen IPTV project YouView, and most recently co-founding his new start-up venture, tBone TV. Before joining the BBC Rose was at Altnet and Kazaa, creating a digital music store and download application. “And before that I was at Brilliant Digital, building a realtime 3D engine and tools for creating interactive branching-plot movies,” he says. “Ironically it seems we were about 15 years too early, with the new generation of connected TVs leading to a rebirth of this medium.”

Rose passionately believes in understanding the direction of multi-platform devices.

“Essentially everyone has a smartphone, tablet or notebook PC, and they are already doing things with that ‘second screen’, very often outside the control of broadcasters who will lose out if they don’t wake up,” he says.

“Secondly, second screen development is happening at about 10 times the speed of

Second Screen

By Adrian Pennington

first screen innovation. Even telcos are bringing out second screen propositions on iPhone and iPad because it is faster and easier to do so than on their own STBs. “The second screen also gives the consumer freedom of choice. Even on smart TVs it is the TV manufacturer which decides which apps will be made available and how they behave. On an iPad or iPhone on the other hand you have an HTML browser enabling consumers to do anything they want.”

While broadcasters are looking to stream their content to TV, PC and mobile devices, pursuing a ‘TV everywhere’ strategy this has the limitation that once outside your house you can’t access your content any more – “and that’s at odds with the new world of content

Second screen development is happening at about 10 times the speed of first screen innovation

in the Cloud, where consumers expect to find and play content at home, in the office, on the road, out and about.”

He says the multi-screen experience provides for an exciting range of new content, social and augmented viewing propositions. “When you think about next year’s TV commissions, the sky’s the limit. Imagine an iPad app which links a TV show to a map, the iPad’s GPS and physical locations, so that thousands of people watching the show can interactively tell the hero where to go next as he frantically scours London looking for the treasure.”

At the BBC Rose was responsible for realising the Corporation’s plans to create a unified embedded media experience across its online properties and his new venture, tBone TV, takes this concept a stage further by making second-screen synchronisation with the TV possible.

“This will be the biggest disruptive thing ever in this space,” he contends. “For example, a tBone app could help to discover content based on what your Facebook friends are watching at any given moment, or deliver additional web content based on what’s covered in the news. It will finally transform TV from a one-way experience into a two way interactive experience.”

46 executive summary theibcdaily

Sport Markus Hövel

Head of TV Operations, TEAM Marketing Region: Europe

ports marketing agency TEAM Marketing sells all commercial rights on behalf of UEFA for their Club Competitions (UEFA Champions League –145 matches per season and UEFA Europa League – 205 matches per season) to broadcasters internationally.

Much more than that though, TEAM defines host broadcasting guidelines and standards and train and guide new rights holders who have to produce UCL or UEL matches for the first time.

“We have previously had to support broadcasters in East European countries simply because they didn’t have the appropriate standard of outside broadcast equipment,” says Markus Hövel, TEAM’s head of TV Operations since 2007. “Now however some of those territories are more advanced in terms of coverage than their west European counterparts.

“Before the start of the season we prepare a production manual which specifies minimum camera requirements and production standards. It is important that we understand our rightsholders and what they need for their unilateral programming, as well as helping them appreciate the requirements for the world feed.

“At some challenging venues, where rightsholders can’t afford to produce matches on a high quality level, we sometimes take over productions on behalf of UEFA or we even provide technical support.”

The last two Champions League Finals were produced in 3D but there are no concrete plans to make 3D a standard requirement. The 3D signal for the Wembley final in May was taken by more than 20 rightsholders, although only a limited number actually offered the match to the consumer in 3D. “Football is not yet an ideal platform for 3D,” says Hövel. “We know that it is easier to cover other sports and events in 3D but we feel that it is difficult to maintain a high standard of 3D

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production over 90-minutes in a live environment when no-one is sure what is going to happen from second to second on the pitch. Several broadcasters however are interested in taking highlights of a few minutes containing the best shots in 3D.” The current financial impasse across Europe is afflicting many of its broadcasters, some of whom are struggling with a potential knock-on effect on production values.

“The financial situation is quite tricky for organisations who pay 90% of their total budgets for TV rights and maybe leave 10% for TV production costs.

Once they get into financial difficulty they may struggle to pay the rights fees and as a result the production budget is at risk of getting cut.

“The key message from us is that the production of Champions League matches remains, and must remain, very high but it needs individual support from our side. We see rightsholders who have perhaps been very competitive in their territory now joining forces with each other to share costs and work together.”

One means by which rightsholders can extend the reach of their UEFA soccer rights is to tap the vast reserves of rich video content stretching back to the mid-1990s. An archive containing every UCL and UEL match linked to a comprehensive statistics and metadata stream is being readied for a full launch next summer. AP

Rightsholders who have been very competitive in their territory are now joining forces with each other to share costs and work together

Mark Silver

Senior Director, Digital Media, Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium Region: Canada

Producing digital like TV TV, Canada’s #1 television network, a division of Bell Media, marked a return to Olympics broadcasting after a hiatus of 16 years for the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games.

Along with Canadian media conglomerate Rogers Media Inc, the companies have formed Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium and hold the rights to London 2012 which will see the Consortium deliver an unprecedented amount of coverage online to Canadians.

For Vancouver, the Consortium aired up to 20 hours of live broadcasts a day and simultaneously streamed every second of the Olympic Broadcast Service’s host feed live online with traffic results that astounded executives.

“The numbers for online were higher than some Canadian speciality networks,” says Mark Silver, senior director, digital media. “It was a game changer for us. Canadians had embraced the Games on TV and digital.”

The bigger summer Games next year will see even more content streamed online but with a critical difference in the backend workflow. More specifically the way in which the Consortium creates on-demand highlights from the thousands of clips made available from the host feed and its own broadcast of the Games.

“For Vancouver we ingested, edited and encoded clips into a MAM in a traditional broadcast manner. For London 2012 the intention is to create the same content but not rely on broadcast systems for anything other than creating the live TV product. We will produce rough cuts from the digitally encoded stream for 100% of our ondemand video content and make those clips available across devices without touching the broadcast environment.”

“We need to produce digital like TV which means ensuring that the TV

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The aim for all sports broadcasters has to be to enable an audience to move seamlessly between broadcast and digital pictures have a digital story running in parallel to it,” says Silver. “We are trying to keep users engaged in content regardless of the platform it is viewed on so that the two media complement each other.”

The Consortium is also keen to make complementary and contextual use of social media so that whether audiences are watching on TV, PC or mobile a story is told in a way that compels them to use other digital media to find out more.

“It’s about closing the loop and keeping the audience involved in the Olympics on our channels,” says Silver.

“The aim for all sports broadcasters has to be to enable an audience to move seamlessly between broadcast and digital. It’s not a process we claim to have all the answers to but we have an idea. It’s critical that those on the broadcast side understand that digital is an asset to get more people into broadcast rather than seeing it as a competing screen.” AP

theibcdaily executive summary 47

Niclas Ericson Director of TV FIFA Region: Global

World Cup Broadcast

By Adrian Pennington

ince joining FIFA in 2003 Niclas Ericson, has played a key role in growing and enhancing the organisation’s coverage of FIFA World Cup football and in its billion strong worldwide TV audience. Arguably the most significant step in his tenure was taken in 2005 when FIFA decided to bring the sales of its media rights inhouse, and to structure FIFA’s TV Division into Sales & Distribution, FIFA Films, Broadcaster Servicing and Host Broadcasting Production.

“It means we could control the destiny of how the product is sold and how it is produced, how we coordinate its delivery and how it is presented to football fans,” Ericson says. “Essentially it means FIFA can reach more of its objectives.

Even before the end of the 2010 World Cup Ericson was deeply involved in planning for the next event in 2014 and in a host country, Brazil, which is larger geographically than any host since the USA in 1994.

“Unlike the Olympics which is covered from one city, Brazil will be delivered from 12 cities from Rio on the coast to Manaus in the Amazon which creates a number of production challenges. We are working with IT companies and local governments to make sure the telecoms infrastructure is in place long in advance so that we can test it.”

FIFA is working through the entire production plan with HBS (FIFA’s

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“If we have to combine a 2D and a 3D production and that means compromising the 2D quality…

FIFA will not do it.”

appointed host broadcaster) which includes discussions about feeds for giant screens in the stadia, public viewing screens and new formats in order to make sure football fans have the best coverage wherever they are in 2014. No definitive decision has yet been made to broadcast 3D in 2014.

“We are looking at what the costs would be to do 3D, examining the technology and looking at the camera positions and we will take a decision on this in 2012,” Ericson said.

If, for example, the number of 3D matches jumped from 25 to 64 across 12 venues then the cost would leap accordingly. In that case it’s important for FIFA to have many 3D channels of its media rights client’s base on board.

“It’s less a rights management and rights fee problem than an issue of covering the greater cost of production with distribution partners,” he said.

“Remember that we are still producing 4x3 protected feeds for some of our audience and that the vast majority of our audience watches in 2D now and will be watching in 2D as far ahead as 2018 and 2022.”

Preservation of the quality of the 2D host broadcast is an absolute priority.

“We will not compromise the 2D coverage. We are clear that if we have to combine a 2D and a 3D production and that means compromising the 2D quality for something that may only be watched by a fraction of our total audience, FIFA will not do it.

“As 3D technology develops and editorial concepts are refined, we hope our decision will be a simple one regarding 3D and that we can do many matches. Remember that our 3D feeds in 2010 were very well received by the broadcast community.”

“Our goal is to grow the impact of a World Cup by offering everything possible so that fans can watch wherever they are and get the best experience on the screen which is at that particular moment available to them.”

48 executive summary theibcdaily

Sport Luc Doneux

Head of EMEA/APAC & Major Events, EVS Region: Global is twofold. “Firstly, where rights holders have been splitting rights into FTA, live, mobile, internet, highlights

By Adrian Pennington and other subsets we see the larger account holders – (eg, UEFA, FIFA) – s Head of Major Events at moving to tie them all together and live broadcast equipment sell to one organisation. It is then up specialist EVS, Luc Doneux to the client broadcaster to supply is well placed to assess content in multiple ways. how sports coverage is altering and is “Secondly more screens, and the set to alter over the next few years. ability to distribute more content by A 15-year veteran of the company, broadband, will open up opportunities Doneux has been privileged to have to cover other sports. There are had a ring-side seat at every Olympics, significant fan bases for sailing, judo World Cup and European soccer or other minor sports that can be Championship since 1998 and believes served by a cost-effective ‘traditional’ that while the fundamentals of sports HD acquisition to distribution broadcast will remain, consumption by infrastructure. We might see Google viewers is set to change dramatically. for instance deciding to cover some “The impact of the second screen so-called smaller sports. At the same as a complement to live broadcasts time the flagship events – Olympics, cannot be underestimated,” he says.

Champions League – will be produced “While we may see more HD or more with ever greater emphasis on specialist hi-speed cameras covering production values, graphics and an event but the overall concept won’t immersive experiences.” change. What is changing is the idea EVS technology is set to play a that viewers can interact with live crucial role in the operation for the sports on a second screen.” host production of the 2012 Olympics, He cites the example of a F1 race in which is expected to be the mostwhich individual viewers might choose watched live event yet televised. to watch a replay of the start from Doneux has helped host broadcaster multiple angles at any time of their Olympic Broadcast Services design choosing on an iPad, while the host the mammoth server system which broadcast continues uninterrupted. will drive the whole event.

“When interactive TV was first “The template of an HD and introduced a decade ago the problem tapeless workflow has been was that if one person wanted to established for some time but there interact with something on screen are always enhancements,” he says. they often did so to the detriment of “In 2012 we aim to capture 5,000 the viewing experience of others in hours in HD, all stored on the biggest the same room,” he says. “Second Olympics server system ever to which screen devices now make rightsholding broadcasters will have complementary viewing possible.” remote access wherever they are in The impact on sports stakeholders the world.”

Interactive Sports

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Flagship events Olympics, Champions League - will be produced with ever greater emphasis on production values, graphics and immersive experiences

Francis Tellier

CEO, HBS Region: Global

ne of the key moments in Francis Tellier’s career was his decision in 2003 to produce a single HD and SD production for the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

As head of Host Broadcasting Services, and previously managing director of TVRS the host broadcaster of the World Cup France 1998, Tellier had been pushing the idea for some time but running up against a brick wall. There are strong analogies, he says, with the current arguments for and against joint 2D and 3D productions.

“I pushed and pushed for a single SD / HD feed since 1998 but people said that editorially the 4x3 and 16x9 aspect ratios were editorially too different. My argument was that you cannot finance a double production forever. In 2006 we made it happen.”

Assuming FIFA greenlight the decision, then 3D for Brazil 2014 will still be “a grand experiment,” he says. “You will see progress - but people are too impatient .The productions will become ever more closely integrated over successive

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tournaments in 2018 and 2022 but this is not Hollywood, this is a live sports production. Maybe it will never be 100% integrated.

“I agree that editorially there are differences but these are not insurmountable.

Ultimately it will be for the audience to decide how they prefer to see the World Cup presented.”

NHK’s Super Hi-Vision format could be tested in 2014 at large screen public venues in Brazil and move to an experimental phase in 2018 with possible wider broadcast by the time of Quatar’s World Cup in 2022, Tellier speculates.

“Remember we are still broadcasting in 1080i. The next step, for 2018 will be a move to 1080p. Super Hi-Vision is another step beyond and it is good for FIFA to be seen at the forefront of technology.”

Already he has begun planning for the Russia hosted FIFA World Cup in 2018.

“We will begin talking with providers locally about stadia and telecoms infrastructure. Everything is possible if you are well prepared.”

theibcdaily executive summary 49

Claire Tavernier

Senior Executive Vice President, FMX and Worldwide Drama, FremantleMedia Region: Global

Gaming on Facebook tends to skew female and older which is an attractive demographic Broadcast business

By Ann-Marie Corvin

H

CEO, Snell Region: UK

Solving the file format crisis

Brand Xtention

arnessing social media channels to bring audiences back to TV shows and experience a deeper level of engagement is the aim of FMX, the central new media division of global TV production giant, FremantleMedia.

Headed by Claire Tavernier, the division oversees the social media elements of key brands across all territories including Idols, Got Talent, The X Factor and Hole in the Wall.

Ten years into her career at FremantleMedia, Tavernier can claim to have utilised every new media development around – from red buttons to internet chatrooms – and she was at IBC to share her experiences of adding value to TV brands through social media engagement.

“Gaming on Facebook tends to skew female and older which is good for us because it’s an attractive demographic,” she explains noting that social media offerings for The Price is Right and Family Fortunes are attracting a new demographic of gamers.

Not all of FremantleMedia’s accompaniments are gaming-based and Tavernier advises that with smaller properties it’s sometimes interesting to try something different. For the relaunch of 30-year old syndicated US show Family Feud, for example, the company decided to exploit the wit of its new host, Steve Harvey.

“The production team created a YouTube channel for the show and uploaded clips that were filmed during

Simon Derry

the production of the host making jokes and saying things that we weren’t able to broadcast on TV. It received about 25 million views and the show’s ratings have risen by up to 40%,” she says.

In general Tavernier has found that gaming works best for gameshows and live chat for entertainment shows – and nowhere is this more evident than through its big brands, X Factor and Got Talent where there is a social media editor present during the filming of these shows.

“We run pre-show competitions with hash tag signs inviting viewers to tweet if they want a signed photo of one of the stars. They tweet their name and the picture gets posted to their Twitter address – all done in realtime,” she explains.

FremantleMedia is currently scoping options for OTT [more for its gameshows than live entertainment properties] as well as for VoD, mobile and connected TV. This all seems light years since the red button technology of 10 years ago – which Tavernier recalls using on the first Pop Idol. It was this UK talent show, she reveals, that taught her a valuable lesson which other content producers would do well to heed.

“My boss at the time was furious with me because there was this massive big red button sitting in the corner of the TV screen eating up half his picture,” she says. “And he was right – that was a big lesson. Extra elements like that can be very disruptive unless they are on a second screen.”

Head-hunted twice, into Vitec and later into Snell & Wilcox by the venture capital group Advent, Simon Derry started his career as employee number four with Nokia Telecoms.

Twenty years on, the CEO of Snell has long passed the point where he needs to talk about Pro-Bel being a good fit with S&W, and vice-versa, or about the Amberfin spin off.

His outfit focuses on two things – comprehensive infrastructure product, and areas surrounding automation and media management – but Derry studies everything that moves right across the media business with a sharp eye.

“What we are seeing in broadcast and media now is drama surrounding the fact that consumers have access to so many different technologies,” he says. “Our customers have got to invest, but look to be fleet of foot to change quickly, because it is hard to know where consumers are going to move. I characterise this as kind of successive approximations and

File format confusion is stopping everybody from progressing as fast as they could. The industry is going to have to move on this iterations rather than big investments. You would not bet the farm.”

Going into IBC, Derry had one major issue on his mind – the failure of initiatives like MXF and AAF to resolve the file format crisis.

“In the area that we are in, content production through to delivery, the big issue is the plethora of file formats. If you look at the broadcast industry generally, and then at other industries, we have not been able to get a grip on the things that force costs up unnecessarily.”

Reminded why MXF was standardised, Derry says: “It hasn’t worked yet. Something has to be done structurally within the industry to sort this out. File format confusion is stopping everybody from progressing as fast as they could, and the industry is going to have to move on this because we are competing in the broader media space now.

“It is such an inefficiency. If you look at the whole value proposition of everything that is produced, I don’t think it is sustainable. I think FIMS (Framework for Interoperable Media Service) could be a good thing, but end users and the vendor community have got to come together somehow to get this sorted out.” GJ

50 executive summary theibcdaily

James Cameron Co-Chairman, Cameron-Pace Group Region: Global

Filmmaker and innovator James Cameron is no stranger to IBC, having been awarded the International Honour for Excellence in 2003. This year, the director of the most successful motion picture of all time—Avatar—returned to IBC to champion innovation and implementation of 3D.

Cameron on... ….2D and 3D joint productions Our philosophy is to have one production.

There is no business model that makes any sense for two separate productions.

There is no technical reason why you need to do that. There is no empirical evidence that faster cutting is necessarily better even in 2D. This is something that needs to get sorted out by the people in charge creatively. You want the best directors to embrace the 3D tools and then make their own creative decision about whether to have two separate line cuts or one that bridges both worlds.

A lot of people are insecure with that idea and want to have the comfort of 2D not being changed in any way and to add 3D separately to that. That is fine – but you can’t cry about how much it costs when there are other ways to do it.

…3D drama I think we are going to see a major breakthrough as the production base widens to scripted TV and sitcoms. When that happens people will start to look at 3D differently. Everybody thinks they know what 3D is for – for big action movies and science fiction worlds. But if you are already spending £200m on a movie to make it visually great the addition of 3D will improve it only slightly. But if you spend only a few million on a production but you have a great script and great actors then the amount that 3D can improve your sense of being physically present and involved in that drama is huge. That is the piece that people are missing.

3D Evangelist

By Adrian Pennington & Carolyn Giardina

….3D business models As a businessman who invested in this technology 12 years ago I always felt the future was going to be in broadcast. CPG (Cameron Pace Group) has a thriving business which has doubled in size in the last year and could triple in size this year in personnel, hardware, reach and revenue.

The thing to remember is that this is an organically grown revenue- based business model. We started the 3D movie business from scratch and we are at a similar junction today in TV where investments need to be made. We believe that it will be successful.

…the content gap A major barrier is the lack of 3DTVs in the market. You are not going to have an explosive growth in 3DTV sales until you have the content. Hollywood is part of the answer but at 15-25 3D films a year and with long lead times it cannot keep pace with the demand.

The opportunity is with live events and sports and scripted TV which has a short post cycle and can deliver many more hours per year of high quality entertainment. That is what it will take to break the content gap.

…higher frame rates That is something that I’m strongly advocating. The cost is not at the camera, which is very straightforward; the cost is not at the projectors, because it is a software upgrade. The cost is in the middle with the render pipeline.

I would actually advise people to wait a year until we get sorted out with the render pipeline portion. The exhibitors need to be ready for when this is coming, but we are not quite there yet with effects-oriented projects.

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