Media Mastery
Managing your content to maximize your bottom line
December 2024
CONTENT
Content Director
Tom Butts, tom.butts@futurenet.com
Content Manager Michael Demenchuk
michael.demenchuk@futurenet.com
Senior Content Producer
George Winslow, george.winslow@futurenet.com
Contributors Gary Arlen, James Careless, Fred Dawson, Kevin Hilton, James O'Neal and Mark R. Smith
Production Manager Heather Tatrow Art Editor Olivia Thomson
ADVERTISING SALES
Managing VP of Sales, B2B Tech Adam Goldstein, adam.goldstein@futurenet.com
Publisher, TV Tech/TVBEurope Joe Palombo, joseph.palombo@futurenet.com
MANAGEMENT
SVP, MD, B2B Amanda Darman-Allen
VP, Global Head of Content, B2B Carmel King MD, Content, Broadcast Tech Paul McLane
VP, Head of US Sales, B2B Tom Sikes
VP, Global Head of Strategy & Ops, B2B Allison Markert
VP, Product & Marketing, B2B Andrew Buchholz
Head of Production US & UK Mark Constance
Head of Design, B2B Nicole Cobban
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Mine Your Business
Today’s TV offers a patchwork quilt of options for those of us in the content business: what format do I use? Where does it go and how do I track who’s seeing it? How do I monetize and protect it?
Those are just the first questions you might ask yourself today, but perhaps most importantly, what are the tools and methodologies I need to manage my content so I can maximize my bottom line? Media asset management systems have been around for about 25 years now and have been powered by advances in metadata and bandwidth. AI has also been around for a while but is now becoming a more valuable tool for content management.
From smart transcribing to facial, object and scene recognition to personalization and editing, AI is poised to revolutionize content management, and just at the right time too. With more content being distributed to more countries around the world, content creators need to be ever more cognizant of where and how their content is being consumed, tracked and monetized.
We manage our content in order to monetize it and in our latest Guide to Content Management, we examine how workflows have evolved and discuss the importance of metadata, how AI is impacting content management and, just as importantly, the steps being taken to protect valuable content in an IP world where tracking it has become ever more chaotic.
Tom Butts Content Director
tom.butts@futurenet.com
content monetization
Making Your Content Work for You
Efficiently tagging your archives is the first step towards maximizing monetization
In the recent TV Tech webinar “Content Management and Monetization,” TV Tech Contributing Editor Phil Kurz spoke with Costa Nikols, exec team strategy adviser, M&E, for Telos Alliance, about the challenges and opportunities in managing and monetizing content. The following is an edited excerpt of their conversation.
TV Tech: Preparing content for distribution across multiple platforms and multiple geographies adds costs. What are some of the biggest pain points this creates?
Costa Nikols: First, we should define what we mean by content: Is it a fully delivered episode or a series of a sitcom or drama? Is it sports content, historical news or archival footage? Are we talking about stuff that’s still sitting on tapes, or was it ingested over a decade ago in some Motion JPEG, AVI or MOV file?
So in the simplest form, when you’re talking about monetizing content, it really starts with identifying what you have and what you want to do with it. And then there are other functions that you might need to perform, such as format detection, decoding and verification, and analyze the content, look for any errors, process it, correct any
errors, or do any restoration if you wanted to add alternative languages, rewrap the content, re-encode the format or even upscale it. So there are quite a lot of tasks that you have to look at when you’re talking about preparing your content for distribution or monetization.
TVT: I’m glad you brought up the different types of content, because I want to drill down on three separate types of content, starting with live. What are some of the hurdles that must be overcome to repurpose live content?
CN: The most valuable part of your content is the metadata, so you’ve got to be able to break down and understand every bit of content to the “5 W’s”: who, what, where, why and when. But you can imagine that tagging that information at some point becomes kind of untenable for a human being. Say, for example, you have in your archive—let’s just randomly make something up—a shot of a Secret Service agent on the White House lawn with a dog in front of the driveway. Now, if a person is tagging the metadata, they will put down “Secret Service,” “dog,” “White House,” “driveway” and, if you’re lucky, you’ll get
some other details, like rainy or sunny day, type of car, whatever.
But imagine now if you had a process that would allow you to tag every bit of detail that’s in that shot, including that the Secret Service agent is wearing Nike shoes and the cars parked in the driveway are a Mercedes and a Land Rover. This makes all that extra metadata searchable.
So if somebody is doing, for example, a documentary about White House dogs or the president’s pets, that’s an easy one to come up with. That content could then be used for, let’s say, “Nike: Protect” and “Protecting Democracy for 25 Years,” or something like that. Having that data that’s part of the content makes it so much more marketable, not just in the midterm, but also long term.
TVT: In terms of live content, there’s also the challenge of geography, where, for example, if you’re seeking to grow your profits by distributing your content to multiple countries with different languages, that must be a major factor trying to accommodate the speakers of different languages on the fly.
CN: Absolutely. Whether it’s live content or file-based, you need to identify what you have and you need to identify what you want to do with it. But when the content is going out to different geographies, and viewed by people with different cultural values, you have to be careful about what you send out. So usually, canned content is better because it’s more scripted and you have better information about what you might need to cut out or leave in, however.
When looking at live content you might be watching for profanity or expressions of political ideologies. You have to be able to look out for that and, depending where it’s going, edit that out or offer clean versions so that it can be at least identified and edited out. There are so many different dimensions about how content has to conform to its target audience.
TVT: Let’s get back to file-based content and metadata. In terms of workflow, how much manual intervention has to be done in order to identify everything in an image? Where do we stand on deriving greater profits with the help of technology?
“Whether it’s live content or file-based, you need to identify what you have and you need to identify what you want to do with it.”
COSTA NIKOLS, TELOS ALLIANCE
CN: I’m going to have to drop some AI discussion into this. I’m usually a bit of a skeptic when it comes to AI being used in a creative context in production, but a human being can only take in so much metadata to a particular asset before it’s no longer tenable due to the amount of time that they need to do the job. AI can go into much greater detail, including identifying every word, every character, every detail and every segment as metadata. As a result, you have a much-richer starting point when it comes to tagging your material that you can monetize again, either in the mid-, short or long term.
TVT: How is technology being utilized to make it easier to monetize archived content?
CN: If you go back 25 to 30 years, a lot of the material was shot in SD, 720x480, and with PAL, it’s 720x586 and interlaced. Today, most broadcasters have standardized on 1080p or, in some cases, even 4K, which is 4 times the resolution at 2160. Converting content to higher resolutions—including HDR—is definitely a worthwhile endeavor, especially if you’re looking at making your content more commercially attractive.
Depending on how you’re going to distribute and have the highest quality, even if you have to go down from that, the end result is always better than delivering content in its native resolution. For audio, it’s just as interesting—you could be going from mono to doubled-up mono tracks to stereo, 5.1, 7.1, Atmos, MPEG-H, immersive audio, etc.—and that’s just to get modern types of resolutions for your content. There are a lot of different types of steps that you might need to take— going between a format that you already have, as opposed to ingesting natively from tape—and ending up with your new, normalized standard.
TVT: Let’s talk a bit more about the audio aspect and, in particular, the challenge for broadcasters deploying ATSC 3.0 with support for Dolby 4.0 in the U.S. and MPEG-H elsewhere. That must complicate the process of prepping content for distribution, would you agree?
CN: For immersive audio, you need to provide the metadata so that the rendering device at the edge can assemble the audio experience;
that’s going to be your TV, soundbar, earpods or computer—all of them have some form of Atmos or immersive audio that come with it, right? So this means upgrading your delivery infrastructure as a broadcaster to accommodate serial ADM metadata.
Moving to ST 2110 is certainly the right direction to be taking, however, you can also deliver sADM [Serial Audio Definition Mode, an audio metadata format] with AES3 interfaces.
TVT: For those broadcasters deploying NextGen TV, what are the challenges in repurposing archived content in 3.0 that could require new data graphics, whether it’s audio or video? And how do they do that economically, so they’re not eating into their potential profits? CN: The best way to look at that is to have solutions that will automate the tasks or manual work that would have had to happen. Divide your archive into short-term and midterm file store and render whatever content you’re going to be playing to take advantage of next-generation audio delivery as an automated task in the background.
TVT: Most content owners likely have media asset management systems in place, but how adaptable are these systems when it comes to integrating the new tools that might be needed
to automate some of this content refresh that we’ve been discussing?
CN: Implementing a media asset-management system or playout solution can often turn into generally long, drawn out projects that have to accommodate a lot of development. But if there’s one part of the industry that’s adaptable, it’s definitely the media asset-management and delivery part of it.
That being said, it’s the same part of the industry that deals with very specific and automated workflows that people have spent tens of thousands of hours developing. But in general, a platform can be dropped in, and with the addition of some development and professional services, made part of an automated process or workflow. So in terms of automating processes and adding something new, this part of the industry is pretty well developed to be able to cater to that.
And as far as consequences, what’s the cost of not doing something? You lose viewers, you lose ad revenue, you lose subscription revenue. How does that stack to your human resources? Do you force extra workloads on them? Do you burn people out? Do you lose people? You really need to look at purchasing solutions that allow you to do more with the staff that you have and the resources that you have.
TVT: Let’s discuss AI and its role in managing content in the cloud.
CN: If you want to invest in generative AI, do you even know where to start? It’s not just a subscription to GPT-4 or Copilot—you have to really look at what is being offered in the industry by vendors that are implementing AI tools that allow you to do this kind of stuff
this photo.
and that generally sits in a cloud somewhere or as a service on top of what a cloud provider is already delivering for you, whether it’s Google, AWS or Microsoft Azure.
It really does kind of make the equation a little bit more difficult to follow, because, it’s not like where you can sit back and say, “if I have 10,000 hours of content, and I need to convert that into another format, and I hire two people to do it, and they could do X number of clips per day, I can get it done this number of months, and this is exactly what it’s going to cost me today.”
You have to ask yourself: “Well, if I’m going to be hosting a solution and I’m going to be running it in AWS, am I going to go with reserve
pricing or am I going to go with pay-per-use pricing, which means I might not get the availability that I want? What is the subscription model of the vendor solution that’s going to do this function for me? Is it a pay-per-use or monthly subscription? Is it a perpetual license with a support agreement?” It gets really complicated to figure out what it’ll cost you, and I think this is part of the maturity of where we are so far with our transition to cloud.
TVT: Content owners may want to distribute across a variety of viewing devices and may have to transcode to get their content on such devices. That might introduce some challenges from a QC perspective.
“A human being can only take in so much metadata to a particular asset before it’s no longer tenable due to the amount of time that they need to do the job. AI can go into much greater detail, including identifying every word, every character, every detail and every segment as metadata.”
COSTA NIKOLS, TELOS ALLIANCE
CN: Ask yourself, “What is the best quality and best resolution and how can I make sure that we can deliver that?” and then work down from there. And somewhere in between, you’re going down to SD with stereo, or your 4K UHD with full immersive surround sound; you’ve got to make sure that that content looks good on whatever device it’s being viewed on. So there’s a lot of QC that has to happen today, and the end result might be on something that is much, much better than the prime viewing device that you’re intending it for.
TVT: What are your recommendations for those who still are storing on videotapes?
CN: If you’re storing videotapes, you need to ingest them into some form of digital format. Go for the highest resolution that you can and for audio, if you want to convert to 5.1 or even 7.1, choose a bit rate that obviously can go through multiple levels of recoding if you need it. And, as you’re ingesting, focus on finding the best tools to tag as much metadata as you can, because that content does have value and it’s just a matter of being able to make that metadata searchable for someone who’s looking for that content. ●
View the webinar on-demand here.
content security
Multiple Threats, Players Target Media Content
Concerns over IP protection continue to fester
By James Careless
With the total value of the global digital video market estimated at $193 billion in 2023 and expected to explode to more than $503 billion by 2032—according to IMARC Group—that growth rate of nearly 11% represents a market that needs to make content protection a top priority.
“The growth trajectory means it will be a dereliction of responsibility for companies in the digital content space that derogate or underfund efforts to protect their investments and IP,” said Emeka Okoli, senior vice president of business solutions with Zixi, a secure content streaming platform provider for companies such as Amazon, Bloomberg, Apple, Fubo and Roku. “All linearized content, including big screen VOD assets are fair game to the bad guys who also see a goldmine.”
In the past, broadcasters and content producers could live with a certain level of piracy and look the other way, according to Asaf Ashkenazi, CEO of Verimatrix, a developer of streaming security solutions such as Verimatrix Streamkeeper whose Counterspy module uses AI to anticipate attacks. “However, today’s incredibly competitive market forces everyone to be more efficient and make sure they don’t share their value with cybercriminals and pirates.”
A WIDE RANGE OF THREATS
Given the multibillion dollar value of digital video content, it’s not surprising that it’s under attack from many directions.
“Key threats include piracy, content leakage, theft and illegal distribution, all of which compromise content monetization,” said Ian Hamilton, CTO of Signiant, known for its SaaS solutions that support secure content exchange within and between media organizations. “Piracy and illegal distribution result in lost revenue from unauthorized access, while content leakage and theft devalue exclusive releases.”
“From an Akamai lens, since we’re dealing mainly with streaming services delivering video content to end-users, primary threats to content include theft, piracy, rebroadcasting,
automated scraping, and account hijacking,” noted Tedd Smith, solutions engineering manager at Akamai Technologies. “These types of actions can be incredibly damaging, causing everything from decreases in viewership, loss of content rights, brand damage, increase in enforcement costs, and revenue loss.”
There is a mind boggling variety of threat actors doing their best to steal content and then profit from that theft, according to Hamilton.
“Threat actors range from organized crime groups and hackers to insiders, individual pirates, and even state actors,” he said. “Organized crime groups run piracy operations for profit, distributing stolen content through illegal channels. Hackers may target content for financial gain or to disrupt media companies. Insiders, such as employees or contractors, might leak content for personal or financial reasons. Individual pirates steal content for notoriety or minor profits, while state actors may pursue political or economic objectives.”
To make matters worse, today’s video content pirates are not the stereotypical lone hackers sitting in a darkened theater with a camcorder, or recording video streams
on their home computer and then sharing those copies with friends. In many cases, “they are organized just like a profitable digital streaming business, often operating across borders with sophisticated operations centered around one goal: making money at the expense of hard-working content providers and video distributors,” said Ashkenazi.
THE PROS AND CONS OF AI
The advent of artificial intelligence isn’t helping. “AI enables threat actors to automate attacks, enhance social engineering, and create deep fakes,” said Hamilton. “It facilitates rapid identification of vulnerabilities and streamlines the theft and distribution process.”
The bottom line: “Anyone who can steal content probably will,” observed Ben Jones, director of solutions marketing at MediaKind. “Their motivations include profit from selling pirated content or bypassing paywalls to watch stolen content for their own personal gain.”
Advances in technology are aiding thieves in their attempts to steal digital video content, but technology is also helping content producers and distributors to better protect themselves against such theft. This technology is being harnessed by companies like Akamai, MediaKind, Signiant, Verimatrix and Zixi, to deter and disable such attacks when they occur.
At MediaKind, their clients are increasing their use of digital watermarking—hiding unique, traceable identifier data within the content, so that owners of pirated content can be found and alerted. “At any point in
content security
the chain where there’s been a detection of leaked content, we can work out where that occurred using watermarking,” Jones said. “With this data, content owners can point their lawyers at the pirates, and force them to take the content down.”
UPGRADING ENCRYPTION
Increasing the complexity of cipher blocks and secure algorithms is also making it harder for thieves to steal content digitally. “The older encryption system used a 42 bit key; now we are moving into 228 and 256 bit keys, which are much more military style and secure,” said Jones. “We’re also using measures such as DRM [digital rights management] and real-time content monitoring online.”
Zixi’s SDVP and telemetry plane, ZEN Master, includes high AES encryption. “We also provide DRM functionalities that utilize DTLS [Datagram Transport Layer Security], which safeguards against stream ripping, eavesdropping, man-in-the-middle attacks and fraudulent endpoints by verifying the receiving device’s certificate of authenticity,” Okoli said.
“Furthermore, Zixi’s platform includes DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit)
“Key threats include piracy, content leakage, theft and illegal distribution, all of which compromise content monetization.”
IAN HAMILTON, SIGNIANT
high-performance networking, enabling content to operate at the network layer, bypassing the operating system and effectively blocking potential OS-based ransom malware. With Zixi’s new multi-hop product, we can offer customers upstream metadata observability which will help companies proactively trace their content incoming digital journey and footprint.”
Signiant’s content protection protocol employs integrated multilayered strategies to protect its clients. “This includes using AI for real-time monitoring and threat detection, applying strict access controls based on least privilege, and employing
encryption,” said Hamilton. As well, “minimizing copies of content by interfacing with customer-owned storage reduces exposure and potential vulnerabilities.”
Akamai and Verimatrix also use the many content protection strategies described above.
Constant vigilance is another important tool: “Visibility is a key component of content protection as well, especially when dealing with direct-to-consumer delivery,” Akamai's Smith said. “This is critical during live events when immediate mitigation is a top priority. Having real-time visibility into traffic patterns and user behavior allows streaming services to quickly catch things like stream-sharing and rebroadcasting so access can be revoked.”
Overall, “our commitment is to make piracy unprofitable, illegal distribution unsustainable, and content security an enabler of business growth rather than merely a compliance checkbox,” added Ashkenazi.
Verimatrix’s position is shared by the content protection companies interviewed for this story, all of which want to ensure that crime does not pay for pirates, and that legitimate video producers/distributors continue to profit from the multi-billion dollar value of their content. ●
How to Increase the Value of Your Content Library With Metadata
Metadata is becoming increasingly important for all media companies due to its improved consistency, data quality and cost efficiency
By Sam Peterson
In today’s highly competitive industry, media companies are strongly incentivized to make use of their archive content. However, many have been stalled in their attempts to leverage archive content by the sheer volume and complexity of their libraries.
Broadcasters may have several decades of unorganized material to sort through and furthermore said companies’ content may still reside on physical media (e.g., tapes), and thus needs to be digitized.
Metadata—simply put, a set of data that
provides information about other data— can enhance content, providing useful descriptive information, such as the individuals featured, the location of filming, the narrative context and more advanced information such as copyrights, expiration dates and audio descriptions. It can also aid this organizational process.
Thus, we can understand that the money and time-consuming task of digitizing and organizing archive content can be much more purposeful if metadata is added during and after the digitizing process. This ensures the organization process is streamlined and that media and entertainment
companies’ content is in its most advantageous form, with enhanced discoverability, allowing them to stay ahead in the competitive landscape of digital streaming and production services.
CLEARING THE WAY
Metadata is becoming increasingly important for all media companies due to its improved consistency, data quality and cost efficiency. Its value needs to be utilized across the value chain, where different systems have different metadata requirements due to applications, such as a Content Management System (CMS) and, within a production
metadata impact
environment, via a Product Asset Management system (PAM).
Without establishing or implementing metadata management within a coherent business strategy, media companies could find themselves at risk of making costly mistakes and missing out on new monetization opportunities.
One way they have been doing this is through metadata enhancement. Enhancing
or enriching metadata is a method used to boost the value and discoverability of digitized content. This involves expanding the existing metadata associated with the content. Moreover, AI-assisted processes can fully automate the addition of extra metadata.
For instance, in sports content, enhanced metadata might involve tagging individual players, specific types of plays, and real-time score updates, among other details. The primary aim is to facilitate efficient and swift content searches later on, thereby encouraging greater utilization of the available content.
STATUS QUO OPPORTUNITY COSTS
Opportunity costs are difficult to quantify, but it’s worth assessing the ROI of metadata capabilities in the context of a highly competitive and fast-moving industry. Media companies that fail to maximize their resources with metadata enhancement put themselves at a competitive disadvantage.
The media and entertainment industry’s
business models are increasingly geared towards diversified monetization strategies, and archive content provides the raw materials to expand your offering. Many sports broadcasters have already caught on to the value of archive material, such as highlights from past games, to reward dedicated fans and maintain engagement between seasons. The same principle applies universally: Having more content ready at your disposal reduces the likelihood of churn and puts you ahead of the competition.
SETTING THE STAGE FOR SEAMLESS COLLABORATION
With a metadata-rich library at their disposal, production teams will have a highly accessible bank of content to work with.
This is one of the key differentiators among media companies today: How well are their systems optimized for collaboration? Content that has been indexed through metadata is easily shared and accessed across remote or asynchronous teams.
The speed and complexity of modern production and distribution may have increased, but metadata will enable teams to zero in on whatever files they need to find at a moment’s notice. Whatever challenges production teams face, “needle in a haystack” situations can be a thing of the past with the assistance of metadata.
CARPE DATUM
Now is the time to embrace metadata. It offers immediate benefits and a long-term ROI that includes business agility, revenue opportunities and highly specialized use cases to suit individual content strategies. Production teams gain access to an indexed library that positions everything they need within arm’s reach, empowering them to make full use of their resources.
With that said, the technology is still new, and we may only be seeing the tip of the iceberg for what metadata has to offer. With the support of a trusted tech provider, metadata can be one of the essential tools that empowers broadcasters to stay ahead of the curve. ●
The media and entertainment industry’s business models are increasingly geared towards diversified monetization strategies, and archive content provides the raw materials to expand your offering.
Sam Peterson
Many sports broadcasters have already caught on to the value of archive material, such as highlights from past games, to reward dedicated fans and maintain engagement between seasons.
AI: More WALL-E Than Skynet
As AI continues its relentless march through the media and entertainment industries, every new innovation creates a multiplicity of questions
By Matthew Corrigan
Artificial intelligence (AI) is shrouded in misconception. People seem to struggle with the idea that the technology is just another tool, albeit a very powerful one. As with any new innovation, finding out exactly where it fits will be key to realizing its full potential, and there is a range of opinions as to how it might be used. Now that AI is really starting to make waves, the media and entertainment (M&E) sector must ensure it is a benefit, rather than a hazard. How, for example, can AI help creatives produce content?
Maarten Verwaest is co-founder of Limecraft, a provider of AI-driven media asset management platforms that enable automation in production workflows. Considering the question, he says, “Much of the [often negative] narrative swirling around Generative AI [GenAI] has related to its potential to create content. I think that somewhat misses the point. The real power of AI lies in its ability to take on the heavy lifting that’s a characteristic of the industry by automating routine, laborious and labor-intensive tasks.
“We often use the ‘dishwasher’ analogy— think of AI as a labor-saving device that can take on the parts of the job you’d prefer not to do, freeing you up instead to focus on the more creative tasks. As one of the earliest media tech companies to integrate appropriate AI into mission-critical production workflows, we’ve been working with it for over a decade, and we feel the industry is much more interested in this ‘co-pilot’ approach rather than asking AI to produce full TV scripts or bring actors back from the dead.”
THE 'HANDS OFF' APPROACH
Using the ingest process as an example, Verwaest describes how AI can be employed to automate laborious tasks such as the backup and preparation of camera cards, which typically tie up edit assistants for hours. Using AI, he explains, the process can be run overnight, without the need for human intervention, “hands-off and reliably, generating significant savings in edit suite capacity.”
Veritone has been delivering AI solutions for a decade and works with the M&E industry
to provide content management, creation and distribution services aimed at streamlining processes and enabling innovation.
Paul Cramer, managing director, media and broadcast, expands on the theme: “The demand for content has never been greater, which puts tremendous pressure on media and entertainment organizations to produce and distribute content at lightning speed, challenging traditional media management practices. Media teams, many already constrained by limited resources and budgets, face heightened pressure to do more with less. AI is already helping curate content archives, so creatives can find the content they want to use more quickly to assist in building sequences faster, while enabling better visual storytelling.”
Personalization is another growth area in which AI can help meet demand. AI models are able to create tailored, direct-to-consumer content experiences where narrated video can be programmatically generated on demand,
“These types of use cases are now possible when generative AI is paired with an archive of content that is indexed, curated and discoverable," says Cramer.
Jason Williamson, MD and AI innovation leader of Deloitte’s media solutions and engineering practice, has a front row view of how AI is impacting the film, broadcast and sport streaming sectors. He also sees AI as complementary to the creative element, emphasising human/machine collaboration.
“Creators and producers are experimenting with AI to increase their productivity,” he explains. “This can mean using AI tools to edit video, modify images and localize content originally created by traditional processes, for example digital cinema cameras, photography, VFX, etc. As such, AI is being deployed as a creative co-pilot—enhancing media tools that once required more manual and time-consuming processes. Creators and their artistic vision are still firmly in the driver’s seat.”
artificial intelligence
AI IS IN ITS INFANCY
It’s probably fair to say that the effects of AI will be transformative, which has led to some raising concerns over its employment. New technologies, however, often open the door to new opportunities. How can the industry ensure AI doesn’t replace humans?
“If we look at how AI is being deployed in the industry right now, it’s a bit like a toddler—it constantly needs human oversight and shouldn’t really be left unattended,” says Verwaest. ”Lots of AI-based activities—let’s use facial and image recognition as good examples—were never designed with the media industry in mind, so of course many of the results generated by AI solutions are inaccurate or incomplete.
"Consequently, workflows still require human eyeballs to check and verify what these solutions are producing and intervene to maintain accuracy," he adds. "AI may change the composition of the industry’s workforce and it will lead to new job titles that we’d never have imagined a decade ago, but it’s not by default a devourer of jobs.”
According to Cramer, the industry is reaching a point at which AI will become mission critical, and that organizations that don’t embrace innovation will be unable to meet the demands of the M&E marketplace.
“Veritone views AI as a tool to enhance the effectiveness of humans, not replace them,” he says. “There’s a misconception that AI will take over jobs. In reality, it’s humans who are using AI that will replace humans who aren’t using AI. Many of our partners indicate that their current staff is facing capacity with its workloads and, therefore, they are turning to AI to help put capacity back into the organization.”
It is easy to spot the emerging consensus: progress is inevitable and there will be advantages for those who quickly embrace and adapt to change.
“As in many industries, there’s plenty of concern within M&E that AI may displace creative professionals,” says Williamson. "However, creative industries are still fuelled by artistic visions. While I don’t discount the truly jaw-dropping demonstrations of AI generating video, images, music and writing, I foresee existing media and entertainment technologies, solution ecosystems and creative processes selectively incorporating AI. They’ll do so to automate and enhance the processes that manage, store and distribute media to audiences and consumers around the world.
"I believe that AI will mature in similar ways to past M&E technological shifts, meaning that creators will see capabilities that once required significant time and money incorpo-
rated into cloud and workstation solutions,” Williamson concludes.
Given the apparent positivity around the idea of an AI-powered future, might there actually be instances where a human job is taken over but the outcome for that individual is a good one?
Here, Verwaest is optimistic. “As I’ve suggested earlier, I think it’s an urban myth that knowledge workers will be the biggest losers from the increasing prevalence of AI. Quite the opposite, in fact,” he says. “As an example, several news desks all over the world rely on Limecraft to automatically create subtitles for news items. These are usually short-form pieces of content, and a typical news desk processes up to 10,000 items per month.
"From a logistical point of view, it is simply not possible to rely on a subtitling company for that kind of volume," Verwaest adds. "Now, as factual content is fairly easy to use as input for AI captioning with almost no post-editing required, these news desks are freeing up 20 to 30 full-time employees who can create more
“Think of AI as a labor-saving device that can take on the parts of the job you’d prefer not to do, freeing you up instead to focus on the more creative tasks.”
MAARTEN VERWAEST, LIMECRAFT
Maarten Verwaest
content rather than spending their time manually creating subtitles.”
Cramer highlights the benefits AI is already delivering, and talks of potential further gains. “Veritone sees a lucrative opportunity for those workers looking to adopt or refine AI-related skills. According to data analysis from Veritone and Aspen Tech Labs, in April, there were 14,117 vacancies in artificial intelligence jobs, a 32% increase year-over-year. Likewise, the median salary for AI jobs in April was $160,056, or $76.95 hourly, an increase from $144,986, or $69.70, during the same period last year.”
Explaining further, he adds, “As AI changes the level of human involvement required in certain jobs, media and entertainment companies should endeavor to safely transition their employees to work alongside AI and, therefore, improve the creative output and efficiency of the entire organization. This way, an employee who used to have a different position can learn new skills and supercharge their abilities, leading to the best outcomes for their company and themselves.”
Although adopting a slightly more cautious tone, Williamson also recognizes the positivity of change, saying, “This is a challenging question to answer given where we are in the timeline. A positive outcome for one’s job displacement would, of course, depend on an equivalent or better opportunity being present, and this would vary across individuals and their cohorts. I anticipate some level of disruption, but feel that it’s unlikely this disruption will be abrupt and believe that it likely will lead to an exploration of new creative roles, jobs, and opportunities.”
FICTION VS. REALITY
Perhaps ironically, the M&E industry has often helped perpetuate the myth of the malign automaton intent on world domination. The reality is, of course, somewhat different but there remains an element of fear around AI. How can the technology be made to seem more friendly?
“Any fear stems from the idea that AI is going to be forced on the market and I just don’t see that being the case,” says Verwaest. “I have a suspicion that we’ll see a raft of different products coming to the market over the next 2–5 years, but many of these will wither on the vine because they will be seen as gimmicky.” As ever, the market will decide what will work and pragmatism will win out, he believes. The industry will consider the business case of each emerging technology solution and react accordingly. Verwaest also recognizes that people working in an industry driven by imagination will always find ways to adapt.
“Finally, even if these solutions do come good, I just don’t see a world where smart and creative media professionals are sitting around in some kind of ‘turkeys voting for Thanksgiving’ scenario,” he says.
Cramer suggests the introduction of AI is following a well-worn path. “History has shown that the introduction of any new transformative technology is often cause for consternation until end-users can become accustomed to the technology and realize its benefit."
History is littered with examples that back this up. Before Stephenson’s Rocket demonstrated otherwise, the received wisdom was that humans could not possibly survive such speeds; when televisions began to become ubiquitous, it was feared they would be hazardous to children’s health and the internet’s rise and advent of e-commerce made some worry that the risk to their personal data was intolerable.
As with all these innovations, familiarity bred acceptance and, says Cramer, it will happen again. “AI has been sensationalized in Hollywood for decades, which adds to some of the fear around the technology (AI has been helping make great content long before it could generate content, in the form of plots written about runaway evil AI). Knowledge and transparency are key, as AI integrates with society,” he says.
Finally, there is growing acceptance that AI, just like any other powerful technology, will need to be regulated somehow. Peering into a not-too-distant future, what might be coming down the line?
Recognizing the need to avoid a "Wild West"-style free for all, Cramer outlines his approach, which is based on the rigorous applica-
“There’s a misconception that AI will take over jobs. In reality, it’s humans who are using AI that will replace humans that aren’t using AI.”
PAUL CRAMER
tion of ethical standards: “Veritone adheres to the mantra of “AI for Good” whereby the use of AI should be clear, compliant and consenting. As such, we support several principles around the use of AI including transparency when AI is utilized, trust that the technology will be accurate and free from discrimination, secure and compliant use of the data derived, ensuring it isn’t shared with unauthorized parties and is created ethically, and empowering use so that the technology can enable humans to make an impact by doing more with less.”
WANTED: CLEAR GUIDELINES
Many jurisdictions are already looking at legislation to ensure AI is deployed safely and responsibly, and Cramer is of the opinion that rules will soon be in place across the globe.
“We will likely see an increasing number of governments around the world establish regulations requiring AI developers to follow certain rules and procedures to ensure the accuracy and security of their platforms,” he adds. “Veritone is committed to working with regulators to create smart, sensible regulations around AI technology. Clear guidelines from regulators can help protect consumers and support the technology as it matures.”
Williamson agrees that regulation is both inevitable and necessary, “Our future M&E AI regulatory landscape is difficult to predict, but I would speculate that near-horizon [~1–3 years], regulations will differ across jurisdictions and likely emerge as a response to suffered negative outcomes and collective public/labor concerns,” he adds. “Possible regulations may include mandatory labelling
of AI content, incorporation of providence methods for government and newsgathering (see C2PA), etc.”
“This is an interesting question,” says Verwaest, who cautions against overreaction, offering a thoughtful conclusion. ”While regulation may sometimes stifle and inhibit innovation, we have come to a point where it is inevitable," he said. "However, we need to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I would recommend that regulators shouldn’t get trapped in micromanagement and direct interference. Rather, they should establish policies to enable a self regulating market—regulate the regulator.”
AI is already here and delivering results across the media and entertainment landscape. It is no surprise that a creative and imaginative industry is finding new ways to harness its power every day, human and machine complementing each other. Offering a new definition, Verwaest says, “We prefer not to talk about AI; we refer to what’s under the bonnet of our solutions as ‘Media Intelligence’—AI is blended with the right human input to achieve superior accuracy and reliability of the results.”
A fitting conclusion to change how we think about the technology that is quietly ushering in a new era in production. ●
“AI is being deployed as a creative co-pilot… Creators and their artistic vision are still firmly in the driver’s seat.”
JASON WILLIAMSON, DELOITTE
Jason Williamson
Paul Cramer
Content Is King!
Whether it’s creating content or buying rights, new content can be expensive
By Neil Maycock
“Content is King” has been a mantra for many years in the broadcast and media technology world, although the original reference was by Bill Gates in 1996 regarding online content.
It certainly seems to have been reinforced recently by the streaming giants battling for subscribers with some Disney+ and Apple TV+ series estimated to cost $15 million per episode. While the post-pandemic dip in subscriber acquisition has caused some level of curtailing of content budgets, investment from the streaming giants remains at incredible levels.
One type of content that has proved particularly effective in retaining subscribers is live, predominantly sport. If proof was needed of the audience power of live sports, then Netflix’s entry into the market tells us it is very real. It was only in 2018 when their CEO stated the company had “no plans to start streaming live sport events,” but today the company is active in the live sports market.
IS DATA ALSO KING?
Whether it’s creating content or buying rights, new content can be expensive, potentially prohibitively so. However, there are many companies with large archives that can potentially be leveraged.
For many years there was an industry challenge to have good data on what was in an archive. Early MAM systems attempted to solve the problem, and although searching a database for that critical video or image was straightforward, this was only as effective as the metadata populated in the database.
The example often given was the Clinton/ Lewinsky scandal, to date that for everyone it culminated in 1998, coincidently the year that Google was formed. Fast forward to today and the ability to catalogue, index and search content is not only solved but is getting more and more advanced with AI providing completely new ways to analyze content in a library.
If we can take it as read that the problem of understanding what’s in our media archive is solved, the next thing we need is innovation in how we get the content to users. This is an area that is seeing a lot of change. To reference Netflix again, in the early days of streaming many content owners licensed content to the company as a simple way to
generate revenue from their archives. The more recent trend is for companies to have their own streaming platform and leverage content under their brands and with that own the customer relationship.
In addition to on-demand platforms, companies are also looking to monetize their archives through linear streaming channels. Certainly, there has been tremendous growth in FAST channels over the last several years, and while they are a cheap way to get content to consumers, the commercial performance of these early services has been very mixed. Companies are talking about FAST 2.0 or 3.0, basically a more sophisticated experience for consumers with scheduling and advertising planning closer to the levels of primary broadcast channels.
THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND AI
Switching focus, any analysis of media content wouldn’t be complete without considering social media. The growth metrics and sheer volume of “free” content on social platforms is hard to comprehend. Referring to the title of the article, I think it’s fair to say there is a lot of content on social media that doesn’t deserve the royal title of ‘King,’ however, there are serious revenues being created and outside of the social media companies, there are influencers and content creators earning significant income. So far, social content has felt quite distinct from that produced by the major media com-
panies, especially content with multi-million dollar budgets, but there is a definite trend of improving production values. Top influencer brands demand quality that is appropriate to the revenues they are generating—just consider the Kardashian dynasty. Another example of high production values is the vast volume of content created by political parties for the recent elections in the U.K. and United States.
That leads me to a final content topic: fake news. So many people now consume news and current affairs on social media ahead of any other platforms, and the danger is that any message can be delivered unauthenticated and potentially deliberately biased. Even mainstream news organizations that we might turn to as trusted sources of information face the problem of validating information when the source is online. There are some interesting industry initiatives between news organizations that are collaborating and sharing information to establish provenance for news stories. Outside of news, AI is making the creation of fake content so easy that it feels that the only limiting factor is one’s imagination. Coupled with the largely unregulated ability to directly reach an audience through social platforms, there is a concerning threat of content misuse. Let’s hope technology and some regulation are able to provide enough protection so content remains King and doesn’t descend to criminal. ●
Before AI and metadata were commonplace, TIME photographer Dirck Halstead used the old fashion method of meticulously going through thousands of slides to locate this photo of President Bill Clinton embracing Monica Lewinsky at a 1996 Democratic fundraiser days after scandal broke out in 1998.