Category: Content & Media

Diversity, equity and inclusion are important aspects of people functions within the content and media industry. Even over the last 5 years, there have been significant changes in the sector. On Episode 38 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast, we spoke with Krystal Brendel, the Vice President of People at Quickplay, about how companies can recruit and retain more diverse teams. Read on for her insights. 

“A really big thing, especially in video tech, is that when you think about labour, you think of it as one big thing. But, within labour, there are lots of different things to consider. People don’t have the right experience. Let’s say I’m looking for someone with 10 years of OTT experience. Quickplay is a remote company where people still have to report to the office sometimes, so we’re not fully remote. That means that the people we can work with are an even smaller group. There isn’t always a lot of diversity within that group. 

My inclination is to look at how we can change the front end in the long term, because I might not be able to find all of these wonderful, diverse people who can contribute to the next iteration of our platform, with 10 to 15 years of OTT experience, who are open to our working model. I can’t create them from nothing. I’m not a magician. What I can do is think about how I can connect with people who are starting on the right path to be employed by us one day. 

How can I create paths into the front end in tech? I make sure that I’m partnering with organizations or communities that maybe aren’t aware of the video tech space. We partner with an organization in Toronto called the ONYX INITIATIVE, and their sole purpose is to partner with college graduates from the black community in Canada and connect them with companies that are looking for talent. They help these graduates create spaces outside of just looking for a job. All the ONYX scholars go through an introductory process that gives them soft-skill training and professional communication experience. 

They also have mentorship programs, internship partnerships and career fairs that we have participated in. That builds brand recognition with these graduates. Every summer, we hire a few ONYX interns, bring them in and get them to participate in technical and non-technical teams. It’s not as easy as saying we’re going to hire diverse candidates and check this box, because you also want to hear the person who is going to do the job the best. We’re planting seeds and investing in the future of the industry.”

To hear more from Krystal, tune into Episode 38 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.     

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.     

AI has enabled the sports media sector to give viewers unparalleled access to behind-the-scenes and additional content. On Episode 36 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast, Elliot Renton, the SVP of Asia Pacific at Magnifi, joined us to share his own inside look at what’s happening behind the scenes of the sports media sector. He explained how AI is shaping the future of sports media, as well as sharing his predictions for how Magnifi will be helping to shape that future directly. Read on for more. 

How do you see AI shaping how fans experience sports, both live and digitally? 

I actually think we’re underestimating the role of AI in sports. I think it will penetrate every facet of the industry over time. It’s already impacting fan engagement and how we’re delivering content through the back-end workflows. Stadiums, ticketing, coaching, and players’ wearable technology are all workflows that can link together on top of what we’re doing in broadcast and social media. I think we will be looking back in a decade’s time at the role of AI, and as long as it’s been deployed responsibly and done in the right way, we’ll be looking at looking back at it as a transformative technology, just like the smartphone has been. Some areas are going to be slower than others, and you’re still going to need the human element, but I think as a technology for the sports industry, AI will continue to be very impactful in the future. 

What is Magnifi’s vision for revolutionising how we interact with sports content?

We as a business are about four years old and have grown from India to become a US-India business that’s doing some fantastic revenues. We work with some really great customers, like the IPL in India, some football federations in Europe and broadcasters. Earlier this year, we launched our US operations on a commercial level and are seeing explosive growth in that. The third pillar has been Asia in the last few months. We have to target the APAC market in a very different way because of its fragmented nature. But, technology-wise, we have a vision to provide AI solutions that can deliver content from the field of play to consumers working B2B with different businesses to understand their challenges. And we’re looking at how to venture into other content areas as well. 

In sports, we provide a set of solutions that are more flexible, affordable, and very easy to work with as a technology. What we’re fundamentally doing is asking business leaders, ‘How can you harness this AI-driven revolution and create more meaningful connections with your fans?’ There’s been a lot of talk about personalisation, but how you package that up from platform to platform will vary. So will the way that you harness the data that comes from that. We share data sets with all of our customers, and they can mix that up with their first-party data. 

Sports businesses in general are behind the curve when it comes to harnessing data. This is spoken about at events that we all go to all the time, but I think the opportunities around that are vast, both from a fan engagement point of view and an advertising or sponsorship point of view. We’re challenging business leaders to think about how they will bring technology into the fold, but we’re coming at it in a very flexible and easy manner. We’re asking, ‘How can you deploy that? How can you connect that to your existing thing? What technologies do you have to drive growth?’ That creates really exciting discussions. 

In this part of the world – certainly in APAC, where people are not quite sure what they want to do – we play a bit more of a consultative role. Then we have other customers who are very clear on what they want to do and how they want to deploy technology, and then it’s up to us to try and win that business. So there are some creative things going on in the sports industry, especially in this part of the world as well as in Europe, the UK and the US, where there are some really exciting developments happening too. 

To hear more from Elliot, tune into Episode 36 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.