Author: Henry Johnson

Change is a fundamental part of the content and media industry. But how can people and companies adapt to those changes without losing touch with where they started? On Episode 37 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast, we spoke with Mitch Askenas, the Executive Director, Video Platform – Head of Commercial, Americas at Comcast Technology Solutions, about how he has been handling changes in his company recently, and his advice for anyone who is going through something similar. Read on for his insights. 

How has the industry changed over the years since you joined?

The industry has evolved tremendously overall, but fundamentally, viewers still want to watch content. Back in the day, content was provided to you on a traditional television channel, and you watched what was delivered to you. Over time, there have been inventions that have allowed us to watch content on demand, first on VHS tapes and DVDs, and then on streaming platforms. The industry has thoroughly evolved from a push media to a medium where viewers can watch what they want, when they want, where they want, and how they want to watch it. 

How have you adapted to those changes over your time in the industry as well?

Well, adapting is fun. You adapt by trying to invent new processes, and that’s both on the engineering side and on the selling side. In my career, I’ve evolved from being an engineer and inventing and running engineering teams to moving into the sales world and managing sales teams, but in both roles, I’ve still had to adapt to change. 

Adapting to change is the key to success across everyone’s career and everyone’s business, but many things don’t change at all. Things like selling your ideas will always stay the same. Whether you’re an engineer or a salesperson, your job is to get your ideas sold to your audience, which can be your management team or your customers. The fact that we have to sell our ideas hasn’t changed, even though the things that we sell have. Some things always stay the same, even while things change. It’s been fun learning that, but I had to learn it mostly on my own. 

From an industry perspective, it has been great to see where new technologies were going to take us, but I never knew if the industry was ready to embrace them. I think circumstances change, and everybody’s embracing the change of allowing viewers and subscribers to access content wherever, whenever. The key to all this is, how do you make money doing that with your content? The challenge of the industry today is ‘How do you monetise the huge amount of content in your library?’

How do you stay motivated throughout those challenges?

Times of change are actually times of opportunity. The question is, how do you embrace that opportunity? For me, change is exciting. It means things are moving forward. Typically, they’re opportunities to do new things and to be part of that change. To me, that’s a huge motivation. If you can muster that mindset and bring those change opportunities forward, especially to your customers, you can help them see that they can be part of the change and be successful as a result. 

Yes, it’s hard, there’s no question about it, but if you’re always thinking about your customers rather than what the thing you’re selling is, you’ll help them make their business better. Especially in times of change, keeping their business moving forward, and helping them figure out how to weather those storms, creates an opportunity to find synergy between your two companies. That’s how it’s an opportunity. 

What tips would you now pass on that have worked for you and your team?

Everybody, no matter what position they’re in, has great ideas. The real question is, how do you get those ideas promoted? Early in my career, when I came up with those great ideas, they were all about me. When I would go and talk about them, they never really resonated because it was all about me. Thankfully, a wise person in my past told me, ‘Don’t make it about yourself. Make it about them.’ That was the seminal moment of learning how to sell. It didn’t matter that it was my idea, it was all about them. When I changed my mindset to figure out how what I was selling could provide value and success to the people I was talking to, everything changed. 

Selling is about three things. Number one is showing the potential customer that the risk of change is much lower than the risk of staying the same. The second is to demonstrate to the buyer why they’re going to be personally successful if they invest in you. The last one is don’t tell them what it is and don’t tell them what it does. Instead, focus on what it means to their business. If you can accomplish those three things, you will be more successful.

To hear more about keeping up with the changes in the industry, tune into Episode 37 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

IBC conferences and trade shows are the content and media industry’s biggest events of the year. On Episode 35 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast, we were joined by Till Sudworth, the CMO and Head of BU Video at NPAW, to discuss his experience of attending the event. He also shared his predictions for the future of the industry based on what he saw at the event. Read on for Till’s insights. 

IBC 2024 was obviously a really big show for you guys. What were some of the key takeaways from this year’s show?

It was a super good trade show. It was almost the most successful IBC we’ve ever had in terms of leads, people stopping by our booth, and in terms of willingness to do business. So it was a very positive IBC, which kind of surprised us a little bit, because we know in the industry there have been a lot of cost cuttings and layoffs among our customers and prospects. I was surprised by the positive atmosphere and mentality that we saw at the IBC. 

On the other side, it was an important trade show for us. IBC is always one of the most important trade shows for us in the world. But this year was specifically important as we launched a lot of new products, and we made an important step in the transformation from being a one-product company to a multi-product company. That was very interesting, and actually, a lot of fun, because we can now serve a lot of different requirements from our customers and prospects. 

Were there any new solutions or products that you wanted to highlight from the show?

It was our first step into the European market. Although the IBC is not a European show, it was held in Europe, which was important for us to launch a lot of new products on the other side. One of the products was an AI product, which was all over the place at the IBC. We were working with data, which is an obvious use case, but we had worked on our supportive AI pretty hard for the last few years, and we finally have a great product which enables and supports our customers to engage with data more easily than before. Our tool not only proactively shows you any anomalies in your system but also helps our users access the data more easily. Our customers that we showed it to really loved it.

Based on your experience this year, how would you say the industry’s moving forward, and what are some key opportunities?

Honestly, I didn’t have a single moment at the IBC to walk around and see anything. So, unfortunately, I cannot say how the industry is moving in terms of other vendors, but what I see from our customers that I spoke to at the event is that there’s light at the end of the tunnel in terms of the industry becoming more stable. There were a lot of layoffs and cost-cutting that were necessary for companies to become profitable in the past two years or three years. A lot of them did their homework already, while some are still in the middle of a transformation, but at least from our perspective, we see the atmosphere becoming better. Ultimately, platforms need to understand the end users and the quality of their experience to remain compatible or competitive in the industry. 

To hear more from Till, tune into Episode 35 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

Sports broadcasting is an evolving space, with viewers demanding an increasingly wide range of options and additional content. On Episode 34 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast, we spoke with Anna Lockwood, the Head of Media & Sport at Telstra International, about the challenges she faces when creating innovative solutions to these challenges. Read on for her insights. 

How do you manage such a diverse range of sports broadcasting requirements across different markets and regions?

We have a very international team at Telstra, and we’ve got people who are across all of our different projects in support roles. We also have people who are dedicated to a specific project, who will just work on that event or that project. We scale and grow depending on what we’re doing at any one time, with new staff members, freelancers, and consultants. There’s a lot of bounce in our talent pool, but we’ve got a core set of on-staff team members who do a lot of work across the globe and across projects. We augment that core team depending on what we need for a particular project or event. 

When I started at Telstra, there were 10 people in our little media business unit, and now we have over 200. I think that underlying growth will continue, but at any given time, especially a summer like this one in 2024, when there have been so many amazing sporting events happening, we’ll bounce and grow our talent pool to accommodate the projects that we’re delivering. 

What are some challenges associated with streaming and broadcasting such live events?

We try to prepare everything that we can control, but the real magic is in reacting to things that we can’t control and completely unexpected things. There are plenty of surprises in the live sports environment. It could be technology, infrastructure, or it could be a change in programming, but being very agile is always important. 

It’s always about putting the customer first. We know that whatever happens, we will be the best partner we can be at any time, no matter what region or time zone they’re in or what event they’re doing. Having that DNA in our business to support customers during these very high-profile events has helped our services wrap around their requirements. Having the experience and razor-sharp focus helps us respond as quickly and as effectively as possible when things do go wrong. That’s what gives our customers trust in our services and is the reason they keep on coming back and working with us again and again.

How do you see the world of sports broadcasting evolving over the next five years?

I think there’ll be a lot of continuation of the trends that we’re seeing today, like remote production. Being able to produce from anywhere, no matter where the event is, is moving workflows and capabilities onto cloud platforms and distributed working models. Those are all trends which accelerated during COVID-19, and we don’t see any slowdown at the moment. 

How people experience and view sports is also always evolving. So how, as a services provider, can we use our infrastructure and technology to create the immersive and collaborative viewer experiences that our customers are exploring at the moment? That’s where I see a lot of growth and development happening. 

To hear more from Anna, tune into the rest of her episode of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

On Episode 28 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast we were joined by Robin Kirchhoffer, the Chief Marketing Officer at Dalet. Robin gave us an inside look at the company’s evolving product offering, going from when he first joined the company to what we can expect to see from them in the future. Read on to find out more about the evolution of Dalet’s media management platforms. 

“The product has evolved a lot. When I first joined, we were much smaller, and we were just about to relaunch the OLED Galaxy, which is still being used today. When it was first launched, it was already a groundbreaking product, with a centralised media asset management and workflow solution for the media industry. That product has been growing a lot for the past six to eight years, and we have been adding a lot of functionalities. 

We’re focused on the ecosystem around the product. As the product has evolved to become a cloud product, everything around it has too. Adding other functionalities, such as transcoding media processing features, as well as more orchestration and automation capabilities for the workflow, has freed up creatives’ time. 

For news operations, we didn’t own a graphic solution back then. Now we’ve got an integrated studio automation. In 2019 we made the strategic decision to purchase a cloud-native asset management and workflow orchestration platform developed by VRLab. It’s the next generation of very light, fast and cloud-native solutions – with an analytical core as well. That has given us a new approach and accelerated our roadmap in going to larger media organisations, sports leagues and Federation teams, who are also trying to become a media organisation. They have so much amazing content around the players, and they’re creating experiences for their fans that extend what goes on in the stadium or at the games. 

There’s been big growth for us in that segment, and the Dalet Flex – the new platform – has accelerated that segment. Larger corporations or big brands are looking at breaking a business unit, and today we also have developed a next-generation user room ecosystem, which is compatible with Galaxy and Flex. That’s an ecosystem of apps to trade the news, write your scripts, and organise the work between journalists, editors and producers in your browser tab, in a very collaborative way. News stories break very fast, so we need to enable our customers to work just as quickly. 

For the past 30 years, we have always been about embracing and combining broadcast broadcast-first technologies with digital-first technology. We started our journey into cloud-first quite early by connecting little pieces of satellite products on the cloud to standard on-prem tools. Today we have taken a much broader step to the cloud. Our cloud-native media asset management and workflow orchestration solution, which is today at the core of all the solutions we provide, is the heart of our product. 

We also took the very big step of going private in 2020. That was the best way to free ourselves from the financial restrictions of being a public company and accelerate our innovation on the news side. Cloud-native applications facilitate collaboration beyond borders, and that really makes us newsroom-centric, because it used to be that you had to be on-site to be able to pick up the news to write it, but now you can do everything wherever you are. Everybody is connected. You can extend the power of the newsroom and major operations in general. 

Many of our customers have their own privacy systems in place and rely on that, and some don’t want to go fully onto the cloud because they want to have a more balanced approach. Including on-premises storage for the more valuable assets, for example, and being flexible, is extremely important. You have to be a giant in this transition, adapt, and take the steps that make everything we develop compatible for our existing customers – because that’s how we approach business. That’s why we have had customers with us for the past 10, 15, 20 or even 25 years, because we have been evolving with them. 

We’re offering practical value, not just a little standalone app on one side of the disconnected from everything else. We’ve always been about connecting things and ensuring an integrated solution for our customers. The transition is key. We want to make sure that our customers can always go at this at the pace that they want. We don’t want to force them onto a new technology, we want to make sure that they are happy with what they have from us, they can carry on with it, they can enrich it. The day they say they want to replace their asset management or workflow orchestration with a cloud-native solution, we’ll have two solutions for that at the core of our offering today.”

To hear more from Robin, tune into Episode 28 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

On Episode 19 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast we were joined by Alan McLennan, the Founder and Global Head of M&E, Industry Strategy and Partnership at the PADEM Media Group. He talked us through his fascinating career in the content and media space, as well as his experience of co-authoring a book. He also shared his perspectives on the state of the content and media industry as a whole and told us what he sees for the future of the sector. Read on to hear what he had to say. 

We’ve unfortunately tipped into a marketplace that is now in television management. That is an inherently comfortable place for most networks and studios because it’s not what it was before. It used to be about the innovation of technology and the connection to the audience. Now it’s stepped back. Streaming television is an important aspect of building an audience. But it’s television. It’s what it always has been. Now it just so happens that you get a choice of what you want to watch, with attached advertising that matches your personality, your behaviour, your information etc, which is much more engaging than it used to be. 

The old statement about 50% of my advertising goes in and 50% doesn’t isn’t true anymore, because we have these identifiable points now.  That allows us to grow into lower social economic environments, and that’s really good. But there is a certain component of this that has a separation of classes. We’re starting to realise in the industry that subscription levels have pretty much levelled off, except in new markets where there’s new subscriber bases. As more countries around the world have enough disposable income to pay for our subscriptions, we’re expanding our markets. We’re able to offer up the second year, or even third year kind of programming on a fast basis. 

What’s driving the industry globally is the ability to tap into the creators that are in this economy. When it comes to production, those creators are producing and providing some of the best programming and content that we’ve ever seen. Before, when you went to gatherings, parties, whatever, people would talk about news or politics. Now it’s ‘What series are you watching?’ That’s where the quality of our work comes in. The first run is for theatrical releases, then it’s aimed towards people who can afford a subscription based programme. We’ve taken a number of steps forward, but we’ve also taken some steps back when it comes to our audiences. By taking those steps back, it puts the industry in a more comfortable position with their business through advertising and audience reach – and that’s good – but where the opportunity comes is from new distribution platforms. 

We’ve seen some things from the cable industries – or Comcast for example, who are talking about 10G. What about 5G? Didn’t that just come out? 5G is the fifth generation of distribution, not the technology. It’s the efficiency of that which is mind boggling. It’s 100 times faster and more powerful than 4G, so how powerful is 10G going to be? That’s going to require whole new infrastructures to support the capabilities it brings, which will need new types of distribution. Things like Edge Computers, cable plants, and providers will have to be built out. That is where we’re going. 

To learn more about the future of the industry, tune into The Content & Media Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.