TVB Europe 123 - July/Aug 2026 PRI

JULY/AUGUST 2026

Fantasy meets reality

How virtual production is part of everyday workflows

A

Another tool in the box

few weeks ago, I was discussing the use of virtual production in the media and entertainment industry, and someone made the statement “virtual production is production”. I didn’t think about it much at the time, but it stuck in my head, and I’ve come to realise they were exactly right. Virtual production is now such a well-established part of the industry that for many it is just another tool in the box.

Look at ITV’s use of virtual production during the FIFA World Cup. The broadcaster employed a hybrid studio, a mix of a real set on top of a building in Brooklyn, as well as virtual components. It immediately caught viewers’ attention, with many taking to social media to praise the look of the set. I wonder how many realised that some of those features were not real.

It shows how virtual production has now entered the everyday. It’s no longer a technology that’s just for Hollywood. I realised it had made the crossover when I wrote about how Coronation Street used a virtual Manchester skyline back in 2022. Virtual production has now become democratised so that it can be used in any kind of production, big or small, from Uber One adverts with Robert De Niro to a podcast studio.

It almost feels to me like we’re entering a new phase of virtual production. It’s moving past the traditional idea of creating a backdrop and loading it into Unreal Engine. Instead, end users are starting to explore how artificial intelligence will impact the use of the technology. What impact could AI have on streamlining operations, and how will it enable creatives to use virtual production outside of a traditional volume set?

There’s so much to explore in terms of the future of virtual production. It’s no longer just about the technical spectacle; instead as the technology continues to develop it can help creatives reach new heights in what they want to put on screen. The next chapter of virtual production is just beginning, and I can’t wait to see how the industry pushes the boundaries of what’s possible.

www.tvbeurope.com FOLLOW US X.com: TVBEUROPE / Facebook: TVBEUROPE1 Bluesky: TVBEUROPE.COM

CONTENT Content Director: Jenny Priestley jenny.priestley@futurenet.com Senior Content Writer: Matthew Corrigan matthew.corrigan@futurenet.com Graphic Designers: Cliff Newman, Steve Mumby Production Manager: Nicole Schilling Contributors: David Davies, Kevin Hilton, Joe O’Halloran, Robert Szczepankiewicz Cover image: Getty Images

ADVERTISING SALES Publisher TVBEurope/TV Tech, B2B Tech: Joseph Palombo joseph.palombo@futurenet.com Account Director: Hayley Brailey-Woolfson hayley.braileywoolfson@futurenet.com

SUBSCRIBER CUSTOMER SERVICE To subscribe, change your address, or check on your current account status, go to www.tvbeurope.com/subscribe

ARCHIVES Digital editions of the magazine are available to view on ISSUU.com Recent back issues of the printed edition may be available please contact customerservice@futurenet.com for more information.

LICENSING/REPRINTS/PERMISSIONS TVBEurope is available for licensing. Contact the Licensing team to discuss partnership opportunities. licensing@futurenet.com

MANAGEMENT

SVP, MD, B2B Amanda Darman-Allen VP, Market Lead Carmel King MD, Content, Broadcast Tech Paul McLane VP, Global Head of Sales, B2B Dena Malouf Managing VP of Sales, B2B Tech Adam Goldstein 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 All contents © 2026 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine

Future PLC is a member of the Periodical Publishers Association We are committed to only using magazine paper which is derived from responsibly managed, certified forestry and chlorine-free manufacture. The paper in this magazine was sourced and produced from sustainable managed forests, conforming to strict environmental and socioeconomic standards. may be used, stored, transmitted or reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. Registered office: Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. You are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price of products/ services referred to in this publication. Apps and websites mentioned in this publication are not under our control. We are not responsible for their contents or any other changes or updates to them. This magazine is fully independent and not affiliated in any way with the companies mentioned herein.

If you submit material to us, you warrant that you own the material and/or have the necessary rights/permissions to supply the material and you automatically grant Future and its licensees a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in any/all issues and/or editions of publications, in any format published worldwide and on associated websites, social media channels and associated products. Any material you submit is sent at your own risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future nor its employees, agents, subcontractors or licensees shall be liable for loss or damage. We assume all unsolicited material is for publication unless otherwise stated, and reserve the right to edit, amend, adapt all submissions.

JENNY PRIESTLEY, CONTENT DIRECTOR JENNY.PRIESTLEY@FUTURENET.COM

www.tvbeurope.com

JULY/AUGUST 2026 | 03

In this issue JULY/AUGUST 2026 10 Powering the future

Media and academia combine at MyWorld to drive innovation and production in the West of England. TVBEurope meets Mark Leaver, head of business partnerships and Oscar De Melio, director of The Sheds

16 AI in VP: Evolution and revolution

With AI quietly evolving virtual production workflows, Robert Sczcepankiewicz asks if this is simply an upgrade to existing tools or a more fundamental reshaping of the production process

20 Turning change into opportunity

IBC CEO Mike Crimp discusses how the show is evolving to prioritise actionable collaboration across the global media technology industry

10

24 Vienna Calling

Ahead of the 70th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, Matthew Corrigan visited Vienna to check out Sennheiser’s behind-the-scenes operation

28 Score!

Joe O’Halloran heads Stateside to discover how the FIFA World Cup was not only a test of athletic skill but also a showcase for cutting-edge broadcast technology

34 Graphic adaptations

Kevin Hilton examines the current trends in the creatively and technologically vibrant broadcast graphics sector

38 The sound of substance

Re-recording mixer Jamie Selway tells Jenny Priestley about the sound techniques used to bring an immersive atmosphere to Channel 4’s A Woman of Substance

24

44 Designing space for virtual production

By Ihor Chupryna, stage designer at WePlay Studios

48 Advancing alignment

David Davies explores the European Programmatic TV Initiative’s Stage Two collaboration aiming to make adtech platforms easier to deploy at scale

28 04 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

www.tvbeurope.com

OPINION

The right recipe for cloud-native workflows

By David Mitchinson, solutions director at Techex

I

n common with many digital-centric organisations, broadcasters have spent years moving towards softwarebased and cloud environments. The arguments in favour of these technologies are compelling, and whether the objective is to improve media and production flexibility or make content easier to access, the direction of travel is well established.

Yet, some challenges remain, and many industry professionals will be familiar with the frustrations of workflows that still depend on managing media as complete files. On the face of it, this may seem like a relatively minor architectural detail, but it can introduce unnecessary complexity when teams need very rapid access to very specific pieces of content.

As we all know, broadcasters are focused on improving efficiency and, as a result, the industry is rapidly coming to the conclusion that the legacy approach to these processes needs to change. One of the most important and potentially beneficial initiatives is the Time Addressable Media Store (TAMS) standard. Originally developed by BBC R&D, it allows media to be organised and accessed by time rather than treated solely as a complete file.

Selecting the ingredients The impact of TAMS is analogous to preparing food, in that content is no longer treated as a ready meal that must be handled in its entirety. Instead, broadcasters can work with precisely the ingredients they need at any given moment. This reduces the need to retrieve and manipulate complete assets when only a portion of the content is required.

Take live sports coverage, for example. In a traditional filebased workflow, production teams typically have to retrieve and manipulate much larger media assets than are actually required for each replay or highlight. These processes often create multiple copies of the same media asset as different teams perform different tasks, creating duplication of effort and storage.

In contrast, TAMS is designed around the idea that multiple users can work from the same underlying media without creating separate copies. It enables them to navigate directly to a specific point within a media asset and access only the

06 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

relevant section of content. This reduces the amount of media that needs to be transferred before work can begin because the metadata associated with individual media segments makes content much easier to locate. The media itself remains in a single location while different workflows reference the portions they require.

While live replay is an obvious example, the same principles apply to other workflows that rely on locating and working with specific sections of content rather than entire assets. On a practical level, different broadcasters can work with the same source material while applying their own editorial decisions.

The result is a more flexible approach to content sharing that is less dependent on transferring large media files between different organisations.

Open to all But why TAMS in particular? Central to the argument is that TAMS is an open standard designed to support cloud-native media workflows. It does not prescribe the use of specific hardware or software, and no industry vendor owns or controls its development. This kind of open governance has been proven to work in the interests of technology users and, indeed, all stakeholders focused on shared innovation and efficiency.

Open standards also make it much easier for organisations to combine technologies from different suppliers within the same workflow. For broadcasters, this represents a win-win because they can be granular about their technology choices with the confidence that interoperability (or the lack thereof) won’t force them into a single technology ecosystem, as might have been the case before.

It’s also important to be clear that moving a workflow into the cloud does not automatically make it cloud-native. Many media workflows were originally designed for dedicated hardware environments, and simply recreating them in software can consume significant processing resources while delivering little operational benefit. Realising the full benefits of cloud, therefore, also requires new approaches to content management, and TAMS was developed around technologies already widely used across the IT industry in cloud settings.

www.tvbeurope.com

OPINION

European data sovereignty and the cloud

By Graham Sharp, VP sales and marketing, BCNEXXT

T

he EU has become increasingly dependent on US and Chinese providers for cloud computing and artificial intelligence, prompting concerns around sovereignty and the storage and movement of content within cloud infrastructures. Fears that foreign legislation, such as the US CLOUD Act, could allow non-European governments to access sensitive data have accelerated initiatives to build Europeanowned infrastructure and led the European Commission to establish its Cloud Sovereignty Framework.

The framework evaluates providers across three foundational objectives: Legal and jurisdictional sovereignty: data must be insulated from foreign legal claims, ensuring local courts maintain ultimate jurisdiction.

Operational control: systems must be independently operated, with administrative and support access remaining within the intended ecosystem.

Data and AI sovereignty: organisations must retain control over their data assets, preventing unauthorised use and reducing dependency on external providers.

While these discussions are particularly prominent in Europe, the underlying concerns are increasingly relevant worldwide.

Media companies are asking important questions about who controls their data, where content resides, and how easily they can move operations if business, regulatory, or operational requirements change.

are typically always running and require additional software layers, they can be less efficient and more costly to operate.

Storage introduces another consideration. Most cloud providers offer robust redundancy by distributing content across multiple servers and regions. As much as it improves resilience this can reduce visibility into where content is physically stored and how redundancy is managed, limiting customer control over data location.

Technical challenges Cloud platforms have delivered tremendous benefits, but they can also create dependencies that are difficult to reverse.

Many application vendors have taken advantage of proprietary cloud services such as orchestration, resource management, transcoding, and transport. This accelerates migration to the cloud, but it can also make applications heavily dependent on services that may not exist—or may function differently—on other platforms. The result is that moving an application between cloud providers can become far more complex than may have been originally anticipated.

Other software vendors utilise virtual machine-based architectures. While these can improve portability, they often fail to take full advantage of cloud scalability. Because virtual machines

Choose carefully The message is clear: cloud strategies should be designed with sovereignty in mind from the outset. Cloud technologies can absolutely deliver next-generation operating models while still supporting sovereignty requirements. In response, we are seeing the growth of regional cloud providers, sovereign infrastructure initiatives, and a new generation of technology vendors focused on preserving customer choice and control.

As sovereignty becomes a more important consideration for media organisations, the ability to retain operational independence, maintain control of data, and avoid unnecessary lock-in will become increasingly valuable. The future of cloud is not simply about scale. It is about ensuring that organisations retain the freedom to choose how and where they operate.

www.tvbeurope.com www.tvbeurope.com

Financial challenges Lock-in is not solely a technical issue. Many cloud pricing models were designed around traditional compute workloads, where large volumes of data are uploaded, processed, and returned as relatively small result files.

Media workflows are fundamentally different. Large volumes of content are uploaded, processed, stored, and repeatedly retrieved or distributed. As a result, storage and egress costs become a much larger factor. This creates an asymmetrical pricing challenge. While ingesting content is often inexpensive, storing and retrieving it can become costly. For media organisations, these costs can create a significant barrier to moving operations between providers.

In discussions with one major cloud vendor, the response was straightforward: media represents only a small percentage of their overall business, and there is little incentive to redesign pricing structures around media-specific requirements.

JANUARY 2026 2024 || 07 07 JULY/AUGUST

TVBEurope’s newsletter is your free resource for exclusive news, features and information about our industry. Here are some featured articles from the last few weeks…

‘WE WANT TO BRING THE BUSINESS BACK’: MULTIDYNE ACQUIRES MRMC ASSETS TVBEurope speaks to MultiDyne Robotics and Motion Control managing director Neil Maycock about plans for the company going forward.

THE TECHNOLOGY BEHIND ITV’S HYBRID WORLD CUP STUDIO ITV Sport’s FIFA World Cup studio was a big hit with viewers. Jim Mann, creative director at Lightwell, explains how it employed a mix of physical and virtual sets.

DO YOU SUBSCRIBE TO TVBEUROPE’S FREE NEWSLETTER?

Images Photobank2/Getty Images

SIGN UP VIA THIS QR CODE

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT IP IN THE BROADCAST INDUSTRY The survey aims to reveal exactly how this shift is translating into real-world deployments across broadcast, production and service companies of all shapes and sizes.

08 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

www.tvbeurope.com

VIRTUAL PRODUCTION

Powering

THE FUTURE

MyWorld brings together media and academia with the aim of driving research, innovation and production in the West of England. TVBEurope hears from head of business partnerships Mark Leaver, and Oscar De Mello, director of The Sheds, about how this collaborative pipeline is shaping the next generation of screen industries

annually, but the way new tools are developed and adopted remains disjointed. Research sits in universities, experimentation in studios, and commercialisation in startups, often with little connection between them. For startups working at the cutting-edge, testing and measurement of their technical developments in real-world scenarios require high-end environments that remain out of reach for many. And for production professionals, the challenge is just as immediate: with new workflows and techniques redefining production, how can they remain relevant in a quickly evolving sector?

MyWorld is closing this gap, building on the existing strengths of the creative industries in the West of England and positioning the region as a globally significant innovation lab for the development and deployment of creative technologies.

What is MyWorld and what is its aim?

Mark Leaver: MyWorld is a £70 million six-year regional R&D and funding programme focused on enabling the West of England’s creative economy to anticipate and innovate in the future of production, distribution and experience. Funded by the UKRI’s Strength in Places Programme, it connects research, production, and cutting-edge technologies across AI, immersive media, and filmmaking into a single funding pipeline. By establishing a collaborative testbed, it enables academic researchers, creative studios, and technology companies to experiment, develop, and commercialise the next generation of media experiences.

Who are your partners?

ML: MyWorld works with a rich and diverse group of partners that are active across the West of England cluster. Academic partners include the University of Bath, University of Bristol, Bath Spa University, and the University of the West of England. We work with leading creative organisations including Bristol Old Vic, Lux Aeterna, Esprit Film & TV, Watershed, and Aardman. But the key partnership is with industry.

Collaborative R&D and sustained project investment has generated a community of innovative practice, developing new products and services and creating new revenues and jobs—an engine for growth.

What is its place within the media and entertainment industry?

ML: The UK’s creative industries generate over £145 billion

What key areas do you focus on?

ML: MyWorld focuses on the future of content production, distribution

10 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

www.tvbeurope.com

VIRTUAL PRODUCTION

and experience, built around the idea of how audiences experience content, and shaping how that content is produced and delivered.

We deliberately concentrate on creative technologies rather than traditional IP, investing in new platforms, tools and services.

The programme’s work falls into four main areas: academic research (for example into connectivity, compression, and audience experience); support for SMEs through collaborative R&D funding that grows the regional creative cluster; skills and training, particularly around in-camera VFX and virtual production where existing education and training can’t keep pace; and building and operating facilities such as The Sheds, where companies have more time and freedom than they would in a commercial studio to experiment with emerging production technologies.

MyWorld treats training as part of the same pipeline as R&D and production

Talk us through some recent media and entertainment projects The team also experimented with virtual production backgrounds MyWorld has been involved with. with Gaussian-splatted model environments to investigate how these ML: One of the most exciting aspects of MyWorld is the diversity of technologies could streamline stop-motion workflows. The goal is not projects taking place across the media and entertainment sector. to replace traditional craft, but to find ways of accelerating production Our work spans virtual production, AI-enabled workflows, gaming, and shot planning, while preserving the handcrafted aesthetic that immersive audio, and large-scale experiential media, giving us a unique defines Aardman’s work. view of how emerging technologies are reshaping content creation and MyWorld is also supporting Moonraker VFX in developing largeaudience experiences. scale immersive experiences for venues including Sphere Las Vegas In virtual production, a standout example is Reno, a short film and major international museums utilising a 360 LED facility at the created with VFX company Lux Aeterna. It used The Sheds’ virtual Sheds. In a separate R&D project, Moonraker and Cardiff-based Nimbl production stage to achieve its distinctive visual style, as well as are using generative AI tools to build 180 degree content from original explore how AI can be integrated into VFX workflows in a practical 16:9 footage, opening up a new market for existing IP. and responsible way, helping the team test new approaches while Continuing the expansion of opportunity in immersive maintaining creative control. The work has since contributed to the environments, MyWorld is currently collaborating with a climatedevelopment of an ethical AI toolkit that has focused charity on an installation that explores attracted interest from policymakers. audience agency within shared immersive spaces, Bristol-based natural history producer Humble using spatial audio, lighting and interactive triggers Bee used virtual production techniques to to influence how audiences move through and film small animals, including newts, in highly engage with an environment. controlled environments. By using the LED Taken together, these projects highlight how volume as both a lighting source and a dynamic MyWorld is helping the industry experiment with background, the production team recreated new production techniques, creative workflows rainforest-style environments, achieving a natural and audience experiences, while ensuring on-screen result—a great example of virtual innovation remains grounded in practical, real-world production being applied beyond its more familiar applications with future commercial potential. use cases in drama and film.

Another fascinating collaboration has been with What can you tell us about The Sheds? What is its Aardman, where we explored model-scale virtual purpose? production and its viability for marketing content, Oscar De Mello: The Sheds is a unique facility by recreating the slow boat chase sequence designed to drive research and development, training The Extended Reality suite from Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. and experimental production in digital and creative

www.tvbeurope.com

JULY/AUGUST 2026 | 11

VIRTUAL PRODUCTION

How does MyWorld support freelancers working in the industry who are looking to develop their skills/acquire new ones?

ODM: The West of England represents one of the largest media hubs outside London, with around 36,000 people and a renowned reputation for high-end TV, animation, post production, and natural history. Like the rest of the sector, it’s dealing with tighter budgets, shifting commissioning models and a constant recalibration of skills. MyWorld’s response is to treat training as part of the same pipeline as R&D and production, establishing a regional talent pipeline with the knowledge to understand, embrace, and apply technical advances.

This ranges from MSc and MA programmes co-designed by

The Sheds Bootcamp technology. It was established in a reimagined conversion of the Retort House (1821) and Coal Shed (1850), originally part of the Bristol Gas Light Company, which first brought gas and gas lighting to the city.

The facility offers a unique collection of world class infrastructure and accessible coworking space to enable researchers, learners and businesses to collaborate, share knowledge and de-risk innovation. It hosts multiple research labs and programmes, like MyWorld, alongside company residencies to ensure our research and training is driven by societal challenges and meets the future needs of industry.

Facilities include: • An experimental studio with virtual production stage and connected live audio and vision galleries • On-site dedicated edit suites • A 35-seater Smart Cinema with Dolby certified Atmos post production capability • SMPTE ST 2110 media networks and live distribution capability • Flexible access to dedicated on-site research networks and storage systems.

• The Reality Emulator: 360 CAVE LED display with dedicated on-site data centre • Extended Reality (XR) Suite with Sony Varjo headsets and additional flexible project space Together they form an unparalleled test bed for large-scale, live immersive experiences.

The Sheds includes the ability to use volumetric capture. How do you see that being developed further?

ODM: The combination of volumetric capture and high-speed distribution opens an opportunity for hybrid digital/physical performances and experiences. MyWorld’s next experimental production will aim to extend access to live music or festival performances combining capture, digital assets, and live audience interaction as a feedback loop. An early prototype capturing live presentation and distributing it via an AR app will be further developed and extended at the upcoming Brazen festival in Bristol.

12 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

industry partners, sponsorship for postgraduate studies, through to Skills Bootcamps in virtual production, free of charge to the learner, giving local production freelancers hands-on experience. This is not only creating a workforce ready to advance the sector, but one that is more diverse and inclusive. Since 2022, more than 3,500 learners and more than 260 businesses have engaged with the programme.

Within two months of completing a Skills Bootcamp, three-quarters of participants had secured work, expanded their role, or taken on new clients.

What do you see as the future of virtual production?

ODM: Advanced production techniques such as Gaussian splatting are now enabling production teams to scan real-life locations, for example the Guildhall in Bath, and then use those scans as highquality scenes displayed on an LED wall for a virtual production shoot. Challenges also remain with the accurate relighting and editing of scenes, and we are actively researching solutions in partnership with industry leaders.

Ultimately, the future looks like faster, more adaptable, and reusable digital assets, more efficient workflows, and greater levels of accessibility around this technology area.

If you had to point to one “breakout” prototype, tool, or local startup that wouldn’t exist today without MyWorld, what would it be, and how does it change the everyday audience experience?

ML: Meaning Machine arrived at MyWorld as a good idea presented by a team with a great games development background. Their pitch was an AI tool which improved gameplay by making interaction with NPCs in games more intuitive, relevant and personal.

Over a series of sustained project investments supporting progressive development, and commercialisation support including international market exposure, MyWorld partnered with the Meaning Machine team—enabling them to secure industry awards, client engagements and private investment. Meaning Machine now has significant market traction and major industry clients as well as high profile deployments including Punchdrunk’s Lander 23 show.

What does the future hold for MyWorld?

ML: MyWorld has generated a significant step change in R&D with

www.tvbeurope.com

VIRTUAL PRODUCTION

creative technologies in the West of England. It has built accessible facilities and catalysed business growth and innovation. Ahead of the initial funding phase completing in 2027, MyWorld will transition to a more fluid model, mixing commercially facing “innovation as a service” activity for national and international clients, with further publicly funded R&D able to leverage existing capital investment and best practice activity to provide added ROI. How do you think the technology MyWorld is involved with could change the way we watch TV or films in the future?

ML: Hidden Signals is a new spin out company exploiting foundational research funded by MyWorld and enabled by the Smart Cinema facilities at the Sheds. It utilises biometric monitoring technologies—including heart rate and EEG signals—to measure audience immersion in content.

The business has piloted delivery with production companies and broadcasters generating reports which are able to provide insight into engagement on a minute by minute basis. This insight will allow content producers and distributors to optimise creative decision making informed by their audience.

What haven’t we asked you that our readers should know about?

ML: Over the course of the programme to date MyWorld has

www.tvbeurope.com

The Sheds includes an experimental studio with virtual production stage

collaborated with major international corporations, including Nvidia, AWS, Netflix, Amazon, D&B and more.

As an established hub of expertise, facilities and industry-led R&D MyWorld provides an opportunity for technology partners to experiment, in partnership with innovative SMEs, in a controlled lab environment with a track record of demonstrable success—taking ideas from pitch to market to VC investment.

JULY/AUGUST 2026 | 13

BUSINESS

In with the new With media and entertainment facing skills shortages, Matthew Corrigan believes we should all be welcoming the new generation

I

would wager most of the people reading this magazine in the UK can remember the launch of Channel 5 in 1997. A scarcely believable fifth UHF choice arriving in a blaze of publicity led by the Spice Girls at the height of their power. The rollout required a massive national operation with technicians visiting some 10 million homes to retune VCRs and ensure the majority could receive what would become the last new terrestrial broadcaster to receive a licence.

There are probably even some readers whose memories reach back further still. Some 15 years before 5’s appearance, Channel 4 made its debut on the screens of millions of unwieldy CRT cabinets in the corners of the nation’s living rooms. When the groundbreaking computer-generated Blocks ident appeared, accompanied by the distinctive strains of a David Dundas-composed fanfare that would soon worm its way into the collective public consciousness, it heralded the birth of a new and fresh way of doing TV, whipping up a storm of outraged editorial content on its way.

It all seems so quaint. The televisual landscape of yesteryear would be unrecognisable to anyone born this century, yet the business remains packed with people who know exactly what I’m talking about. For older generations, and very regrettably, this includes me, the realisation that we have colleagues who don’t remember 9/11, who have grown up never knowing life without the internet, an always-on culture or the chaos that seems to define every aspect of our days can be rather disconcerting. However, it is, of course, inevitable. For my generation— the ones who sneered at our elders for being unable to programme the VHS—it is time to realise we are no longer the cutting edge.

It’s 2026. A newly-qualified graduate entering the world of work for the first time is likely to have been born in 2003/4. It’s time for us oldies to welcome in the new. While we have previously featured some incredible de-aging visual effects in these very pages, there has sadly been a dearth of scientific progress in enabling this technology to transfer to the real world. Time, sadly, catches up.

Of course, there is very little more cringeworthy than oldsters trying to be down with the kids, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t, as an industry, pay attention to the trends they are setting. They are, after all, the future.

Increasing democratisation of production technology is already opening opportunities for content creators that until recently would have required complex (and expensive) infrastructure and extensive

14 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

teams. It’s now possible to produce content with mundane mobile devices. We’ve even seen coverage of the Olympics filmed using iPhones. The direction of travel is only going one way, and it is accelerating. Some of the developments in the broadcast space are mirroring what has already happened in the music and publishing industries. Keeping up is not only going to be nice to do, it’s going to be mission critical.

Innovation is accelerating. When Nvidia’s Jensen Huang announced his company’s AI chips were outpacing Moore’s Law, for decades the accepted benchmark for the pace of technological change, it was considered controversial. But he undoubtedly had a point. The solutions, applications and devices used by today’s high school entrants will be obsolete by the time they sit their final exams.

Which is why it is so essential to ensure that as an industry we strive to encourage and nurture young talent, to bring the next generation forward, welcome them and let them find their feet.

Initiatives like the Media Talent Manifesto’s On Air are leading the way. Founded last year, On Air brought together students, educators and professionals from across the industry to produce the world’s largest student-led broadcast. Streamed on YouTube, the 24-hour production allowed young people from around the world to gain valuable insight into what makes a live broadcast in a consequencefree environment. This year’s event will be even bigger, with more participants and greater industry involvement. A multi-channel format will encompass news, sport, film, culture and children’s content.

TVBEurope is very much looking forward to supporting the project.

The future is unstoppable. Let’s all learn to work with it.

“It is essential that as an industry we strive to encourage and nurture young talent, to bring the next generation forward, welcome them and let them find their feet”

Image: The Next Valley

AI inVP:

EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION

AI is quietly evolving virtual production workflows. But, asks Robert Szczepankiewicz, is this simply an upgrade of existing tools, or the start of a fundamental reshaping of how productions are made, from on-set capture through to post production?

V

irtual production revolutionised filmmaking, replacing traditional methods with real-time rendering, LED volumes and virtual workflows that blurred the line between physical and digital production. A further shift is now emerging: artificial intelligence (AI).

Whilst AI has long supported human work across many sectors, in virtual production it is increasingly embedded within the pipeline itself, enabling tools to enhance and optimise other systems rather than simply automate tasks. As integration deepens, it is streamlining workflows, reducing technical friction and expanding

16 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

what can be achieved in real time. From environment generation and motion capture to camera systems and visual effects, it is reshaping both efficiency and creative possibility.

Quentin Jorquera, freelance director of photography and virtual production supervisor, says his first practical experience with AI in virtual production “was probably NVIDIA DLSS—especially when DLSS 3 arrived and AI frame generation started giving Unreal Engine projects a serious performance lift,” and making real-time work much smoother.

“That was not ‘generative AI’ in the current sense, but it was already AI directly affecting what was possible in real-time production,” he explains. “On the generative side, my use has been more selective and production-aware. I have not been treating AI as a magic one-click solution, because it is not one. Most of these tools are still early, inconsistent, and dangerous if you do not understand where they break. But I have been working heavily with AI workflows over the past year: previs, visual development, asset ideation, pipeline organisation, documentation, production systems, and private AI Carl Lyttle workflows through Perseus XR.”

www.tvbeurope.com

Netflix has raised the stakes in recent months with its acquisition of actor Ben Affleck’s AI startup, InterPositive. Filmmakers now have access to AI tools trained on a film’s own dailies, enabling precise manipulation of footage while streamlining post production, reducing costs and speeding up editing and delivery.

“From the invention of the moving image to the transition to digital, from motion capture to virtual production, technology has evolved alongside the artists who use it,” the company said in a statement. “Our shared commitment to continuing this legacy makes joining together a natural next step, in addition to Netflix’s decades of experience applying and scaling technology responsibly.”

Jorquera describes the streamer’s purchase as “a very strong signal” in this space. “The acquisition does not mean AI filmmaking tools are suddenly mature, or that anyone has solved the ethical and creative questions,” he says. “But it does make it much harder for the industry to dismiss AI as a fringe experiment. When a company like Netflix acquires a filmmaker-led AI technology company, it tells the rest of the market that these tools are becoming part of the production conversation at the highest level. Netflix acquiring InterPositive feels like the start of a more serious race: studios, streamers, VFX companies, VP team, and independent creators all trying to understand where AI genuinely helps, where it creates risk and who will control the new production pipelines.

Image: The Next Valley

VIRTUAL PRODUCTION

Work by The Next Valley on creating phone screens Carl Lyttle, chief digital officer for nmatic.ai, a hybrid AI creative production studio and technology company and AI technical lead for The Next Valley, a newly launched Hybrid AI VFX production studio, says that while “Ben Affleck has been very clever” in that he “spotted something the industry needed, built it quietly and brought it to Netflix at exactly the right moment,” it’s important to be precise about what the deal actually involves.

Solid Systems are built with Bricks

Check out the whole yellobrik line-up at

www.tvbeurope.com

www.lynx-technik.com

JULY/AUGUST 2026 | 17

VIRTUAL PRODUCTION

Image: The Next Valley

“InterPositive is a post production tool, trained on a production’s own dailies, doing continuity, relighting, VFX support,” he says. “That is not virtual production and the way the deal is structured, it feeds Netflix’s own pipeline rather than the wider virtual production industry. Netflix has said the tech will not be sold commercially, so what the deal really says is that Netflix sees AI as worth a serious internal investment on the Quentin Jorquera post side. It does not move the needle on virtual production as a discipline, or for productions made outside Netflix. The more interesting question, what AI looks like upstream, on set, in the actual creation of scenes, is still wide open.”

Gary Adcock, consultant in AI and virtual production, sees both sides of the discussion. “People go, ‘Oh, Ben Affleck did an AI company, it can’t be any good,’ but it’s actually about very specific ideas and workflows,” he says. “AI is here whether we like it or not and there are ways to use it without interrupting workflow or restricting copyright.

AI can simplify workflows in virtual production, especially when building elements in tools like Blender and Unreal, but it’s not a onebutton world—you don’t just prompt something and get perfection.

A lot of people still want a one-click solution, but that often causes problems like elements mixing together incorrectly, so working in a traditional animation-style workflow is often cleaner and faster, while also maintaining a human element for copyright reasons. In virtual production, especially background plates, that’s where AI will really accelerate workflows.”

It’s time to address the elephant in the room: the fear of replacement.

It’s already playing out across other industries, so what does it mean for film and television—and more specifically, virtual production?

“The nervousness is real,” says Lyttle. “AI will change the shape

18 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

of virtual production crews. Some roles will shrink, others will grow, and there will be jobs in three years that don't have a name yet. None of which is much comfort if your job is the one being squeezed. The responsibility sits with the people building these tools to bring crews with us in a streamlined more efficient workflow, rather than over them.

That tension sits alongside a growing sense that, regardless of the risks, adaptation is no longer optional.

“The future is uncertain, but one thing is not: the industry is moving,” says Jorquera. ”If you still have many years ahead of you in film, VFX, or virtual production, you have to learn how these tools work. Not because every tool is good. Not because every AI claim is true. But because staying relevant now means understanding the change clearly enough to use it, challenge it and not be replaced by people who only understand the surface.”

Adcock is very positive about the future and says he does not believe AI will ever replace humans.

“It can’t really emote or write poetry in the human sense—and I’m not afraid of AI taking my job; I use it to make myself more efficient,” he explains. “People already use AI every day in things like Siri, Alexa, maps and autocorrect and we’re moving from basic machine learning to more agentic AI that can learn and adapt. Tools will keep evolving whether we want them to or not.

Virtual production is not new—it’s just an updated version of rear projection—and we’ve always reinvented old techniques with new tools. Even old lenses are popular again because people want character that film used to naturally have. It’s about being realistic with technology, but also understanding it will keep evolving and we keep reinventing the same ideas from film to digital and back again.”

The question now is not AI will change the shape of whether AI belongs in virtual virtual production crews, production, but who gets to says Lyttle shape what it becomes.

www.tvbeurope.com

Flex Your Workflow.

Tackle Any Production.

Wow Your Audience.

From Camera to Screen: An Encoder/Decoder that Handles Every Stage of Your Broadcast Journey.

Level up the gear, amp up your workflow, and scale productions with confidence.

Monarch EDGE is a versatile 10-bit 4:2:2 encoder/decoder that does remote production, contribution and supports distribution workflows. Capture high-quality HDR visuals remotely, contribute synchronized multi-streams with ancillary data, and gang multiple devices for even the largest-scale productions.

video.matrox.com

Scan to learn more

IBC SHOW

Turning opportunity CHANGE INTO

TVBEurope sits down with IBC CEO Mike Crimp to discuss how the show is moving beyond the traditional trade show model to prioritise actionable collaboration across the global media and technology industry 20 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

Mike, you’ve spoken of IBC’s power to convene. What is it about the show that gives it that power?

One of IBC's greatest strengths is that it brings together every part of the global media entertainment and technology ecosystem in one place. Broadcasters, sports organisations, tech providers, creators, and students all come to Amsterdam because they recognise that the industry's biggest opportunities and challenges can no longer be solved in isolation.

That breadth of IBC’s truly international cross-industry participation creates conversations that simply don't happen elsewhere. It's also why IBC has evolved beyond being somewhere people come to discover new products.

Increasingly visitors come to exchange ideas, solve problems together and build relationships that continue long after the show has closed its doors.

www.tvbeurope.com

IBC SHOW

How does the show manage to remain fresh?

The industry doesn't stand still, so neither can IBC. Every year we look carefully at how media and entertainment is evolving and ask how the show can better reflect the conversations our community needs to have.

This year, for example, we're expanding Future Tech with the launch of Future Tech Ignite and Braindate, available through the new IBC Exchange Pass to encourage more meaningful knowledge sharing, while continuing to evolve the Conference programme around the issues shaping strategic decisions today. The themes may change from year to year, but the principle remains the same: helping the industry move from understanding change to responding to it.

At the same time, the continual mix of established global brands, first-time exhibitors, emerging technologies and new voices means every edition of IBC offers something genuinely different.

What benefits has the partnership with EIT Culture and Creativity brought to IBC? The partnership reflects a shared belief that innovation doesn't happen in isolation.

It happens when industry, academia, entrepreneurs and investors have opportunities to connect and collaborate around real challenges.

EIT Culture and Creativity has already strengthened the IBC Accelerator Media Innovation Programme as Innovation Partner in 2026, helping reinforce its focus on creating clearer pathways from proof-of-concept to practical deployment. We’ve recently announced that we're extending that partnership into Future Tech Ignite, connecting IBC more closely with Europe's creative innovation ecosystem and creating new opportunities for start-ups and entrepreneurs to engage directly with the wider media industry.

Ultimately, the partnership is about helping create an environment where promising ideas have a greater opportunity to become deployable industry solutions.

With the theme of Innovation in Action in mind, how can IBC help facilitate the technologies being showcased make it into the real world?

One of the biggest shifts we've seen over recent years is that

www.tvbeurope.com

organisations no longer come to IBC simply asking what's possible.

They want to know what works, what delivers value and how quickly it can be adopted.

That's why programmes like the IBC Accelerator Programme have become so important. Rather than developing technology in isolation, leading media companies—often traditional ‘competitors’— collaborate around real operational challenges and develop proof-ofconcepts together.

We've already seen that approach deliver lasting impact. Work around private 5G networking has progressed from Accelerator projects into major live broadcast deployments, including coverage of King Charles III's Coronation and the Paris Olympic Games. That's what Innovation in Action means to us: creating an environment where collaboration accelerates adoption.

IBC is highlighting trust, authenticity, and provenance at this year’s show. Is the industry keeping pace with necessary standards around AI, and how can the collaborations seen at the show provide a viable roadmap for the future?

AI is moving incredibly quickly, but what's encouraging is that the industry increasingly recognises that trust isn't something any one organisation can solve alone.

We’ve seen that reflected through the Accelerator Programme over several years. One Accelerator project from recent years brought together leading media organisations and tech providers to address the challenges of disinformation in media. This year, the incubator project, SMART STORIES: The Agentic Production Ecosystem, sees many of the same champions and others—including AP, BBC, ITV, Sky, Channel 4, NBCUniversal, Al Jazeera, Washington Post, the EBU and SMPTE—collaborate with tech partners to explore an open standard for editorial context interoperability across AI-powered production tools. The goal is to ensure AI can support newsroom workflows while preserving human editorial control and trusted editorial context.

Content provenance in the age of AI is also a key theme in the Conference programme. The panel, Security, Authenticity and Provenance: How can we trust the content we have now and in the future?, brings together experts from LaLiga, Globo and Google to explore how content can be secured, verified at its source and traced throughout its lifecycle.

IBC provides the environment where those conversations can happen across the whole ecosystem. Rather than debating standards in theory, we're creating opportunities for organisations to test ideas together and develop approaches that have the potential to become industry-wide best practice.

You’ve described IBC’s role as turning ‘change into opportunity’. How far do you want the show to go in being a live testbed for AI, rather than just hosting demos and panels?

We're already seeing that shift happen. Demos remain important, but increasingly visitors want to understand how technologies perform in realistic production environments and how organisations are

JULY/AUGUST 2026 | 21

IBC SHOW

beginning to adopt them. That's why show elements such as the Accelerators and the new Start-up Zone in Future Tech are such an important part of IBC. They provide an opportunity to fast-track technologies that address real-world challenges.

Our role is to create the environment where organisations can come together to accelerate progress. If those collaborations continue beyond Amsterdam and ultimately lead to deployment across the industry, then IBC has achieved exactly what we set out to do.

Braindate and IBC Exchange Pass sound like a shift from pure trade show to a curated knowledge network. How central is that to IBC’s long-term strategy?

It's a very deliberate evolution. People still come to IBC to discover technologies and meet suppliers, but our research increasingly shows they also want to maximise the return on the time they spend away from the office. They're looking for higher-value networking and conversations that help move projects forward.

That's exactly why we introduced the IBC Exchange Pass, which provides access to Braindate, a peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing programme that enables attendees to connect around shared interests, expertise and industry challenges. Rather than relying on chance encounters, IBC Exchange Pass holders can create discussion topics, join conversations hosted by others and book one-to-one or small-group meetings. The Braindate Lounge in Future Tech provides a space for these more focused conversations.

It's another way we're helping visitors make better use of their time at the show. We see curated networking and learning becoming an increasingly important part of the overall IBC experience, alongside the exhibition and Conference.

The Ignite stage expands IBC’s talent programme to four days. From your conversations with universities and industry, which specific skills gaps are coming up most urgently—and how is IBC addressing them beyond inspirational panels?

One of the biggest themes coming through our conversations is that the workforce itself is changing. AI and new commercial pressures are reshaping roles across media and entertainment. While new opportunities are emerging, there's also understandable concern about how existing professionals develop new skills and continue building long-term careers.

22 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

That's why the Talent Programme is designed to support the whole industry, not just people entering it. Alongside students and graduates, we're bringing together employers, educators, industry bodies and experienced professionals to explore everything from AI literacy and evolving production workflows to leadership, recruitment and continuous professional development. The aim is to create practical conversations around how the industry can reskill and upskill its existing workforce while also building stronger pathways for the next generation.

Students remain a vital part of that picture, which is why we're continuing to work closely with universities and education partners through initiatives like Future Tech Ignite and student-led content projects. But if we're serious about preparing the industry for what's next, we have to help people at every stage of their careers navigate change with confidence.

Do you have plans to be more granular in mapping where innovation is clustering on the show floor—for example, a way for attendees to trace a path from core broadcast to creator tools to sports tech in a coherent journey?

One of the strengths of IBC is being able to explore dedicated technology and market themes across the exhibition. Attendees can begin in Halls 9 and 10, where production technologies take centre stage, explore Halls 11 to 13, which bring together production, audio, transmission and film technologies, move into Hall 5's Content Everywhere for cloud, streaming and monetisation, before heading to Future Tech in Hall 14, where emerging technologies such as AI and the creator economy are shaping what's next At the same time, we're very conscious that today's innovations don't sit neatly within a single category. AI for example influences everything from content creation and live production to monetisation and audience engagement. That's why we're continuing to improve the digital experience. One example Mike Crimp is our new personalised event planner on the IBC website which means you can provide your job title and company and get personalised recommendations of sessions to attend and exhibitors to visit.

What do you hope attendees and exhibitors will take away from IBC2026?

Above all, I hope people leave energised about the future of our industry. IBC is unique because it brings together every part of the global media and entertainment ecosystem in one place, creating opportunities that simply don't happen elsewhere.

If exhibitors leave having built valuable new relationships and visitors leave with practical ideas they can put into action, then we've had a successful show.

Ultimately, that's what IBC is about: helping the industry turn change into opportunity and creating moments that genuinely matter.

www.tvbeurope.com

AUDIO

Vienna CALLING

The Eurovision stage at the Wiener Stadthalle

24 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

www.tvbeurope.com

AUDIO

Ahead of the 70th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, Matthew Corrigan visited Vienna to check out Sennheiser’s behind-the-scenes operation

T

he towering cumulonimbus columns reached far above us, chasing away the silvery light as we slipped from the Viennese sky. Beneath our wings, the piano keys marking the end of the main runway slid by and we dropped onto the tarmac at Austria’s world renowned City of Music, once home to Mozart and the birthplace of Schubert, Schoenberg and the revered Strauss brothers. It didn’t take long for the storm to erupt, building in a dramatic crescendo of sound and light that illuminated the capital with a demonstration of nature’s power. Watching from the eighth floor of the hotel, I realised that as metaphors go it was a pretty good one. The Eurovision Song Contest was in town.

Following Austria’s win last year, the event returned to Vienna for the third time in its 70 year history, with host broadcaster ORF taking on the monumental responsibility of ensuring proceedings ran smoothly for a global audience measured in the hundreds of millions. Over the decades, it hasn’t just been the flamboyant performances that have captivated audiences the world over. International relations have played a part too, with voting patterns often following political allegiances or otherwise.

Photo courtesy Adrian Almasan

Vienna's Eurovision Village

Behind the scenes, however, a very different story is played out, as teams from all corners of the continent work in harmonious collaboration to produce a technological tour de force that surpasses expectations with every edition. Underpinning the international nature of the event, Italian rental company Agorà provided full service support to ORF and worked closely with vendors such as Sennheiser both ahead of and during the event.

Backstage at the Wiener Stadthalle and behind their consoles in the OB trucks lined up outside, a small army of technicians make sure nothing is left to chance on the night. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the event offers an excellent opportunity for new workflows to be developed and evolved, as Sennheiser’s Volker Schmitt, manager of the company’s technical application engineering (TAE) team explains, “Eurovision is always a playground for us technical people.”

An integral part of Sennheiser’s Eurovision team, Schmitt and his colleagues made the journey over the border to oversee the largest ever deployment of Spectera, the company’s innovative WMAS solution.

Launched at IBC2024 in Amsterdam, Spectera has been a true game changer in the industry, shifting the dial on what is possible. Designed from the ground up with the future of audio production at its heart, Spectera is the world’s first bi-directional wideband digital wireless ecosystem using WMAS (Wireless Multichannel Audio Systems). The company is rightly proud of its creation.

Spectera’s advantage lies in its simplicity. By taking an entirely new approach befitting the plug-and-play, softwaredefined environments in which modern audio production takes place, Sennheiser has overcome the limitations that have shaped wireless innovation for more than half a century. Overturning the accepted norms, the company

www.tvbeurope.com

JULY/AUGUST 2026 | 25

AUDIO

each Base Station, a setup that gave full transmit and receive power for the hall. An additional two antennas per Base Station were added to ensure extra reliability.

A full overview of the current status of the Spectera wireless microphones and in-ears was provided by an RF control centre in the sound room, via Spectera WebUI and the Sonoros app.

Vienna also marked the solution’s Eurovision debut, as well as the first outing of its latest development: manufacturing samples of a new handheld transmitter.

Although not yet available on the market, the transmitters have already been fully certified.

26 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

Calm before the storm. An air of quiet competence surrounds the teams collaborating to ensure everything goes to plan

Sebastian Georgi Photo courtesy Adrian Almasan

designed an interoperable ecosystem that enables seamless integration of current and future hardware across a multiplicity of infrastructures. Spectera’s bidirectionality allows the simultaneous handling of audio signals and control data via a single RF carrier.

Its robust modulation and multiplexing capabilities provide protection against interference and RF dropouts while full system redundancy ensures continuity and consistent quality. SEK bidirectional bodypacks handle both mic and IEM in a single unit, enabling simultaneous transmission and reception of audio signals at a latency as low as 0.7 ms.

The system is unique in terms of modulation, as Jan Watermann, WMAS developer at Sennheiser explains, “Spectera has a modulation that is only Spectera. There are currently no other eight MHz professional audio systems, so therefore it’s very easy to detect friend from foe.”

“We’re excited to bring the largest deployment worldwide of Spectera Base Stations, bidirectional bodypacks and handheld mics to the ESC,” says Schmitt. “Artists and crews will benefit from the extraordinary clarity of IEMs over Spectera, and artists using a headset mic will be able to perform with just one belt pack. Like the Agorà team, our wireless experts are very much looking forward to the amazing international teamwork at Eurovision.”

The TAE team took six Spectera Base Stations to Vienna, driven by the need for failsafe reliability.

Four were active for audio and control data, each working on a single RF channel, while one unit was exclusively dedicated to 24/7 spectrum scanning.

The last unit was held in reserve as a spare.

Initially, two Spectera DAD antennas were located at stage right and green room left for

“When you’re an engineer at Sennheiser, you have a unique opportunity to design a system from scratch,” says senior development engineer transmission technology at the company, Sebastian Georgi, also confirming the solution performed perfectly in the run-up to the main event. “The electronics inside the handheld are almost identical to the beltpack,” he explains, “so with the first iteration, we anticipated some more issues, but it was absolutely flawless.”

Regulation of RF signals has historically been challenging, with no overarching global standard and different countries adopting their own approach.

As part of its ongoing development work and the continuing drive for spectrum, Sennheiser is lobbying regulators around the world to ensure approval is granted. The process is nearly complete, with authorities in most countries on board. “There is no single RF signal that can be used everywhere,” explains Watermann. “Europe is done, the US is done, and Canada. China is almost done. We have a dedicated department fighting for spectrum. There is so much going on, especially now with the German Bundeswehr (armed forces) claiming frequencies and cell phones taking more and more frequency. We are basically squeezed and it’s David versus Goliath.”

Real-world customer interaction also forms a vital part in the solution’s development, with Eurovision offering an ideal opportunity for the team to find out what is needed. “For us as engineers, it’s always very important to get to see these deployments,” Watermann says.

As an example, Spectera now includes a monitoring feature allowing the team to see if a cable is unplugged, driven by user feedback.

“The typical problem is a cable is unplugged from a beltpack but nobody knows. So the artist is saying ‘louder, louder’ but nothing happens. So now we have plug detection.

Due to the bidirectional communication,

www.tvbeurope.com

AUDIO

The first Eurovision 2026 semi-final in Vienna it’s possible to show this on screen, so the problem can be corrected. It’s a very simple feature, [but] very important sometimes.”

The evaluation process never stops, underlining the evolutionary ethos behind Spectera’s design.

Constantly looking ahead, the team is working towards additional monitoring capabilities. “We have some Monitoring every aspect of the performances ensures nothing is left to chance

www.tvbeurope.com

special features coming in the near future, to do more live monitoring and record stuff,” Watermann comments. “It’s important to see after the show, 'ok, what happened, at this minute, this second. What can we improve for the next show?'"

Looking to the future, it is already clear there will be some surprises as the pace of development accelerates. Earlier this year, the team opened the API to the world. “We created a specification of the control panel to monitor and set up the system,” says Georgi, “and something happened which we didn’t really anticipate. After 36 hours, customers created their first AI-driven monitoring tools… This is a development which is extraordinary.”

Extraordinary is a useful adjective to describe the Eurovision extravaganza, with the off-screen operation as impressive as any of the performances that take place on stage. Watermann closes with a tantalising glimpse of what is yet to come for Spectera, “There are a bunch of possibilities and yeah, we will decide what comes next. We have some ideas for smaller packs… and for completely new devices which were not possible—but now maybe they are.”

The full inventory of Sennheiser equipment in use during the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest comprised: • 4 x active Spectera Base Stations, using one RF channel each •​​​ 1 x Spectera Base Station for scanning • 46 x Spectera SKM handheld microphones with Neumann KK 105 A super-cardioid capsule • 101 x Spectera SEK bidirectional bodypacks • Headmics 4 (cardioid) • IE 100 PRO in-ears and EK 2000 IEM bodypacks for the orchestra and dancers

JULY/AUGUST 2026 | 27

LIVE PRODUCTION

In the crowd during Argentina v Cape Verde

Score!

Joe O’Halloran heads Stateside to discover how the FIFA World Cup 2026 was not only a test of athletic skill, but also a showcase for cutting-edge broadcast technology

F

or some, the FIFA World Cup of 2026 may be remembered for events that took place off the pitch—in a White House rather than on a green field—but in a tournament offering much controversy and unlikely heroics, what can’t be denied is that viewers did not miss a thing.

Featuring 48 teams for the first time, playing 104 games spread over 16 stadiums in the United States, Canada and Mexico, the tournament was also the most technologically enabled of its kind. Innovation encompassed fully-redundant cloud and networking infrastructure, as well as 3D and advances in broadcast technology.

Indeed, the broadcast tech deployed will almost certainly pass from pioneering into standard for sport.

As well as breaking new boundaries in scale, the event offered unprecedented operational challenges to official technology partner Lenovo. The tech firm entered the tournament with the aim of showing how its hardware, end-to-end technology backbone and “big moment” technical expertise could deliver what was required for the organisers, teams and six billion fans engaging across the globe.

At the heart of the technological infrastructure was an International Broadcast Centre (IBC) in Dallas distributing live match feeds to over

28 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

200 countries, working alongside a technical operations centre (TOC) in Miami. In addition to dealing with mission-critical operations, the TOC also took 4K IPTV feeds from the IBC with a direct latency of two seconds from Dallas to Miami.

Transforming data into insight Before the tournament began, Lenovo expressed confidence that fans would be able to enjoy live football like never before through new experiences powered by artificial intelligence. Indeed, a central facet of the broadcast operations was making use of billions of pieces of football-related data and representing them as insights for viewers. The technology provider noted that never before had this much data been available and meaningful to so many.

FIFA gave Lenovo unparalleled access to data and analytics through AI Pro, a specialised football interaction tool orchestrating multiple AI agents based on millions of data points. It analysed over 2,000 different metrics and delivered insights via multiple outputs, including immersive animations.

Exclusive 3D digital player avatars were used to provide greater context and understanding to the video assistant referee (VAR), semi-

www.tvbeurope.com

LIVE PRODUCTION

automated offside technology (SOAT) and goal-line technology (GLT) offered by fellow FIFA technical partner Hawk-Eye. The avatars turned split-second refereeing decisions into easy-to-follow 3D visual explanations for watching fans.

Lenovo's role was to build and manage the 3D player models with millimetric accuracy, scanning each of the 1,248 participating players. It also undertook the process of quality checks and asset management.

Creating realistic, scalable 3D content has traditionally been time-consuming and expensive, with existing 3D models lacking the accuracy needed for analytics, simulation and digital experiences. AI was vital in cutting the scanning time down to less than two hours.

Sharing the referee’s perspective Yet perhaps the most interesting and directly tangible way in which TV broadcasts were boosted by technology was the use of video captured from Ref Cam. The primary use was to help on-pitch decision-making, but for the World Cup a further aim was to transform footage of the referee's perspective into a stable, usable viewing experience with high clarity and consistency. Ensuring high-quality broadcast material from such a source presents a number of intrinsic key challenges. Namely, such environments make it difficult to capture clear, usable video while poor video quality can limit situational awareness for broadcast teams.

The new technology was first trialled, says Lenovo director sports vertical Santiago Manso, at the FIFA Club World Cup in 2025, but its genesis hails from the world of Formula One and the cameras attached to cars. “We had a similar challenge with the [on board] cameras where Formula One wanted to use that streaming content from all the cars at the same time. But whenever there were changes in light in the ride—for example, getting into the Monte Carlo tunnel—they had to adjust the colour, contrast, brightness manually. This [new] solution monitors the different kinds of frames, contrasts and all of the different parameters, adjusting automatically.”

Viewing experiences were enhanced through real-time visual

Pierluigi Collina, chair of the FIFA Referees Committee and chief refereeing officer, with Lenovo director sports vertical Santiago Manso

www.tvbeurope.com

Hardrock Stadium Miami

intelligence, Al-powered computer vision and network edge inferencing and analytics technology—Referee View Al Stabilizer—which could stabilise and enhance video as it was captured, transforming highmotion footage.

Observations showed that compared with previous Ref Cam technology, Referee View Al Stabilizer produced a 60 per cent reduction in video jitter for content at 60 fps transmitted with less than twosecond latency. According to Lenovo, this meant up to 70 per cent smoother video trajectories with zero image quality degradation in both colour and sharpness.

Legendary football referee Pierluigi Collina laid out more basic challenges. Collina, now chairman of the FIFA Referees Committee and chief refereeing officer at FIFA, explains that there were concerns around how heavy the camera would be, and this led to the cameras being worn on the referee’s heads, as seen in the TV coverage. “When you are on the field of play, every gramme matters. I was told that [the weight] would have been 400 grammes; I was a bit worried, so I asked [FIFA] to reduce it as much as possible. Then the other problem was how comfortable the camera was, which was initially linked to the audio system they had. They developed another one, which makes referees look like RoboCop.” In addition, Collina says having AI-based stabilisation means avoiding the need for extra hardware in the camera, thus cutting down on weight, while having a head-mounted device means that viewers follow the eyes of the officials. By contrast, a chest-mounted camera would have resulted in worse content and meant referees wearing a vest, something to be avoided in temperatures of over 30 degrees Celsius.

Lenovo believes that among the fundamental outcomes of the new technology on the Ref Cam have been clearer video, improved situational awareness and faster correction in production, leading to higher-quality broadcasts. Another by-product has been enhanced opportunities for broadcasters. For example, in the middle of the tournament, the BBC showed clips of Ref Cam footage to complement normal action, offering very personal insights into the reactions between officials and players not possible from standard broadcasts.

In many ways, the FIFA World Cup 2026 saw barriers broken both on the pitch and on screen. Going forward, the AI-based technology will only set new standards for how the game is run and how it is seen.

Goals have been met—and scored—everywhere.

JULY/AUGUST 2026 | 29

VIRTUAL PRODUCTION

Unwrapping A VIRTUAL STUDIO workflow Luxembourg-based FreeLens combined real-time graphics, live production infrastructure and a standardised post workflow to support the Ferrero Group’s growing demand for employer branding and corporate content 30 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

F

or production teams working with major brands, the challenge is rarely just one film, one event or one campaign. More often, it is the steady accumulation of briefs: recruitment videos, employee stories, social cutdowns, live streams, internal updates and web content, all expected to look consistent while moving quickly through production.

That is the space Luxembourg production house FreeLens has found itself occupying with Ferrero Group.

What began as recruitment communications work has grown into an ongoing production partnership around

www.tvbeurope.com

VIRTUAL PRODUCTION

Images: FreeLens

Career Bites, Ferrero’s employer branding campaign built around short-form employee testimonials, social media assets and live programmes.

FreeLens has now produced more than 100 short formats for Ferrero, alongside recurring live shows.

Some are filmed in a controlled green-screen studio, while others are filmed inside Ferrero’s offices and facilities. The production challenge is not to make every video feel the same, but to keep them recognisably part of the same world.

FreeLens is based only a few minutes from Ferrero’s Luxembourg offices, although the relationship is built on more than geography. The company has worked in broadcast for more than 25 years and continues to operate across both television and corporate production. That background has shaped the Ferrero workflow: live production habits, standardised infrastructure, fast turnaround and a reluctance to rebuild the process from scratch every time a new brief arrives.

“We transpose this logic to corporate productions: the objective is to create engagement through formats that are engaging and accessible,” explains Yann Figuet, director at FreeLens.

Taking a bite out of production For the studio-based work, FreeLens uses a 100 m² green-screen space with walls and a floor designed for real-time production. Three PTZ cameras feed dedicated Pixotope render engines while an URSA Broadcast G2 is mounted on an Arcam XD robotic arm. Tracking data from the arm is sent to Pixotope, allowing the virtual camera to follow the physical camera's movement in real time.

“The tracking transmits the camera movements; Pixotope interprets this data to drive the virtual camera and generate the set in real time, then everything is adjusted so that the camera signal, the keying and the 3D rendering are perfectly aligned on air,” says Figuet.

“The tracking transmits the camera movements; Pixotope interprets this data to drive the virtual camera and generate the set in real time" YANN FIGUET

www.tvbeurope.com

For this kind of work, FreeLens believes green screen is the more practical choice. Ferrero’s briefs shift from live programmes to recruitment films and social edits, so the studio has to reset quickly rather than commit to a single large environment.

“It also leaves more room to shape the material after the shoot. Backgrounds can be changed and graphics updated, while different versions can be created without locking the production into a single look on the day,” adds Figuet.

Physical sets can be expensive to build and slow to change, and Figuet sees them as largely disposable once a campaign wraps up. The Ferrero virtual environment, by contrast, can be treated more like part of the brand’s visual identity: something that is maintained and updated over time.

For studio-based pieces, the virtual environment also gives FreeLens a way to carry Ferrero’s visual identity into formats that might otherwise feel disconnected.

Using brand assets including Applaydu, Kinder’s ARbased game platform, the team can build sets around familiar colours, textures, packaging cues and graphic elements, then adapt those same ingredients across live programmes, tutorials and social edits.

“This allows us to create a real global video charter, built from the graphic elements of the Ferrero brands," explains Figuet.

The same concern for consistency carries into the location shoots. For filming inside Ferrero’s own sites, FreeLens uses a single-camera interview setup.

“The additional resolution of the [Blackmagic] Pocket Cinema Camera 6K [Pro] gives us room to create both 16:9 and vertical versions from the same material, which is essential for a campaign that has to feed careers pages, internal communication channels and social media,” says Figuet. “Likewise, the built-in NDs help when moving through mixed office and industrial lighting, while capturing to SSDs keeps the handoff into post quick.

“Our production team even records both shotgun and lavalier audio to give the editors options.”

In the control room, an ATEM Constellation 8K sits at the centre of the broadcast control solution, supported by HyperDeck recorders and SmartView monitoring. For live productions, feeds from the cameras, Pixotope outputs and any external sources come together in a single production chain, allowing FreeLens to manage the live stream, programme record and archive simultaneously.

“This integration allows us to offer broadcast-level quality with an excellent cost-to-quality ratio, particularly

JULY/AUGUST 2026 | 31

VIRTUAL PRODUCTION

FreeLens employs a mix of studio, cinema and compact camera systems that can be configured depending on the brief

PTZ cameras feed dedicated Pixotope render engines

suited to demanding corporate productions," explains Figuet.

“For us, the ATEM Constellation gives us the flexibility we need in the virtual studio. It handles the Pixotope engine outputs that feed the virtual set while also enabling us to build several versions of the programme simultaneously: a clean feed, a fully branded output and 9:16 or 16:9 versions for platforms like TikTok,. The clean feed is important because once the broadcast is finished, we can use that to produce the social cutdowns instead of relying on a branded master. The point is to avoid rebuilding the workflow every time the job moves from studio to location.

“We use a largely SDI-based setup, with modular control rooms and a mix of studio, cinema and compact camera systems that can be configured depending on the brief. Cabling, configuration and fault-finding are faster when every piece of equipment speaks the same signal language.”

Nuts and bolts With more than 100 short-form pieces moving through

32 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

the pipeline, FreeLens uses DaVinci Resolve for editing, grading, audio and export. Blackmagic Cloud Store centralises media so editors, colourists and graphics operators can work from the same files rather than managing separate local copies. The grade starts from agreed project settings, LUTs and reference exports, giving the team a common base before each piece is adjusted. Studio and location material are balanced for exposure, contrast, colour temperature and saturation before the Ferrero treatment is applied.

For green-screen work, Resolve is also used to refine subject integration, manage spill and protect skin tones against the virtual environment.

“DaVinci Resolve gives us the colourimetric precision and the capacity to manage a large volume of content, while the Cloud Store ensures workflow consistency across teams,” says Figuet. “Deliverables are exported from the same projects in the formats required for social, web and internal platforms. Lower thirds, transitions and branded graphic elements are built into templates, reducing the amount of repetitive work required each time a new video moves through post production.”

www.tvbeurope.com

PRODUCTION AND POST

Graphic adaptations

Graphics are a key part of modern broadcasting, not just for the look of channels but in delivering necessary information during news reports and sport coverage. Kevin Hilton examines the current trends in this creatively and technologically vibrant sector

T

he celebrations for 100 years of television have shown that many techniques of the medium viewers might take for granted have been there since the beginning. This is true for on-screen graphics. Early examples relied on a fixed camera shot of caption cards, which gave way to superimposed captions followed by rear-screen projections, logos and, in the late 1960s and ‘70s, character generators.

Digital image generation, including computer-generated imagery (CGI), is now well established, but the current trend is an adaptive approach enabling the image to be resized and moved within different aspect ratios and screen formats according to the platform or device.

Among the real-time graphics system developers leading this new multi-format approach is Vizrt. Senior customer success manager Russell Leak observes that a key point of adaptive graphics is to serve multiple resolutions from the same basic scene, while at the same time maintaining the quality and integrity of a brand. "Some broadcasters and content providers have a name for how good their on-screen look is," he says. "We want to maintain that as well, so the animations are important as well as the look and feel of the graphics."

This, Leak explains, calls for designers to have the ability to manage one scene for both the 16:9 broadcast or streaming output

34 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

and the 9:16 social media feed. Alongside adaptive graphics, the other main demand from users, Leak adds, is economic. "They're asking to do more for less," he says, "but part of that is not to lose sight of their brand and the quality Vizrt has become known for."

A connected production ecosystem A more recent name in TV graphics is HYPER Studios, founded in 2019 and now providing real-time, cloud-enabled systems to a variety of broadcasters, including IMG, Sky Sports, ITV News and YLE in Finland. The main requirement business manager Sam Wilson sees is flexibility, because, he says, broadcasters are no longer producing for a single linear output. "That means graphics systems need to support speed, accuracy, automation and scale," he explains. "For live sport and news especially, broadcasters need graphics that are data-driven, reliable, quick to operate and consistent across different outputs."

The overall trend, Wilson comments, is not merely "better looking graphics" but the whole process being part of "a connected production ecosystem" that combines playout, data, templates, editorial tools, automation and publishing.

Jump is a design agency that works on logos, title sequences, sports graphics, idents and branding. Art director Harry Handyside comments that while adaptive graphics matter, they are "the output requirement, not the creative solution."

www.tvbeurope.com

PRODUCTION AND POST

Jump's '60s-'70s styled retro graphics for the titles sequence of the BBC's The Claudia Winkleman Show, produced by So Television

Graphics for the 2026 Comic Relief Red Nose Day, designed by Jump

The technology, he says, is just the delivery mechanism, with memorable broadcast design instead coming from ideas, visual language and emotional intelligence.

For Dave Meadows, managing director of Pushed animation and video production studio, "simplicity is the number one goal." He adds that graphics need to be functional yet engaging, with the style largely based on a programme's subject matter, feel and tone rather than a stylistic trend. "Graphics must be adaptive to accommodate different screen formats," he says. "We now produce most graphics based on a 1:1 square screen and safe frame, so they can be easily adapted for portrait and landscape formats, although sometimes we will need to create separate artwork for that."

Removing friction As social media and other non-broadcast outlets become a priority for broadcasters, workflow platforms have developed to obviate the need for additional work and integrate all necessary formats. These include the production platform, incorporating MAM/DAM/PAM capabilities, from Mimir, part of the Fonn Group. Training specialist Richard Bentley, who has 30 years broadcast industry experience including stints at the BBC, ITV News, Al Jazeera and Danmarks Radio, explains that the system can ingest live feeds, edit graphics to the correct size in the Mimir Cutter and then output to the correct destination.

www.tvbeurope.com

Bentley comments that this is a shift away from not only when broadcast and social media outputs were treated as separate entities but also the even older demarcation of journalists and producers having to send graphics requests to designers and wait for the finished results. "What we're trying to do is move the friction away but still have the designers creating the templates and branding, with the editorial teams able to leverage that design and fulfil the graphics data from their own computer," he says.

As for graphic looks, there is a perceived trend for cinematic or older styles, with adoption of grainy or blurred effects, kinetic typography—moving text as exemplified by the opening 'crawl' of the first Star Wars film, although the technique goes back to the 1930s— and 'retrofuturism', vintage designs in a contemporary setting. Wilson reports growing demand for "more sophisticated and cinematic graphics", particularly for promos, titles and digital-first content, but says it should be applied carefully. "Kinetic typography is very relevant because short-form video needs to grab attention quickly, often without relying on sound," he explains. "But in live broadcast, especially sport and news, clarity still comes first."

Handyside agrees that sport has its own demands, including "graphic boldness and simplicity, less complexity and more immediate visual impact”. He also feels there has been a reaction against the previous taste for "glossy 3D graphics" in favour of "more textured and tactile visual styles".

At Pushed, Meadows says that graphic style is driven more by programme content and budget, not trends. He agrees the retro influence is "definitely apparent", with the irony that as graphics technology has become faster with better quality, people are looking to the past.

Technologically there are future possibilities for broadcast graphics through AI and virtual or augmented realities (VR/AR). The general feeling is that while these will have a role to play—or already are in the case of VR/AR for sport—they should be treated as either assistive (AI) or another creative choice to integrate into existing graphics workflows. All of which should ensure that graphics remain an important and evolving part of TV for at least the next hundred years.

JULY/AUGUST 2026 | 35

Image: Diarmuid Doran

HOW PLATFORM-BASED PLANNING REDUCES

A

complexity

cross the broadcast industry, organisations have typically built their technology systems around the needs of individual departments. That’s completely understandable; requirements often vary and budgets can be allocated at different times. The main downside of this approach, however, is that workflows are often quite fragmented, particularly as multiple specialist systems are integrated, sometimes more successfully than others.

For Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTÉ, the design of its new IT strategy provided an opportunity to shift the emphasis to platformbased planning and improve workflows across the organisation. This philosophy has recently helped shape the search for a replacement production scheduling and resource management platform that could operate across departmental boundaries rather than serve a single team or use case.

As RTÉ project manager Brian Cash explains, many broadcasters have been “hemmed in” by procurement driven by individual departmental needs, with the almost inevitable knock-on effect on operational complexity.

“We identified that, as part of our wider IT strategy, moving to

36 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

platform-based planning had enormous potential. The opportunity was to move away from isolated systems and towards platforms that could operate across departmental boundaries, and support a much broader range of activities.

“Our existing scheduling platform had been end-of-life for some time,” says Cash, “but we also viewed the project as an opportunity to address broader operational opportunities. For instance, we wanted greater flexibility in the way information was shared and managed, as some of our existing reporting processes and templates had been in place for a decade.”

A genius move The research phase lasted two to three years and involved discussions with more than ten broadcasters. By the time RTÉ initiated the formal tender process, the field had narrowed considerably, with only two suppliers making the final shortlist.

One of them was dzjinius, a software company that had already established a successful relationship with RTÉ through its work with the broadcaster’s long-running drama series, Fair City.

The company has developed a modular production management

www.tvbeurope.com

CASE STUDY

The platform currently focuses on planning studio activities and rolebased resources platform that supports activities including scheduling, budgeting, reporting and other key functions. It is designed to replace multiple point solutions with a more integrated approach, allowing different teams to work from the same information.

“We were aware of the relationship between dzjinius and our colleagues in the Fair City team, which had been in place for a number of years,” explains Cash. “Having evaluated the platform ourselves, it became clear that it aligned very closely with our wider thinking around platform-based planning. We were looking for something that could support different teams and ways of working without the need for extensive customisation, and we felt dzjinius offered the flexibility and collaborative approach we were looking for.”

The new project had wider implications for the broadcaster, covering four distinct areas, including sports, operations, finance and international distribution activities, with each team having different priorities and workflows.

According to Cash, one of the attractions of dzjinius was its ability to support those different requirements without forcing teams into separate systems. “We chose dzjinius because we felt it offered the right balance of flexibility and simplicity. Different teams naturally have different priorities and ways of working, but the platform gave us the confidence that we could support those requirements within a common environment rather than creating more complexity.”

Beyond spreadsheets To support the implementation process, a series of workshops were held, both remotely and in-person, to understand how each department operated. RTÉ also used the implementation as an opportunity to simplify processes rather than simply replicate existing ways of working.

A work in progress, the initial phase of the project focuses on planning studio activities and role-based resources. Work orders are used to map facilities and production requirements and align them with budgets. The same principles are being applied differently by the distribution team, which uses the platform to manage satellite bookings and feed information for colleagues in the control room.

“Although these use cases vary considerably, the underlying objective remains the same, which is to support different teams through a common platform,” says Cash.

www.tvbeurope.com

Phase two of the project will introduce named resource rostering through integration with RTÉ’s new HR system. In addition, one of the longer-term goals is to retire numerous spreadsheets and consolidate activities within the unified platform architecture. In addition to rostering, RTÉ anticipates the platform could also eventually support timesheet functionality.

“Staff will ultimately be able to access schedules through a mobile application, reducing the need to manually publish information,” Cash continues. “Existing dashboards currently rely on manual processes and information drawn from multiple spreadsheets, and the move towards a single platform will allow us to create new dashboards and introduce more live reporting models.”

According to Cash, the ability to export and report on information more flexibly has already demonstrated the potential benefits of a more centralised approach.

“Even at this relatively early stage in the implementation process, the speed and flexibility with which information can be accessed and reported on have demonstrated the value of a more integrated approach," he adds.

As adoption increases, RTÉ expects to create new dashboards and introduce more live reporting models. “Feedback from users across the four teams involved in the project has been very positive, with different teams excited by different capabilities.”

Looking ahead, the four teams involved in the project are expected to be fully using the platform by autumn 2026, with the legacy scheduling processes remaining in operation for a period to support financial reporting.

“This is very much a journey rather than a single project,” continues Cash. “As more teams adopt the platform and become comfortable with new ways of working, our goal is to create an environment where information flows more freely and people can spend less time managing processes and more time focusing on the work that matters.”

RTÉ’s News2day brings audiences news from Ireland and around the world

JULY/AUGUST 2026 | 37

AUDIO

Re-recording mixer Jamie Selway tells Jenny Priestley about the sound design techniques used to bring an immersive atmosphere to Channel 4’s A Woman of Substance

The

sound of

substance

38 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

www.tvbeurope.com

AUDIO

I

n January 1985, Channel 4 broadcast an adaptation of Barbara Taylor-Bradford’s classic rags-to-riches story, A Woman of Substance. Some 40 years later, the third episode remains the most-watched broadcast in Channel 4’s history with an audience of 13.8 million viewers.

It’s no surprise then that Channel 4 returned to the story earlier this year with a new adaptation produced

by The Forge. The story is told through two timelines, one following the young Emma Harte (Jessica Reynolds) in the early 1900s and the other set in the 1970s, with Brenda Blethyn playing the character as she approaches her 80th birthday.

Company 3 London re-recording mixer Jamie Selway employed different audio techniques to define the atmosphere of the show’s various settings, ranging from a stately mansion called Fairley Hall in the early 1900s to a 1970s Manhattan penthouse, with a key task of making the show sound modern and fresh.

Selway begins each project by digesting its needs and aspirations before building his team. For A Woman of Substance, he worked alongside sound designers James Hayday and Zoltan Kadnar, Foley supervisor Blair Slater, dialogue editors Sebastian Dale and Micah Livesay, ADR editors Adam Horley and Timor Oren, and mix tech Alessio Festiccia. “I bring everyone's editorial work together, compiling it all in the studio, mixing, and then working with a project’s showrunner to set the tone for how the show feels,” he explains.

On A Woman of Substance, Selway began working with producer Charlie Palmer and lead director John Hardwick before production began, enabling him to blur the line between post and production.

"I feel like the traditional old school way is that you shoot, you cut, you hand over to the post house, and it's a completely separate team and a separate process,” he explains. “But we were really lucky that we got to meet them quite early on and started the conversations about what was important for us to focus on and what would help tell the story they were putting together.”

Palmer and Hardwick wanted Fairley Hall to feel opulent, explaining that they saw it almost

as another character within the story. “There's a particular character called Adele who's the woman of the household,” says Selway. “Everything that she touches in her room is bejewelled; if it shakes, you can hear crystals. There are lots of thick materials and leather; the wood is all super creaky. We spent a lot of time building this palette of opulence, and John and Charlie really let us just layer it up and tell that story with sound.”

Another key feature of Fairley Hall is the solarium, which Selway reveals was inspired by the Temperate House at London’s Kew Gardens. The team visited the real-life venue to build the sound design for the fictional house.

The tools of the trade Selway uses Avid Pro Tools for mixing, often beginning in Dolby Atmos before mixing down to 5.1 or stereo depending on the client’s needs. He employs a number of plugins to keep the audio as clean as possible, a particular challenge with some scenes on A Woman of Substance. “We were shooting in places that had planes flying overhead or cars that we didn’t want. Pro Tools has lots in its arsenal that can really sculpt what was recorded. We use Hush, a dialogue-cleaning plugin, a lot, and Altiverb, a really lovely reverb tool that lets us place things in spaces effectively.”

To help decide how the reverbs and effects would work, Selway and Hardwick drew a map of Fairley Hall to understand how the house would sound. “The sound of the front of the house is very different to the sound of the back. It's not just an upstairs/downstairs thing,” he explains. “We had a hierarchy of how sheltered Jamie Selway

JULY/AUGUST 2026 | 39

Brenda Blethyn as the older Emma Harte in 1970's Manhattan

the family were from the workers of the house. For example, you would hear more of the gardeners at the front of the house than you would at the back. We built reverbs for each of those spaces using Altiverb.”

Adding to the drama While they endeavoured to stay as true to life as possible in building the sounds of Fairley Hall, Selway and the sound team also added in some fantastical moments where they "just threw the rule book out”.

These include introducing the sound of tropical birds in the garden during a key scene where Adele finally leaves her bedroom. “We wanted to really sell when Adele has her moment and she is in the garden. We went kind of nuts and really amped that moment up.

There were some tropical birds that you probably wouldn't find in Yorkshire in the early 1900s, but it just really worked and made it feel really magical.”

Another key example of where sound helps to dramatise what’s happening on screen is around the house’s grand staircase. Foley was key to these scenes, with the sound of creaking steps added to what in real life was a stone staircase. “The disciplines between the Foley and sound effects team really blurred on this project,” says Selway. “We worked very collaboratively.

We would have calls to discuss how we were going to translate what John wanted for the spaces. Often it was a combination of both, with the Foley team physically recording things like the movement of expensive cloth and footsteps on thick lush carpet, and then sound designer James Heyday using his recorded sound effects and cutting things together. It was my job to kind of make them feel cohesive and as one.”

40 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

Jessica Reynolds plays the younger version of Emma

While much of the action takes place indoors, young Emma spends a lot of her time walking across the Yorkshire countryside between Fairley Hall and her parents’ home. One key location for the story is an area the Harte family christens Top of the World, which is open to all weathers.

“I love the realness of production sound, and my instinct is to try and preserve that,” explains Selway when discussing dealing with the weather. “There are so many tools at our disposal now, we can fix a lot of issues, such as Ceder VoiceEx2 and Hush Pro, that, five or 10 years ago, you just wouldn't have been able to. That said, we have a lovely-sounding ADR room at Company 3 in London, and it’s so nice having that in-house. It flows really well, having everything under one roof.”

Company 3 also worked on the series’ online edit and colour grade, which meant the producers were based in their London office throughout post production.

“That meant I could experiment and try things and then grab them in for a minute and play scenes. It made the process feel really collaborative and fun.”

The other side of the story in A Woman of Substance follows Emma Harte in the 1970s. Now a leader of industry, she spends most of her time in her New York office. One of the joys of these sequences for Selway was creating the sound of the technology from that time. “We spent a lot of time recording that sort of clunky ‘70s very physical mechanical electronic tech.

I'm forever mixing people just tapping on phones now, but creating the sounds of those old clunky telephones was really fun.”

The main challenge of any period drama is the production sound, says Selway: “It has to be clean as a whistle for you to believe that you're in that world with them. Building the whole world around the anchor, which is the dialogue, that I would say was our biggest challenge on this one.

“The thing I'm just most proud of is the house.

Everything has character and we really thought about every little element within that house. Even the fireplaces are a character. They sort of tell the story of the demise of the family. The fires were less stoked as their businesses started to decline. There was slightly less coal on the fire, so we really tried to tell subtle story hints with the sound. I think it’s really effective in the show.”

A Woman of Substance is available to stream on Channel 4. Season two has recently been commissioned

www.tvbeurope.com

All images Channel 4

AUDIO

CASE STUDY

MODERNISING

R

production

adiotelevisione Svizzera (RSI), Switzerland’s public broadcaster for Italian-language content, produces around 4,000 hours of original programming each year. As audience expectations shift and production demands grow, RSI focuses on evolving its technology in a way that supports both creativity and efficiency.

What began with a graphics transition has led to a long-term broader transformation. Working with Ross Video and AVC Systems, RSI is building a connected production ecosystem across graphics, switching, automation, robotics, and media management, with each deployment aiming to simplify workflows and reduce complexity.

42 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

This approach allows RSI to introduce new capabilities without disrupting live production. Today, its environment runs on SMPTE 2110 IP-based infrastructure, giving teams the flexibility to scale, adapt, and deliver high-quality content with confidence.

Reducing complexity across production RSI previously operated with a mix of legacy systems and longstanding vendors. This made workflows harder to manage and offered limited flexibility when change was needed. As key systems reached end of life, the need to modernise became more urgent.

Graphics was a central challenge. Moving away from an

www.tvbeurope.com

CASE STUDY

RSI is able to deliver five shows from a single green screen studio

established provider was seen as complex and risky, especially when graphics are deeply embedded in live production. This perception can delay change, even when other options are available.

At the same time, managing multiple vendors increased the effort required for support, upgrades, and integration. With added pressure from changing viewing habits and a strong focus on efficiency, RSI needed a simpler and more efficient way to operate.

“Our technical strategy is based on getting the best value for money,” explains Stefano Pagani, CTO, RSI. Building a unified IP-based workflow RSI addressed these challenges through a phased deployment of Ross Video solutions, building a more integrated production environment over time.

A key step was the move to XPression Graphics. The transition was smooth and caused minimal disruption, showing that even core systems can be replaced without impacting production. This gave RSI the confidence to expand its use of Ross graphics tools and strengthen its on-air look.

The success of the broadcast graphics deployment helped build trust in the wider Ross ecosystem and supported the adoption of additional solutions over time. RSI also introduced Voyager to support virtual graphics, enabling teams to deliver five shows from a single green screen studio.

Ross graphics, routing, switching, robotics, and automation work

www.tvbeurope.com

together in a unified SMPTE ST 2110 ecosystem that improves integration, simplifies control, and supports the broadcaster's consistent day-to-day operation.

More recently, RSI deployed Carbonite HyperMax to replace its existing switcher, introducing a modern production platform that enables the RSI team to scale production and ultimately do more with less.

“I work with Ross solutions every day. They are really powerful, and we can change scenes very quickly,” states Luca Brioschi, virtual production designer and developer, RSI. Greater flexibility, efficiency and scale RSI now operates with greater efficiency, clarity and control across its production environment. Systems work together more effectively, reducing time spent on integration and support while improving reliability for the company.

The move to XPression and Voyager strengthens RSI’s graphics capabilities and proves that even core systems can be replaced without disruption. This gives teams the confidence to continue evolving their workflows as production needs change.

Ross solutions, supported by AVC’s expertise, have improved both RSI's operational efficiency and creative output. Teams deliver high-quality content with greater flexibility, while the integrated ecosystem reduces complexity and creates a more consistent production experience.

With SMPTE ST 2110 and Carbonite HyperMax in place, RSI is ready for the future. The environment scales as needed, and the broadcaster's ongoing relationship with Ross Video ensures continued 24/7 support, stability, and alignment in order to meet its long-term goals.

JULY/AUGUST 2026 | 43

VIRTUAL PRODUCTION

The VTuber Awards' virtual environment

DESIGNING SPACE FOR VIRTUAL

production

By Ihor Chupryna, stage director and stage designer at WePlay Studios

So even when a client brings me a reference, I don’t see only a pretty image. I see a functional element the event will rely on: where the focus will go, how the space will support the performance, what can be built within the timeline and budget, and what makes more sense to build physically versus virtually.

s a stage designer, I’m often one of the first links between the client and the production team. My job is to understand the client’s main goal and translate it into a stage that works as an event. And this is where many talented stage designers get stuck.

Instead of looking for the core idea, they try to copy the client’s words or match a reference image too literally. A client brings a mood, a feeling, a direction. Sometimes they bring one image they simply like. If you try just to copy it, the stage becomes a backdrop, not part of the story.

A stage is not a background. A stage is the event’s environment. It sets the audience’s mood and helps viewers believe what they see. And it doesn’t matter if the stage is physical or virtual—the idea is the same.

The stage has to work as a system.

What virtual production actually means When I say “virtually,” I don’t mean a 3D picture placed behind the performer. I mean an approach where part of the stage exists in a digital environment, but it still works as a real stage inside the production process. People often underestimate virtual stages.

They treat them like a nice prop, or something you can add later.

In reality, a virtual stage must be part of the concept from day one, because it defines how the frame works, where the focus is, how characters move, and more.

In other words, we are not designing a background but a stage, just not all of it is made from wood and metal. Part of it is made from 3D models, textures, lighting, and real-time rendering.

Modern virtual shows like the VTuber Awards are no longer just “a stream with an avatar.” They are closer to full TV productions,

A

44 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

www.tvbeurope.com

VIRTUAL PRODUCTION

mixing together game-style visuals with live broadcast workflows, camera tracking, and real-time control.

The VTuber Awards The VTuber Awards clearly show this mindset.

VTuber culture is built on unique characters: each has their own lore, personality, style, and small details that fans recognise. So for me, it was important not to create a catchy 3D environment, but to build a world that supports the characters and feels true to the format.

At the centre of this setup is Unreal Engine.

It’s where the show’s visuals are built: virtual environments, lighting, materials, effects, and animation. The key difference is that it runs Connecting the virtual world of the VTuber Awards with the real studio was key to the project in real time, so the world can react instantly during the broadcast.

I designed an underwater universe that matched the lore of one Unreal Engine is often distributed across multiple machines, as was of the hosts and the overall event idea. To make it believable, we the case in our VTuber Awards setup. This is where the Disguise had to follow real-world rules: how light spreads in water, how platform comes in, acting as both a media server and a show movement reads on camera, and how air appears as bubbles. control system. Disguise coordinates multiple rendering nodes, Without Unreal Engine, the space would have looked like a themed manages timing and synchronisation, and routes output signals overlay instead of a living world. to different destinations—from LED screens to broadcast feeds. It We planned how the world would feel, how the characters—digital unifies everything into a single system, helping ensure stability and avatars—would move, and how the audience would read it. I built predictable live output. the space with a virtual audience zone, live chat widgets that Even with the best solutions, technical bottlenecks still happen. appeared on the stage, stream-style UI elements, and small onIn those moments, the stage designer’s job is not to cling to one screen overlays to support a true live-show feel. cool trick if that proves to be technically risky. The job is to protect For this event, the most important part wasn’t just the graphics, the feeling and find another way to achieve the same result without but how seamlessly the virtual world connected to the real studio. breaking the broadcast.

To make that work, we used camera tracking (for example, systems That’s how we approached the VTuber Awards when we hit like stYpe). The tracking sends the camera’s real movement and technical limits with textures and system load. We didn’t drop the lens data into Unreal Engine, so the virtual scene follows the atmosphere—we found a solution that gave the audience the same camera exactly. effect with less risk in live.

That’s what makes the illusion believable: perspective stays correct, scale feels natural, and virtual objects look like they exist in Instead of final thoughts the same space as the hosts or performers.

Every year, virtual production gets more tools: real-time engines, Live broadcast changes everything. In large-scale productions, smarter tracking, better lighting workflows, and faster AI. But the real question is not “What new tech can we add?”, it's “What should be virtual in the first place?”

If you treat virtual elements like decoration, they will look like decoration. If you treat them like real space, designed for camera, scale, light, movement, and live timing, they start to feel believable.

And just like in physical stage design, you have to choose solutions that can actually carry your idea. On a real set, you don’t pick materials that can’t hold the weight of the construction. In virtual production, the same logic applies: you don’t pick tech or assets that can’t survive real-time rendering and live broadcast. The goal is to choose the method that supports the concept and keeps it stable under production pressure.

Backstage at the awards

www.tvbeurope.com

JULY/AUGUST 2026 | 45

CASE STUDY

post BECOMES production

WHEN PART OF

E

ntertainment television has always been about scale. Bigger audiences, bigger productions, bigger expectations. Today, however, the scale challenge is increasingly happening behind the scenes.

Formats such as The Voice generate extraordinary amounts of content. As production volumes continue to grow, ITV Studios The Netherlands and the Dutch team of NEP Europe began asking a simple question: is there a better way to bridge the gap between production and post production?

A different approach The Voice includes a vast amount of content generated from multiple stages, dozens of cameras, countless hours of recordings, and a constant stream of performances, reactions and backstage moments, all of which contribute to a growing mountain of media that editorial teams must process, review and transform into compelling television.

For years, broadcasters and production companies have tackled

46 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

that challenge through people and process. Assistant editors log footage, producers create notes, editors sift through material and post production teams work against the clock to prepare content for delivery. The approach works, but it was designed for a different era.

As production volumes continue to increase, many in the industry are questioning whether traditional post workflows are fit for purpose.

For ITV Studios The Netherlands, the answer was to look at the entire production chain differently. Working with the Dutch team of NEP Europe, the company set out to address a challenge familiar to almost every producer of large-scale entertainment television: how to maintain creative quality at lower cost while handling ever-increasing volumes of content.

Media becomes available during recording. Production notes are linked directly to content. Metadata is generated automatically.

Editorial information follows the material throughout the workflow rather than being transferred separately.

The goal is simple: ensure that when editors receive content, they can focus on storytelling rather than preparation.

www.tvbeurope.com

CASE STUDY

Building intelligence into the workflow For producers, the challenge is clear: deliver A modern entertainment format such as the same or better quality with tighter budgets The Voice can involve dozens of camera and faster turnaround times. feeds, including ENG material, multiple audio Workflow innovation helps address that sources and production days that generate challenge. By reducing manual effort and hundreds of hours of content. Every camera streamlining the path from acquisition to angle potentially contains an important edit, productions can operate more efficiently editorial moment. The challenge was not without compromising creative ambition. capturing the content but understanding it.

In that sense, efficiency is not simply a To address this, NEP integrated technology cost-saving exercise; it is a way of protecting from Limecraft into the workflow. Content quality in a changing market. recorded on EVS systems became available almost immediately through live ingest, A glimpse of the future allowing production and post teams to start The collaboration between ITV Studios and reviewing material while recording was still NEP Europe reflects a broader transformation Dozens of cameras are used on The Voice taking place. taking place across the media industry.

At the same time, production notes and As audiences demand more content and metadata were linked directly to media assets, ensuring valuable production schedules continue to tighten, broadcasters and producers context is not lost between production and post. must find new ways to balance efficiency and creativity. The answer Automated transcription and metadata enrichment further improved is unlikely to be found in working harder within existing workflows. searchability and accessibility across large volumes of content. The Instead, it will come from rethinking how content moves from result was not simply more data. It was more useful data. production to post production in the first place.

Editors could quickly identify relevant moments, search content For decades, the handover between those worlds has represented more effectively and gain immediate visibility into the material one of television’s most significant operational boundaries. arriving from production. In an environment where hundreds of hours Increasingly, that boundary is disappearing. of content may be generated over a relatively short period, those The future of entertainment production may not be defined by efficiencies quickly become significant. better cameras or faster editing systems alone. It may be defined by workflows that ensure the journey from capture to edit is seamless, Reducing friction, protecting creativity connected and intelligent from the very first frame. For ITV Studios Much of the industry’s discussion around automation and AI focuses and NEP Europe, that future is already taking shape. Not by replacing on future possibilities. The reality inside TV production is often far editors, but by ensuring that by the time content reaches the edit suite, more practical. much of the heavy lifting has already been done—allowing creative The biggest gains come from eliminating small, repetitive tasks that teams to focus on what they do best: telling stories. occur thousands of times throughout a production. Every clip that requires manual identification. Every note that must be copied between systems. Every sequence that needs to be rebuilt before editing can begin.

By automating these processes, the workflow reduces manual handling, improves consistency and accelerates the journey from production to edit. On The Voice, this approach significantly reduced the time required for preparation and pre-cutting, allowing the show's editorial team to access relevant content faster and spend more time on creative decision-making.

There is also a compelling business case. Broadcasters and production companies are operating in an increasingly challenging market. As viewing habits continue to shift away from traditional linear television, advertising revenues are under pressure, and production budgets face greater scrutiny. At the same time, audiences continue to expect Content became available almost immediately through live ingest premium content and high production values.

www.tvbeurope.com

JULY/AUGUST 2026 | 47

ADTECH

Advancing

ALIGNMENT The European Programmatic TV Initiative’s Stage Two collaboration aims to make new adtech platforms easier to deploy at scale— and open the door to advertisers who might not have made use of traditional TV, writes David Davies

Following on from Stage One which culminated in the publication of a report setting out next steps, Stage Two aims to tackle the “practical barriers slowing programmatic TV scale across Europe”. With workflows, definitions and measurement still the subject of considerable variation, this phase plans to establish “shared guidance and reusable frameworks to reduce complexity and enable consistent, scalable trading of premium TV inventory across markets.”

s the content boom of the last decade has continued, and the number of services and platforms that broadcasters, agencies and adtech companies need to accommodate has surged, so has the imperative to achieve greater automation and efficiency—but without adding unduly to interoperability and workload challenges.

Hence, the European Programmatic TV Initiative (EPTVI), a major ongoing project from the Project X Initiative (a thought leadership and advisory collective focused on the international media, advertising, entertainment, technology and sports industries).

Backed by The Trade Desk, Google, OpenX, PubMatic, Equativ, Magnite, Cadent and Adform, EPTVI aims to accelerate the development of a more effective programmatic TV market in Europe. For those unfamiliar with the term, programmatic TV refers to the data-driven, automated trading of video ad placements across markets and platforms.

Pivotal point Justin Gupta, head of broadcast and video ads, EMEA at Google Sellside Partnerships, indicates the timeliness of the initiative: “For years we’ve seen broadcasters, agencies and adtech providers managing a complex transition from offline sales models to a marketplace that is digital, data-driven, and automated. At Google Ad Manager, we want to be a collaborative partner in this journey. Our goal in joining EPTVI is to support the adoption of common standards that drive muchneeded consistency across different markets.”

But whilst this undoubtedly involves wrestling with some tricky technical challenges, there is also a shared emphasis on allowing advertisers who may not have previously appeared on TV services to benefit from this new era of delivery. As Gupta remarks: “Programmatic isn’t just about tech; it’s about opening the door to new demand, bringing in digitalfirst brands and smaller advertisers

A

48 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

Justin Gupta

www.tvbeurope.com

ADTECH

who haven’t traditionally used TV, and helping broadcasters extract more value from their premium inventory through better yield management. We want to show the path toward a converged world where linear and digital aren’t competing, but working together to keep TV at the centre of the media plan.”

Riding two horses James Grant is senior vice-president of advanced television at full-service monetisation platform provider Equativ. Whilst he cautions that it might not be possible to “answer everything in one go”, he says that Stage Two will address such critical questions as: “How do you improve interoperability? Can we improve take-up of programmatic TV from the linear broadcasters?

And can the more programmatic-led businesses adapt to the constraints of a regulated broadcast world?”

Alluding to trading requirements such as Real-Time Bidding—whereby advertising inventory is bought and sold on a per-impression basis, via instantaneous programmatic auction—Grant adds that if we can “find some commonality that will really help programmatic television [to grow more].”

Identifying such points of agreement seems even more critical when you consider that, as Gupta remarks, “right now, many broadcasters are effectively ‘riding two horses’—trying to manage localised linear systems while building out sophisticated digital businesses. That creates a massive operational strain.”

Opportunities he sees for improvement encompass such issues as inconsistent metadata and the transition towards automated creative clearance verification.

Gupta adds: “We also appreciate the industry’s desire for measurement that spans every surface, which is essential for broadcasters looking to sell their inventory seamlessly across different platforms and screens.

There’s a natural commercial tension, too: broadcasters need to protect their pricing and their brand, while buyers demand the flexibility and transparency they see in other digital environments. Addressing these misalignments is the ‘hard work’ of Stage Two.” North Star principles Whilst there is much to be done, it surely helps that Stage Two has a well-delineated structure. There are three core deliverables: North Star Principles, which will provide common reference points for how programmatic TV should operate across European markets, covering interoperability, measurement, transparency, workflow and local adaptation; reusable core components, which includes shared guidance

www.tvbeurope.com

and documentation such as metadata templates, measurement and reporting conventions, workflow and interoperability guides; and the Premium Programmatic Partner (3Ps) programme, which will deliver an industry framework to support clearer and more accountable trading of premium programmatic TV inventory.

The work will be delivered through three crossindustry Working Groups, focused on Definitions and Measurement, Technical and Operational Foundations, and the 3Ps programme. Early signs are encouraging, indicates Grant: “I think that Stage Two is doing a really good job already of putting the right people around the table and highlighting the areas where, as a group, we can really do something.”

Meanwhile, individual members of EPTVI continue to innovate in the area of programmatic TV. Subsequent to its interview with TVBEurope, Equativ announced it has expanded its partnership with Titan OS to introduce what is billed as the first-ever programmatic connected TV (CTV) home screen video advertising solution across Europe and Latin America. The new offering allows advertisers to access premium home screen video inventory programmatically through curation platform Maestro by Equativ.

For Google, Gupta reveals that “we are leaning heavily into technologies that bridge the gap between broadcast quality and digital precision. A major focus for us is delivering addressable and programmatic live advertising. The ‘next wave’ of revenue for broadcasters will come from scaling these live, connected TV experiences. We’ve already seen encouraging results in live sport environments, providing seamless ad breaks that preserve the viewer experience while giving advertisers the digital-style reporting they expect.”

James Grant

For more on Project X Initiative projects, including EPTVI, please visit https://www.projectxinitiative.com/

JULY/AUGUST 2026 | 49

THE FINAL WORD

Virtual production is no longer just a production tool

By Ivan Reel, director of business development at StradaXR

A

few months ago, an independent producer stood in our LED volume trying to prove something no deck or mood board could show. Accelerant is Mike Manaserri and FluxCap Films’ project, and our role was to support Mike and his team as a virtual production partner: helping them understand what was technically possible, what made sense for the story, and how stage-based production could help to create a stronger proof-ofconcept. The goal was to move beyond a traditional pitch package and create something cinematic, tangible and most importantly, technically credible. A deck can communicate references and intent, but it cannot fully show tone, camera language, performance environment, or production value.

Accelerant had ambitious production goals even by virtual production standards, built around speed, tension, collisions, impacts and sustained vehicle-based action. That kind of material is extremely difficult to stage conventionally, especially at the proof-of-concept stage. Our LED volume gave the team a controlled environment where actors, cinematography, vehicles, lighting and virtual environments could be brought together safely and repeatedly, pursuing the intensity of high-speed action without exposing anyone to the full risk profile of live-road stunt execution.

That changes the investor conversation, because it reduces abstraction. Investors can see the world, the image, and the production value that the team is pursuing. It becomes less about saying “trust us, this could work” and more about showing “here is the direction, here is the production method, and here is how this could scale,” and in some cases that happens directly in front of prospective investors, in real time.

I think this points to a significant shift in how projects get made, not just Accelerant. Virtual production has historically been discussed mainly as a tool for projects that are already financed.

What we are seeing now is that it can also become a development and financing tool, allowing a production company to prove more of the project earlier, before a full greenlight. That does not replace the traditional business package, but it strengthens it, because investors and commissioners can start evaluating execution rather than just a script and a deck. Over time, that will change what gets funded, not only how it gets pitched.

50 | JULY/AUGUST 2026

Broadcast is a very natural fit for this kind of thinking. Arguably more natural than film in some ways, because broadcasters already think in terms of repeatability, speed, format development and scalable production value across a series rather than a single asset. The same methodology used for a film proof-of-concept applies just as well to a broadcast one. Instead of a static deck with references, a production team can create a short piece of material that demonstrates the set language, the host environment, graphics integration and camera movement. Our bias is toward tools that move the image closer to final production value as early as possible, which is why a path tracing pipeline like Chaos Arena is so compelling for broadcast work specifically: broadcasters and commissioners are not only buying an idea, they are buying confidence that a format can be produced repeatedly, efficiently and at the right quality level.

There is a larger conversation emerging here too, particularly around AI. I see the stage and LED volume production more broadly, as a natural meeting point between practical set builds, AIgenerated CG, real-time environments and final-pixel production for both film and broadcast.

Once those strategies begin to merge properly, producers are no longer choosing between physical production, virtual production and AI-assisted world-building. The stage becomes the bridge: a place where filmmakers, broadcasters and technical teams can meet in one production language, well before anyone has committed a full budget to finding out whether the idea works.

Virtual production does not automatically make a project fundable, and it does not replace story, talent, producing discipline or a credible finance plan. It can help translate ambition into confidence, and it can democratise access, giving smaller or independent teams a stronger way to prove themselves, provided the technology is guided properly rather than used as a gimmick.

The question every independent producer, and increasingly every broadcaster, should be asking is what part of their project is hardest for an investor or commissioner to imagine. If that piece can be demonstrated on a stage rather than described in a meeting, it is worth serious consideration, because that is where the industry is heading regardless.

www.tvbeurope.com

9000