SEPTEMBER 2026
, inspirationa l a n o i t a s l, n e s t s o i o t nal, Mupp a m r b e l e e c h etat T ion al…
at 50 AN INDEPENDENT VISION:
Thomas Riedel on his latest adventure
F
It’s time to get things started
or those of us of a certain age, The Muppets have been a huge part of our lives. For me, The Muppet Show was integral to my childhood. I’m slightly too young to remember when the show made its debut in September 1976, but I vividly recall sitting with my Dad to watch what must have been repeats. I had a Muppets’ album (no idea which one) which I would beg my parents to play endlessly. And as I grew older, the Muppets stayed with me. Anyone else remember Muppet Babies on BBC One in the mid-1980s? Once I became an adult, the Muppets became that nostalgic show that I would think about fondly. And then, in 2012, the gang returned to the big screen with The Muppets. Back then, I was a film journalist and attended a press conference to promote the film’s release. The highlight of my career remains asking Kermit and Miss Piggy a question. So, I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to celebrate 50 years since The Muppet Show premiered on ITV in the UK. As is often the case, it was British audiences who first saw the genius behind the show before it became a global phenomenon. Conversely, much of this issue looks forward. There’s so much innovation happening in our industry. Walk around any of the major trade shows, and you’ll see new products, platforms and ideas. Over the last few years we’ve seen terms like TAMS, software-defined, the edge and, of course, AI enter the conversation. At last year’s IBC Show, I spent most of my time learning about the Media eXchange Layer, which has gone on to make headlines over the past 12 months. What will we be talking about this year, I wonder? Hopefully, in the following pages, you’ll find plenty to spark conversation whether you’re travelling to Amsterdam or not.
JENNY PRIESTLEY, CONTENT DIRECTOR @JENNYPRIESTLEY
www.tvbeurope.com FOLLOW US X: TVBEUROPE / Faceboook: TVBEUROPE1 LinkedIn: TVBEUROPE
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, Monica Heck, Joe O’Halloran, 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
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. All contents © 2026 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine 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.
Image: CBS/Getty Images
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.
www.tvbeurope.com
SEPTEMBER 2026 | 03
In this issue Image: Nancy Moran/Sygma/Getty Images
SEPTEMBER 2026
12 An enduring legacy How did a puppet show filmed in a studio based in leafy Borehamwood become a global smash hit? Jenny Priestley looks back at the production of The Muppet Show, the talent behind the cameras, and why its legacy continues to resonate 50 years later
16 Getting to know you How can broadcasters better understand their audience while simultaneously enhancing the viewing experience? Monica Heck investigates BBC R&D’s new platform, Signals, which aims to transform passive consumption into a deeper, two-way engagement
12
20 Peering over the edge The edge is no longer just a buzzword, it’s a critical component of modern broadcast infrastructure. TVBEurope speaks to industry leaders to discuss how edge technology and cloud workflows can co-exist to create more resilient, cost-effective and scalable media operations
26 Empowering the future Industry partners are once again coming together to provide vital infrastructure and expertise for global student-led live broadcast On Air. TVBEurope hears how the 24-hour event is helping to shape the next generation of broadcast talent
30 An independent vision Thomas Riedel has built a global broadcast powerhouse guided by a simple philosophy: technology should create experiences, not just solve problems. As he embarks on a new adventure with ARRI, Riedel sits down with Jenny Priestley to discuss industry shifts and why he refuses to abandon the approach that’s brought him this far
30
34 Time for TAMS Originated by BBC R&D, the open-source Time Addressable Media Store technology is being applied to a host of applications including newsroom production and social media content, writes David Davies
46 Improving mobile video As high bandwidth mobile video consumption continues to surge, EE and Meta have partnered to implement congestion awareness technology, promising more reliable streaming and reduced buffering, reports Joe O’Halloran
04 | SEPTEMBER 2026
46 www.tvbeurope.com
OPINION
Going beyond hardware By Stuart Newton, media solutions regional sales head, Sony Europe
A
n hour before kick-off, the operator is already at the desk. The screens are dark. There’s nothing there yet—no feeds, no graphics, no sign that anything is about to happen. And still, they sit down, look at the empty screens in front of them, and think: all right, it’s coming. That moment is the industry in miniature. It’s not really about the kit. It’s about the operator’s certainty that the live production system will do what it has always done. Hardware has earned that certainty over decades of dependable, if inflexible, service. Software hasn’t had those decades yet, and that, more than any technical shortfall, is the real barrier to software-defined broadcast (SDB) adoption. The numbers back this up: 93 per cent of broadcasters in Europe say they’re ready for software-defined broadcast, according to Sony’s research.That statistic should eradicate any idea that SDB is being held back by immature technology or a skills gap that needs another five years to close. What’s missing isn’t capability, but rather the lived experience of watching it work, under pressure, on a high-profile production. But readiness on paper only converts into confidence in the gallery if broadcasters approach the shift the right way. As one of our team put it recently, the mistake is treating software-defined production as a like-for-like swap—in other words, recreating today’s workflow and simply relocating it to a data centre or the cloud. That’s not what this transition is for. It’s a new, highlyflexible technology stack, and it needs to be treated as one; an innovation leap where some things work, some things don’t, and the organisation is ready and agile enough to try, adjust, and move on quickly rather than expecting a perfect result first time. One of our live sports customers is the clearest illustration of what that looks like in practice—and it’s all the more useful for being honest rather than spotless. In the first season running a software-defined workflow, there were real technical challenges. Workarounds had to be found. But the production is on track and running on a workflow that simply couldn’t have existed in a hardware-only world. That journey—early friction, quick adaptation, a stronger production on the other side—is exactly what our industry needs to see more of. It’s proof that the risk was worth taking. It’s a better product for the audience, efficiencies gained,
06 | SEPTEMBER 2026
and an organisation willing to say we’re not doing it the old way rather than defaulting back at the first sign of difficulty. That’s how confidence actually spreads. The conversion story won’t be flawless, but organisations must be willing to take the risk, work through the early friction, and come out the other side with something better. Every broadcaster watching their experience has a slightly easier decision to make than the first mover did. This brings us back to the 93 per cent. When we asked broadcasters directly what’s shaping their view, the answer wasn’t scepticism about the technology, it was a shared recognition that this is simply where the industry is going. Everybody knows they’ve got to make this move. The question isn’t whether software-defined broadcast happens, it’s how fast. We view our role as convincing broadcasters that software is ready, and that we’ll make the leap survivable, providing the systems, the support, and a track record that lets the next operator sit down at a software-defined live production desk an hour before kick-off with the same “it’s coming” certainty they’ve always had with hardware. The technology conversation at IBC this year will, rightly, cover the architecture. But rather than discussing whether software-defined broadcast is coming, the conversation that actually determines the pace of adoption must focus on how fast broadcasters are willing to move once they see it holding up under real pressure.
“The mistake is treating software-defined production as a like-for-like swap...it’s a new, highly-flexible technology stack, and it needs to be treated as one” www.tvbeurope.com
OPINION
Broadcast technology must move with audiences By Stuart Green, media and entertainment lead, Accenture UK and Ireland
D
isruption is nothing new for broadcasters. The industry has spent years adapting to shifting audiences, new platforms and changing economics. What’s different now is that disruption is continuous. Audience fragmentation, AI-driven content discovery and platform-led competition are now structural forces reshaping how media companies create, distribute and monetise content. The uncomfortable truth is that many broadcasters are still responding with piecemeal fixes. The market, however, is rewarding those prepared to rethink their technology foundations altogether. Technology sets the terms of reinvention. But it is people with the courage and capacity to change that will determine whether broadcasters achieve their reinvention goals.
From channels to fluid ecosystems Broadcast has been built around stable formats. Linear schedules, discrete distribution channels and predictable viewing habits defined success. That stability has gone. Audiences now move between live TV, streaming platforms, short-form social video, gaming environments and podcasts, often within the same hour. That shift is already visible in viewing behaviour. According to BARB’s 2026 report What People Watched in 2025, live TV accounted for 45 per cent of total identified viewing on the TV set in December 2025, while on-demand streaming made up 38 per cent of viewing across the year. That fragmentation is also reshaping what audiences expect next. Accenture research found that 86 per cent of consumers would be interested in a single destination that can provide all the services they want on one platform, and 41 per cent would be willing to pay for it. For example, Netflix is evolving from a pure-play streaming library into a broader entertainment ecosystem, bringing together advertising, cloud gaming and live programming to drive retention, increase engagement and maximise revenue per user. For broadcasters, this means the unit of competition is no longer the channel or the programme, but attention. Winning it requires systems capable of operating across formats, platforms and moments, not stacks optimised for a single mode of delivery. Technology leaders increasingly recognise this shift, but
08 | SEPTEMBER 2026
execution often falls short. Many organisations still treat streaming, social video pipelines, advertising technology and data platforms as parallel initiatives rather than components of a single ecosystem. The result is duplicated effort, fragmented data and limited ability to move at audience speed. The broadcasters pulling ahead are those building modular, cloud-native foundations that allow new products, experiences and revenue models to be launched and retired without reengineering the entire business each time.
Optimisation versus reinvention Generative AI has found its way into operations. Automated highlight creation, metadata tagging, localisation and marketing optimisation are delivering real benefits. But these gains are incremental. Only 3 per cent of organisations have a clear vision for how generative AI will reshape their business, and just 30 per cent feel prepared to rethink their operating models and processes around it. Broadcasters are already experimenting in targeted ways. ESPN, for example, has trialled an AI-generated avatar to bring
“The gap between tech-native platforms and traditional broadcasters is widening. Spotify’s model, built on shared data, cloud and identity backbones alongside decentralised teams, shows how stability and speed can coexist” www.tvbeurope.com
OPINION analytics-led commentary into its college football coverage. These experiments show what is possible, but do not yet amount to fundamental reinvention. The bigger shift lies in how AI rewires the media value chain end to end. When embedded across commissioning, production, distribution, advertising and audience engagement, AI changes how decisions are made and how value is created, not just how quickly tasks are completed. Yet many broadcasters remain caught between ambition and readiness. Leadership teams talk about AI as transformative, while their technology estates remain siloed and their data fragmented. True reinvention requires redesigning workflows. It’s deliberate choices about what should be automated, what should remain distinctly human and where new capabilities need to emerge. Done well, AI becomes a growth engine to new monetisation pathways. Content discovery is shifting towards AI assistants and conversational interfaces. As audiences increasingly find content through prompts, broadcasters face a new visibility challenge. Being present on platforms is no longer enough. Content must be structured, licensed and surfaced in ways that ensure attribution, control and value flow back to the originator. This brings technology and content strategy closer together. Decisions about metadata, rights management, APIs and data architecture now directly shape commercial outcomes.
Confidence in digital maturity remains high; 60 per cent of media executives say they are ahead of their peers in AI, yet 88 per cent still rely on rigid technology stacks that limit adaptability. Legacy systems, fragmented ownership and underinvestment in core platforms create the illusion of capability while constraining change. Forward-looking broadcasters are more selective. They invest where technology creates differentiation and partner where it does not to support continuous change without repeated disruption.
Designing for flow After years of transformation, many organisations are tired, but stepping back now would be a mistake. The gap between technative platforms and traditional broadcasters is widening. Spotify’s model, built on shared data, cloud and identity backbones alongside decentralised teams, shows how stability and speed can coexist. The next era of broadcast will belong to organisations that move with their audiences. That requires shared foundations alongside teams empowered to innovate at pace, where experimentation becomes routine and new ideas can plug into the enterprise without destabilising the core. Technology alone will not solve the industry’s challenges. But without treating it as the foundation of reinvention, broadcasters risk being optimised for a world that no longer exists.
“Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx” www.tvbeurope.com www.tvbeurope.com
JANUARY 2026 2024 || 09 09 SEPTEMBER
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…
HOW AI TURNED STEVE PENK’S RADIO WIND-UP CALLS INTO A VIDEO SERIES
HOW A BROADCAST INDUSTRY VETERAN SINGLEHANDEDLY BUILT AN ALTERNATIVE TO YOUTUBE Master control veteran Clint Rolfe explains how he created Long Play: an ad-free, algorithm-free platform built to broadcast standards that prioritises preservation, quality control, and creator ownership over engagement metrics.
The broadcaster talks to TVBEurope about how he’s teamed up with ITV Studios and Abadi Films to give new life to his famous wind-up calls.
DO YOU SUBSCRIBE TO TVBEUROPE’S FREE NEWSLETTER?
SIGN UP VIA THIS QR CODE
ALEXANDRA PALACE CELEBRATES 90 YEARS SINCE ITS FIRST BBC TV BROADCAST Highlights include free public displays and new digital exhibitions, and the Palace’s television transmitter mast will be illuminated throughout the anniversary celebrations.
10 | SEPTEMBER 2026
www.tvbeurope.com
Image: Nancy Moran/Sygma/Getty Images
PRODUCTION AND POST
legacy AN ENDURING
12 | SEPTEMBER 2026
www.tvbeurope.com
PRODUCTION AND POST
How did a puppet show filmed in a studio based in leafy Borehamwood become a global smash hit? Jenny Priestley looks back at the production of The Muppet Show, the talent behind the camera, and why its legacy continues to resonate 50 years later
O
n 5th September 1976, ITV aired the first episode of what would become a worldwide cultural phenomenon. The Muppet Show was the brainchild of Jim Henson, brought to the screen by UK broadcasting legend Lew Grade for ATV, then part of ITV. By December of that year, the show had 14 million viewers tuning in on a Sunday evening to watch the antics of Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear and the rest of the gang. Just a month later, over 100 countries had either acquired the series or were in talks to
buy it. By The Muppet Show’s third season in 1978, it had a weekly worldwide audience of 235 million viewers. While the show itself only lasted five series, its impact on popular culture continues today. Over the years, the Muppets have been animated, appeared on the big screen, and attempted to recreate some of that first show’s magic for the streaming era, although that's yet to be successful. The Muppet Show was filmed at ATV’s studios in Borehamwood, about 14 miles north of London. “I think Lew Grade said Studio D was one of the most profitable TV stages in the whole of the UK,” says Howard Berry from the University of Hertfordshire, who has spent 16 years documenting behind-the-scenes work at ATV Studios. “I could well believe it considering the programmes that were made in that studio. But The Muppet Show must be the major contributor to that, with the fact that it was sold worldwide in so many countries.” A significant portion of the production team were British, including camera operator Jeremy Hoare, who says no-one gave a puppet show with guest stars a chance when the idea was first discussed. “The Americans had been telling Jim Henson for 20 years that it would never work. And then he did a Julie Andrews episode on Sesame Street, and I think it must have been Julie who got Jim to meet Lew Grade. Lew gave Jim a studio for a couple of days to make a pilot, and that’s how it started.”
80 Years of experience in every single frame.
Visit ubse!r 11 -14
Septem Booth A.31 / Hall 12 / m a d r e t s m 26 A
20
ikegami.de
www.tvbeurope.com
SEPTEMBER 2026 | 13
PRODUCTION AND POST
Image: TV Times
Image: courtesy Jeremy Hoare
ATV had four studio crews working on the “The balance, the tubes, the lens show, with each being rotated and swapped was integral in the body of the camera, over the course of filming. “Everybody in the so the ice block, as it was called, the camera department worked on the show,” prism, which split the light into four explains Hoare, “there were four crews of beams, was at the back, which made the seven people each, so there were 28 people balance of the camera really good. Then who worked on it in the camera team alone.” the Americans wanted better quality, Each week, the Muppeteers would gather so we went to the Philips LDK 5, which for an episode read-through on Sunday, had a very conventional camera body when they would meet that week’s guest with the lens stuck on the front, as all host for the first time. On Monday, a sound cameras are today. They weren’t nearly recording would take place with the show’s as nice to operate.” orchestra, and then taping would take place Filming on was particularly tricky for on Thursday and Friday. “The camera crew Hoare and the camera team because was only in for two days,” explains Hoare. of how it was shot. The Muppeteers “We would go in and record some bits one would operate the characters with their From the bottom: camera operators Jeremy Hoare, Steve day and some bits the next, and if there Harrow, Paul Martingell, Jim O’Donnell and Mike Dugdale hands above their heads while standing were dance routines with guest stars like up. “The cameras had to be on Vinten Raquel Welch or Elton John, then there’d be one day with big production pedestals,” he explains. “We had high hats, which were like three legs numbers, and the second day would be with the Swedish Chef, and and then the head, and then the camera, so the viewfinder was really things like that.” high up. It was tiring on the neck. You needed plenty of stamina.” As the show became more popular, Henson and co were able to book But despite all the hard work, the team knew how to celebrate once bigger stars, particularly from America. However, this would sometimes the show was in the can. Hoare remembers Henson hosting a party lead to problems when it came to filming, reveals Berry. “A lot of the on a boat on the Thames during series one. “We hadn’t done the last American guests wanted to improvise, but found out the show actually show; it was going to be a couple of days later, and the guest star was very heavily scripted and there wasn’t room for improvisation in was Candice Bergen. We all went down to the Thames and got on this that kind of way.” boat, and one by one, we all lined up and danced with Candice, and she was highly amused, but quite flattered, I think, that we all took the On and off camera time and trouble to do it. It made a lovely atmosphere in the studio a The Muppet Show initially used EMI 2001 cameras to film, which couple of days later. Hoare describes as “the very best cameras ever made for TV”. “On the back of the boat, there was a big sign saying The Muppet Show, but nobody knew what it meant, because it hadn’t gone out yet. If the party had been a year later, it would have been inundated.” The production team’s social activities even helped inspire a character seen in The Muppet Show’s final episode in 1981. The writers would often visit a restaurant named Signor Baffi’s in Borehamwood, where, according to Berry, the owner wasn’t great at getting lunch out on time. “They knew that if they were going to eat there, lunch would be about two hours long because he was just kind of bewildered by being able to do service.” This ineptitude inspired the sketch, Signor Baffi and His Flashing Knives of Death, which Berry describes as his favourite Muppet skit. “I think Fozzie was involved as his assistant who’s meant to stand still whilst the knives get thrown. The problem was that the character version of Signor Baffi had a problem with his eyesight.”
Julie Andrews performing Song For Kermit on the set of The Muppet Show circa 1977
14 | SEPTEMBER 2026
Chatting with Kermit As the show gained popularity, it crossed the pond to the United States. Paul Harrison, who was working at ATV as a promotions director, was tasked with shooting the TV spots that would introduce the Muppets to America.
www.tvbeurope.com
PRODUCTION AND POST
Image: courtesy Jeremy Hoare
The job involved spending the day in a studio with Henson and Frank Oz playing Kermit and Fozzie Bear respectively. As each of the spots was so short, Harrison worked to structure the shoot to make it as easy as possible for the two performers. ”On zero they would say ‘Hello Des Moines, The Muppet Show comes on at…” and went out with a joke dead on 15 seconds. We kept the tape running, and at 30 seconds they would say, “Hi Chicago, blah blah blah blah blah’.” The process took around three hours, with a couple of breaks, covering TV spots right across the United States. “The thing that was most jaw-dropping for me was that Jim and Frank as Kermit and Fozzie never repeated a joke once. They had a new joke for everyone; it was astonishing,” says Harrison A flyer featuring the show's iconic opening sequence, which debuted during season two “And, as I was in the gallery seeing them only on camera, all conversations were with Kermit and Fozzie, “Everybody working on the show just loved working on it because Jim not Jim or Frank. I would ask Fozzie or Kermit to move right, left, and the team were so calm and relaxed. Maybe things were going on up down etc and the character would answer. The whole day was backstage we didn’t know about, but they seemed so together. They were spent in conversation with the characters. Totally professional and lovely people.” completely fabulous.” Hoare agrees, adding: “Jim was such a nice guy, very dedicated, very Hoare also remembers talking to Henson as his alter ego. “There determined. I’m writing a book about my life story at the moment, and was a hold up one day. I was at the back of the camera crane, just there are only two real total geniuses I’ve ever known personally: Jim standing around and there was Jim with Kermit. Jim said, ‘What’s the Henson and Lew Grade. I worked for Lew Grade and worked with Jim hold up? Do you know?’ I replied, and he started talking to me with Henson, and I think those two men gave so much to this world. Kermit’s voice. You couldn’t help but look at the puppet. I didn’t look “After I quit TV, which was in 1990, I became a travel photographer, and at Jim, I looked at Kermit, and he laughed, because everybody did I’ve been to about 60 countries and in every country I’ve been, I’ve ended that. Jim said, ‘Here, do you want to have a go?’ And he took it off, up talking about The Muppet Show, and everybody knows it. It was just and I put it on, and I operated the original Kermit. He spoke, and I did such a lovely show with nice people. I’d see it on my schedule, and I’d the movements.” know I was going to have a nice couple of days, no matter what.” That wasn’t the only time Hoare got to work with Kermit. On series three, Henson offered the camera team the opportunity to spend the day operating the Muppets. “I said, ‘Yes, Jim, love to.’ He asked me whether I needed to ask the rest of the team but I didn’t have to. We’d all been doing it for years, so we knew the movements. There were five of us, and we all jumped in. We spent the whole day being the real Muppeteers.” Both Hoare and Harrison describe Henson as extremely dedicated to the show. “We thought Lew Grade had gone bonkers when he came back and said, ‘We’re going to do this big show with these people’,” says Harrison. “But as soon as they turned up, they were unbelievably JEREMY HOARE professional and it was such a great organisation.
“There are only two real total geniuses I've ever known personally: Jim Henson and Lew Grade. I worked for Lew Grade and worked with Jim Henson, and I think those two men gave so much to this world”
www.tvbeurope.com
SEPTEMBER 2026 | 15
MEDIA CONSUMPTION
Getting to know you
Signals delivers an interactive layer on top of the video layer
How can broadcasters better understand their audience while simultaneously enhancing the viewing experience? Monica Heck investigates BBC R&D's new platform, Signals, which aims to transform passive consumption into a deeper, two-way engagement
16 | SEPTEMBER 2026
S
ignals is the latest project by BBC Research & Development (BBC R&D)'s FWD team, an internetdelivered layer alongside broadcast TV which was tested for the first time at Wimbledon 2026. Signals aims to add interactive moments directly into live TV, while feeding information back to editorial teams. According to Laura Harrison, principal product manager at BBC R&D, a major blind spot still exists when it comes to understanding the television viewer. Signals addresses this. “In TV, we don’t understand viewers as much as we would like to, and this gives us a way to understand audiences more,” she says. “We are not competing with the second screen, which is well established and a great fit for certain types of audiences. However,
www.tvbeurope.com
MEDIA CONSUMPTION
we thought there was a bit of a gap within TV, and wondered: how can we knock down that glass barrier and really bring the focus back to that first frame?“ Signals was initially seen as a perfect fit for programmes from the BBC catalogue with unscripted formats and entertainment such as Strictly Come Dancing, but sports quickly became an obvious target. “Sports viewership comes with a lot of real-time data and overlay graphics on top of live video, but that’s a one-way street,” says Harrison. “We were seeking a two-way participation, with interactivity as well as the realLaura Harrison time data and graphics aspects.” Wimbledon 2026 became the natural first testing ground of the new platform, in the form of a web-based pilot targeting computers and mobile phones. But the endgame is broader TV interaction, according to Harrison. “We were originally thinking about ground-up remote-control interaction, but obviously you could use voice and gestures. As new sensor technology comes into smart TVs, with higher processing power and more edge compute and AI processing within, what does that look like next? There are lots of possibilities for the television with Signals.”
Base Station
Signals was developed internally by the BBC R&D team and presents as three products in one, says Harrison. The first aspect is the experience of the interactive layer on top of the video layer of live TV. The second is the dashboard, which is the tooling that allows the editorial teams to be involved through the creation of quizzes, the monitoring of audience interactions and the real-time reactions to this feedback and subsequent adjustments to drive further engagement. And the third is the analysis and data interaction aspect, involving the cooperation of several external partners providing feeds and data into the system. At Wimbledon, Signals was blending multiple sources, which was a challenge when it came to juggling delays for a smooth, simultaneous output. “We built it as a layer of plugin on top of the live video stream that comes in from the BBC, for example from centre court,” says Harrison. “Then we've got the multiple data sources coming from Wimbledon and their third parties like Hawkeye, or SMT data streams. Some of that data feed is immediate, like serve speed, but the rest of the data stream goes through a whole validation process, both automated and human-
DAD
SKM
SEK
Professional Wireless. Simplified. Spectera is the world‘s first wideband, bidirectional wireless ecosystem, bringing microphones, in-ear monitoring, remote control and wireless management together in one integrated platform. It simplifies every stage of the production workflow, delivering greater confidence, exceptional audio performance, and professional wireless without the complexity. Learn more on sennheiser.com/spectera
MEDIA CONSUMPTION
The J bar format was used so as not to disrupt match play centred, which can take anywhere between five and 30 seconds, alongside the latency of the video feed which can run up to 50 seconds. So we really had to think about time delay in terms of how we wanted to deliver the experience.” Delivery is over IP and not baked into the feed, which makes it completely agnostic and available for others to use. “The idea going forward would be to work with other parties outside of the BBC to commercialise it, and bring the revenue back into BBC R&D." Signals offers users three different ways to engage with audiences, which were tested at Wimbledon, where the BBC Sport editorial team created quizzes blending historical tennis questions, on-the-ground action and items that can be picked up quickly from the video feed, with further questions tailored to the number of responses and the feedback from viewers. Prediction polling was another way of getting people engaged, alongside data-driven questions querying the live real-time data about the specific match being played. “The blend across all those three options gives editorial teams a way to understand their audience better, but also educates them about tennis a bit more, which of course creates higher engagement and return viewership,” Harrison says. “We know we've got that with other devices through IP, and this gives us a way to understand audiences more on TVs.” Load testing ahead of time showed that the current infrastructure
18 | SEPTEMBER 2026
could handle the surge in interaction. A lot of thought also went into visual clutter. “It depends on the programme, but in tennis we knew everything had to be placed around the side, which explains the J bar format that doesn’t disrupt match play,” says Harrison. “We reduced the feature-levels for mobile, as the screen is too small to see as much detail. It’s one of the reasons the quiz only comes up when the players are sitting down.” The audience was involved in testing Signals on both the BBC and Wimbledon platforms, particularly around usability. A feature like serve speed did well, while a quiz added a more lighthearted touch where both editorial teams and audiences could think about more than just the tennis and react to the action on court. Signals has been well received by the enormous Wimbledon editorial team, especially those working on the interaction side focusing on match analysis that included this year’s high-level content delivered by former player Jamie Murray. Audiences also responded well. Harrison says over 70 per cent of viewers rated the experience five stars. “This is really positive for a pilot of this scale,” she adds. There is no timeline on when viewers can expect to see Signals deployed to traditional television yet. “All our focus has been on Wimbledon, and then the analysis that follows. I'm sure that input and insights will then develop the ideas further for how we might implement it for television.”
www.tvbeurope.com
MEDIA MANAGEMENT
Peering edge OVER THE
The edge is no longer just a buzzword; it’s a critical component of modern broadcast infrastructure. TVBEurope speaks to industry leaders to hear how edge technology and cloud workflows can coexist to create more resilient, cost-effective, and scalable media operations How do you explain the edge in simple, easy-to-understand terms? Ian Wadgin, VP technology and innovation at Appear: The edge is the venue, the stadium or the studio, and doing some media processing there can be so much more efficient and flexible than backhauling everything to a central data centre or cloud for processing. Think of it as taking the heavy lifting to the event, not the event to the heavy lifting. In practice, that means processing, compression, encryption, protection, and format conversion happen in the first mile, so what travels across the network is already secure and broadcast-ready. It is not a replacement for cloud; it is about putting each workload where it performs best. In some instances where connectivity bandwidth is constrained it may also be beneficial to have operational functions such as vision mixing or sound processing at the edge and controlled centrally. It is possible to build a mini data centre at the edge of cloud architecture and then just send relevant outputs such as programme and multi-viewer feeds over the network, removing the need to send every source back to the central processing platform. As more functions become based on software rather than hardware, we can think about this as replacing a traditional OB truck with a data centre in a couple of racks or on wheels.
20 | SEPTEMBER 2026
Francesco Scartozzi, Matrox Video’s VP of sales and business development: Think of the edge as the point where the digital production environment meets the physical world. Cameras, microphones, displays, and operators all exist at the edge. Those signals still need to be captured, synchronised, transported, monitored, and delivered with predictable performance before software can do anything with them. While more production functions are moving onto standard IT infrastructure, the edge remains essential because it's where real-time media enters and exits the workflow. The future isn't about eliminating edge devices, but allowing edge infrastructure and software-defined production to work together seamlessly.
Ian Wagdin
What are its advantages in live streaming? IW: The most obvious advantage is latency. Processing at source removes round trips to distant data centres, which matters for live sport, bettingadjacent content, and interactive formats. The economics follow close behind: compressing at the venue with codecs such as JPEG XS or HEVC before transport cuts contribution costs dramatically and makes premium remote production viable over the internet rather than expensive leased circuits or
www.tvbeurope.com
MEDIA MANAGEMENT
satellite links. Then there is resilience. Deterministic, purpose-built processing at the edge, combined with protection such as ST 2022-7 and SRT, keeps output stable even when networks misbehave - and in live, there is no margin for error. It also protects quality by protecting the signal at its high point, before it ever meets the public internet.
same: make production resources more flexible and better utilised.
How can security risks be overcome? IW: It starts with treating every edge node as part of the attack surface from day one; security must be designed in, not bolted on. Encryption in transit should be standard, over SRT and similar, with key FS: Live production is unforgiving. Every frame management that works operationally under live Francesco Scartozzi matters, and delays or synchronisation issues quickly conditions. At the device level, hardware-based become visible on air. Edge devices perform the security and signed firmware matter, alongside time-critical functions closest to the source, allowing media to be network segmentation so that a compromised link cannot reach the captured, synchronised, encoded, decoded, and transported before wider production network. Just as important is disciplined lifecycle it reaches software-defined processing environments. They're also management: patching, access control, and audit across a distributed what make modern remote and distributed production economically fleet, applying structured, auditable security processes to broadcast viable. By bringing media onto IP networks at the edge, broadcasters infrastructure, rather than ad hoc security fixes. This ensures that can transport high-quality feeds over long distances without relying on security is treated as a continuous process (including risk assessment, dedicated broadcast infrastructure between locations. That reduces the patching cadence, access control, audit logging) rather than just set cost and complexity of connecting venues, centralising production, and and forget practice. scaling coverage to more events. FS: As broadcast adopts more IT technologies, security naturally Which use cases do you feel present opportunities in terms of the becomes a bigger consideration. The good news is that broadcasters most untapped potential? don't have to start from scratch. They can draw on well-established IT IW: The biggest untapped opportunity is scaling remote production practices while designing workflows that meet the reliability demands down, not just up. The same edge economics that serve Tier One of live production. events make Tier Two and Tier Three productions commercially viable, a far larger market than marquee events. AI at the edge is an exciting What are the edge's computing limitations? development, with tools soon to be available to automate functions such IW: The edge is a constrained environment by default. Power, space, as audio and video mixing, metadata tagging and highlights generated and cooling at a venue are not as efficient or as powerful as at a data at the venue rather than sending raw feeds to the cloud for processing. centre, so efficiency per rack unit and per watt is the real currency. This There is also real potential in the venue-as-a-platform model, is where purpose-built hardware earns its place: dedicated processing where stadiums with permanent edge infrastructure serve multiple delivers deterministic, low-latency performance at a density and power rights holders simultaneously from a single contribution layer, and in envelope that generic CPU or GPU compute cannot match. Density distribution, edge processing at affiliate and regional level enables faster also matters commercially; the more channels and services per onboarding and localisation without central re-engineering making more chassis, the fewer boxes to ship, power, and manage at each location. feeds available for a richer content experience. With edge infrastructure Ultimately the optimal answer is hybrid: with deterministic and it's not necessary to have all the kit or crews travel to the venue. By powerful media processing at the edge, elastic and bursty workloads splitting control and processing, it's possible to redeploy staff and handled in the cloud. production facilities across multiple events in the same day or weekend. FS: General-purpose compute has become remarkably capable, but FS: One of the biggest opportunities is enabling organisations that live media still has unique requirements. Processing uncompressed previously couldn't justify broadcast-grade infrastructure. Regional video, maintaining precise synchronisation, delivering deterministic sports, collegiate athletics, corporate media teams and specialised latency, and ensuring redundancy at broadcast scale remain highly content producers all want to deliver higher-quality productions while specialised challenges. The question isn't whether IT infrastructure operating with leaner teams and tighter budgets. Software-defined is powerful enough. It's how to make standard IT infrastructure production combined with edge infrastructure lowers the barrier to behave like broadcast infrastructure. That's where software-defined entry, allowing these organisations to build workflows that would frameworks, media-aware orchestration, and purpose-built edge previously have required far greater investment. devices complement one another. At the same time, larger broadcasters are using similar technologies Rather than replacing specialised hardware entirely, we're seeing to launch new FAST channels, support remote production, and extract production functions migrate to software while media acquisition, more value from existing infrastructure. In both cases, the goal is the transport, timing, and connectivity continue to live at the edge.
www.tvbeurope.com
SEPTEMBER 2026 | 21
ADVERTORIAL
Lighting
W
the way
hen light became the protagonist of a major live production at Barcelona’s Sagrada Família, the challenge for the production team was not simply to document the event, but to make audiences feel it. Marking the centenary of Antoni Gaudí’s death, the 3Cat-led production centred on the illumination of the Cross of Jesus— the largest cross within Gaudí’s architectural vision. The ceremony brought together architecture, faith, music and visual storytelling, while providing a demanding test case for a production approach that sits increasingly at the intersection of live broadcast and cinema. For creative director Igor Cortadellas, the ambition was clear from the outset. “It’s a project that, in the end, is about telling a story—a story in which the true protagonist is light.” That distinction shaped almost every production decision. Rather than treating the event as a conventional live broadcast, the team designed the coverage around the emotional and visual impact of illumination itself. The narrative drew on Gaudí’s understanding that he would not live to see the completion of his masterpiece. The architects, craftsmen, engineers, artists and supporters who followed him became part of that story: individual contributions represented as points of light, gradually forming constellations before culminating in the illumination of the Cross.
22 | SEPTEMBER 2026
The result was intended to communicate continuity across generations—a visual reminder that monumental projects are built through collective endeavour rather than by one person alone.
From ceremony to cinema One of the production’s key creative decisions was to establish a clear visual distinction between the liturgical ceremony and the subsequent artistic performance. During the blessing, the production retained a natural, documentary character. Once the performance began, the visual language shifted towards a more cinematic treatment, with colour grading helping to signal the transition. For the audience, the change needed to feel organic rather than technically imposed. Behind the scenes, however, creating a cinematic image in a live environment required careful coordination between camera, lighting, colour and technical operations. The Sagrada Família presented an especially demanding environment. Filming at night meant working with extremely bright sources against deep shadows, while the architecture demanded sufficient resolution, dynamic range and tonal subtlety to preserve its intricate detail.
www.tvbeurope.com
ADVERTORIAL
The production therefore deployed Sony’s VENICE 2 digital cinema camera alongside the FX6 and FR7 PTZ camera. The VENICE 2’s 3200 high base ISO was particularly valuable in the low-light environment, giving the cinematographers the latitude needed to retain detail while working with the dramatic contrast created by the lighting design. The objective was not simply to record the illumination. The cameras had to capture the atmosphere around it—the relationship between darkness, architectural surfaces, reflections and changing beams of light.
A cinematic workflow at broadcast scale The scale of the camera deployment reflected the complexity of the event. Around 24 cameras were positioned throughout the venue, providing the production with multiple perspectives while allowing the director to move between wide architectural compositions, detail shots and more intimate moments. Crucially, the production team chose not to compromise the cinematic characteristics of the imaging system for the sake of conventional broadcast workflows. Cameras were operated in fullframe mode, maintaining the depth of field and image characteristics associated with digital cinematography. That approach places very different demands on a live production chain. Camera matching, monitoring, colour management and vision mixing all become critical when cinema cameras are being used as part of a multi-camera live environment. The technical infrastructure was built around PhotoCine’s OB3 mobile unit, incorporating a Sony XVS vision mixer alongside Sony PVM-X and BVM-HX reference monitors. Technical direction was led by British broadcast consultant Hector Sole-Bradshaw Beltran, working with the 3Cat Technical Department (IDT). The objective was to create a workflow in which cinematic acquisition could operate with the responsiveness and reliability expected from a major live production.
Making HDR part of the storytelling For a production centred on light, the ability to reproduce both intense highlights and subtle shadow detail is more than a technical specification. It directly affects how the audience perceives the story. The production used Sony’s BVM-HX3110 reference monitor, with the team mastering the live production according to EBU R167 HLG Extended standards. This provided a controlled environment for judging the relationship between the brightest illumination and the darker architectural elements surrounding it. That level of control was particularly important as the lighting changed throughout the performance. A beam could become a compositional element; a reflection could reveal architectural detail; a shadow could create separation and depth. In this context, HDR was not simply about making an image brighter. It was about preserving the hierarchy of light established by the creative team.
production sector: the boundaries between broadcast television and digital cinematography are becoming increasingly fluid. Sony’s position across both markets enabled the production to combine Cinema Line technologies with established live-production infrastructure. Cinema cameras, PTZ systems, vision mixing and professional monitoring could be considered as elements of one production ecosystem rather than isolated technologies. For production teams, that convergence opens up new creative possibilities. A live event no longer has to choose between the immediacy and operational discipline of broadcast and the visual language traditionally associated with cinema. Instead, the two approaches can be designed together from the outset. That was particularly significant for this project because the team was not simply looking to reproduce an established broadcast workflow. The production was conceived as an opportunity to explore what Cinema Live could look like in a European environment, adapting processes and technical practices around the requirements of a cinematic live experience.
Technology in service of the story Creating that kind of production requires more than selecting high-end cameras and monitors. It requires close collaboration between creative and technical disciplines. Directors, cinematographers, engineers, lighting designers, colour specialists and camera crews all have to work towards the same objective. The technology becomes successful when the audience stops noticing the technology itself and instead experiences the intended image and emotion. That principle was particularly appropriate for an event whose subject was light. The production demonstrated how a historic architectural and spiritual story can be reinterpreted through contemporary live-production techniques without losing its sense of authenticity. Gaudí’s vision provided the starting point; generations of human endeavour provided the narrative; and the production technology became the means of connecting that history with a global audience. As Cinema Live workflows develop, that model has relevance well beyond architectural or religious events. Concerts, cultural performances, major ceremonies, fashion shows and other large-scale productions are increasingly looking for the visual sophistication of cinema without sacrificing the immediacy of live. The Sagrada Família production provides a compelling example of what that convergence can deliver when creative intent drives the technical design. Ultimately, the most significant achievement was not the number of cameras, the HDR workflow or the sophistication of the OB infrastructure. It was the ability to make all of those elements serve a single idea. For one night in Barcelona, light was not simply something to be captured by the cameras. It was the story.
Where broadcast meets cinema The project also highlights a wider development across the live
www.tvbeurope.com
Find out more at Sony´s stand at IBC Hall 13 and on pro.sony/ibc
SEPTEMBER 2026 | 23
MEDIA CONSUMPTION
Beyond THE prompt
From hyper-personalised ads to immersive virtual reality, the future of video isn't static— it's dynamic. Jenny Priestley discovers how Reactor Inc is going beyond the ‘type and wait’ workflow to power a new model of interactivity, putting real-time control directly into the hands of creatives
J
ust as the leap from traditional film to digital photography laid the groundwork for the explosion of social platforms like Instagram and TikTok, the media industry is now at the start of a seismic shift in video creation. So far, the promise of AI video generation has been hampered by a slow, iterative bottleneck: you type a prompt, wait ten minutes, receive a 30-second clip, and if it isn’t quite right you start the process again. It’s a workflow reminiscent of the era before digital cameras, where experimentation was costly and feedback delayed. Enter Reactor Inc, a platform that says it can produce generative AI video in real-time, providing users with a unified software kit (SDK) and API that allows them to build interactive applications and run them at scale. By handling the complex orchestration and GPU scaling required to run these real-time models, Reactor enables creatives to focus on building, not managing infrastructure. Ahmed Ahres, an early key player at the company, says this is not just an improvement on existing technology, but a technological revolution. "We don't believe that in the future video generation can be really impactful if you need to type and wait and then hope for the best," he explains. "When it becomes realtime, you can change what's on the screen; it unlocks new things."
24 | SEPTEMBER 2026
A new paradigm for creativity This real-time capability promises to change how films and TV are made as well as how visual effects are implemented. Rather than the usual cycle of rendering and waiting, artists could theoretically interact with their visual effects in the moment. "Today, a lot of people in the film industry are using these AI models,” states Ahres. “They create a scene and then they want to add snow to it. They wait 10 minutes, they get back a 30-second file, but it's not perfect. "If you have it in real-time, one of the things that unlocks is real-time visual effects, real-time video editing. I can tell it, 'make the snow faster, make the snow slower’. Today it's text and voice. But in the future, you click somewhere and be like, 'I want a dragon to appear here’. I see this as the future of visual effects editing.” This interactivity extends beyond the editing room, with the possibility of a future where TV advertising can be hyper-personalised at scale. “The idea is that what you're watching can be changed based on certain conditions, such as where you are, what the weather’s like, what happened a minute ago. For example, 'Did Dua Lipa give a concert a minute ago? Can I reference that in a movie 10 minutes later?' Yes, we will be able to do that.
www.tvbeurope.com
MEDIA CONSUMPTION
“It's very hard for people to comprehend because we've always thought about video as something that is filmed and that's it, but not anymore," he continues. "It's a whole paradigm shift that has been very exciting to work on, but also It's hard to sit down and explain it.” Perhaps the most ambitious aspect of Reactor’s vision lies in the idea of interactive, immersive experiences. Ahres envisions a world where users don't just watch content, but step inside it. "I could technically embody a character,” he explains. “I could embody a tennis player and feel what it's like to be on the court. With these models, you can pair them with virtual reality. You can simulate anything you want." Industry backing Reactor has seen rapid growth over the last 12 months, increasing from four members of staff last autumn to around 20 today. The company has also been backed by a major Series A funding round, which included industry heavyweight Jeffrey Katzenberg. "Having these names really helps because everybody can start companies today Ahmed Ahres with cloud code and a million dollars
www.tvbeurope.com
in funding from VCs, but when you have such credibility, it actually puts you in a different position," says Ahres. Looking forward, the roadmap for Reactor is focused on expansion. The company is aggressively hiring and building partnerships with other leading technology providers to offer more robust, scalable solutions. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a strategic partner, serving as the platform’s preferred cloud provider and helping it meet the compute infrastructure and distribution reach required. “From the beginning, AWS has always been forward-looking,” says Ahres. “They invested and put us in meetings alongside the CEO of AWS with a lot of incredible people. They connected us with Twitch and Amazon Robotics, and invited us to NAB Show in April. It's been a collaboration that started with compute and ended up with introductions to customers.” For Ahres and the team at Reactor, the goal is simple: democratise the power of real-time video, enabling a new generation of creators to bring their imaginations to life without the constraints of the past.
SEPTEMBER 2026 | 25
BUSINESS
Empowering the Future 26 | SEPTEMBER 2026
www.tvbeurope.com
BUSINESS
Industry partners are once again coming together to provide vital infrastructure and expertise for global student-led live broadcast On Air. TVBEurope hears how the 24-hour event is helping to shape the next generation of broadcast talent
O
n Air returns this October, bigger than ever. This time around, the global student broadcast will feature a number of different channels, covering Culture, News, Sport, Film and Children’s content. TVBEurope is supporting the Culture Channel. “After attending last year’s On Air, I was blown away by the amazing work from both the students and industry colleagues. I’m delighted TVBEurope is supporting such a worthwhile event with the aim of bringing new talent into the industry,” says content director Jenny Priestley. Described as the world’s largest student-led broadcast initiative, On Air spans 24 hours and six continents on 22nd October. It aims to help students navigate the same technical complexities and editorial pressures as seasoned professionals. Industry support The success of On Air relies on the support of industry partners who provide the tools, expertise, and infrastructure necessary to pull off such a feat. It’s a perfect example of the industry coming together to support the next generation. "Inevitably, some of our industry competitors are involved, but unlike tradeshows or usual work, I feel like any competition to outdo another company is set aside," says Kendrick Foo of Techex. "We are all coming together for a wider purpose, which is to deliver an amazing stream alongside the students." Techex is providing the ‘glue’ between cloud infrastructures, utilising InSync's framerate converter within tx darwin to normalise the student feeds and provide broadcast compliance. “Levira/VIPE's playout output will feed back into tx darwin for switching before delivery to YouTube. We're bringing in TAG Video Systems for monitoring and multiviewing for various folks on the day, and tx core/Brightsign will be used to pull said multiviewer feeds on-prem.” Zixi is supporting the new Sport Channel, providing its software platform and hands-on technical support for the students. "It's a rare chance to put our technology in the hands of the next generation of broadcast engineers and producers while it actually matters, live, under pressure, rather than in a training exercise," says Marc Aldrich, Zixi CEO. "On Air puts over a thousand students, educators and industry people through the experience of delivering a genuinely live, global broadcast, across six continents, with everything that comes with that: schedules slipping, kit failing, decisions needing to be
www.tvbeurope.com
SEPTEMBER 2026 | 27
BUSINESS
"When you go live, every second counts, and learning the flexibility to deal with the inevitable is a skill useful for the world beyond broadcast as well." The student experience On Air 2026 is giving all the students involved the chance to work across multiple disciplines, from directing to playout, post production to handling the event's social media. Miguel Pina, a second-year TV
Part of the 2025 team of industry experts and students made in seconds. That's exactly the kind of experience that's hard to teach in a classroom. “We'd like to keep working with the students who stand out on the Sport Channel; whether that's mentoring, work experience, or bringing them into future Zixi and On Air projects,” continues Aldrich. “Getting involved for one broadcast and then disappearing would undercut the point of being there in the first place.” The technical demands of a 24-hour live broadcast are huge, whether that's on a student livestream or a Tier 1 broadcast. Victoria Butt, representing Levira, has been working closely with the student playout directors to manage the five separate channels. "Last year, we had one channel to manage. This year, we have five, which brings a whole new level of complexity," she notes. "The biggest challenge will be coordinating the live feeds and managing contributions from universities across all five channels, ensuring everything is technically ready and goes to air at the right time." For Butt, the initiative is vital because it gives students real experiences that they can take with them as they enter work. “As an industry, we often advertise roles that require experience, yet many students struggle to find opportunities to gain it." Vizrt’s Jack Stringer, who has been involved with On Air since its inception as a student hackathon, sees the event as a perfect opportunity for the students to learn the ropes and industry veterans to find value in the exchange of ideas. "Getting the hands-on experience that On Air provides will hopefully show the students that while preparing and planning are essential, being quick on your feet and working as a team are just as important," he says.
28 | SEPTEMBER 2026
production student at the University of Westminster, is excited about experiencing the highs of producing live TV. "The thing that always makes me prefer live TV over cinema is the exhilarating stress and adrenaline, and working under the guise of so many seasoned industry professionals!” he explains. "Plan as we may and regardless of the expectations that we have: I need to be on the lookout for something unexpected. Television is not just a Plan A and B... it's all the letters right up to Z." Emily-Kate Pastiljone agrees that the event gives students the opportunity to gain valuable experience in working on a live show. “I haven't worked on this kind of scale before. I think working on a live broadcast will involve communicating really well with the team, staying organised, and being able to adapt quickly because there's no opportunity for retakes. It's a mindset that's similar to another project I worked on that was filmed entirely using in-camera editing, where everything had to be carefully planned and executed correctly the first time.” Other students, like Fatima Asim Butt, see the project as a way to challenge the status quo. "The industry needs to adapt to the changing times, and that doesn’t happen without investing in the future," she states. “When I started uni, I wanted to go into post production, but now I really like the concept of vision mixing. Trying it out during On-Air will be a really fun experience. I am also really looking forward to experiencing how a TV station works in a more realistic setting, since there are many more teams involved in creating the shows and running them live.” For Beatrice Thropp, who’s studying film production at Westminster University, the appeal of On Air lies in the environment. "I anticipate a unique blend of chaos and camaraderie that only comes from participating in a live event," she says. "I’m hopeful that this will enhance my skills in time management and maintaining composure under pressure, while also providing valuable experience collaborating with various departments."
www.tvbeurope.com
BUSINESS
Some of the students taking part in On Air already have experience working in the industry. Mengyuan Li spent eight years in scheduling and production in the Chinese media industry before changing path to study media and development. "I wanted to explore the differences between Eastern and Western approaches to media production, collaborate with students and professionals from different cultural backgrounds, and experience the exchange of ideas that comes from working in an international team.”
"For me, the highlight will be the incredible variety of content being produced by universities from around the world. I'm also looking forward to connecting with the different teams and watching our student playout directors grow in confidence and capability over the course of the 24-hour broadcast,” agrees Butt. Perhaps the most enduring legacy of On Air 2026 will be the network it builds among everyone taking part. The hope is that the sense of ownership and camaraderie doesn’t end once the stream stops. "We want to keep finding new ways to support the students, 2026 highlights so we're always open to hearing what they Everyone involved in On Air 2026 has a need," says Stringer. particular highlight that they’re looking As the media and entertainment industry forward to. For the industry participants, that faces questions about an ageing workforce involves seeing the growth in confidence and the need for fresh perspectives, On Air founder Carrie Wootten (left) among the students taking part. “It's a initiatives like On Air 2026 provide a concrete new, higher-pressure format for the students this year, and there's answer. Creating a space where the next generation can make something exciting about seeing a team that's been rehearsing and mistakes in a safe environment and learn from those who have gone preparing suddenly own a live broadcast for real,” says Aldrich. before them is building the future of media, one frame at a time.
www.tvbeurope.com
SEPTEMBER 2026 | 29
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW
Thomas Riedel has built a global broadcast powerhouse guided by a simple philosophy: technology should create experiences, not just solve problems. As he embarks on a new adventure with ARRI, Riedel sits down with Jenny Priestley to discuss industry shifts and why he refuses to abandon the approach that’s brought him this far
An
INDEPENDENT vision 30 | SEPTEMBER 2026
www.tvbeurope.com
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW
W
ith almost 40 years in the broadcast industry else—organising events, setting up light and sound systems, learning under his belt, Thomas Riedel still finds plenty by doing. That practical school was very important for me, and I would to keep him engaged and excited. Earlier this not want to lose it. year, Riedel oversaw the biggest acquisition “But if I could change one thing, I would have used school more of his career as he became the new owner of seriously to learn languages. Learning English after school was not film equipment manufacturer ARRI. easy, but it became essential. And if I had learned French and perhaps In an industry defined by rapid turnover and the relentless march other languages properly at that time, I would benefit from that a of innovation, Riedel remains focused on the unique, high-pressure lot today. In an international business, language is not only about nature of live production. “What excites me most is the possibility communication. It also gives you a better understanding of people to do things that have not existed in that form before,” he says. and cultures.” “Technology can help redefine formats—how a race is covered, how a concert is experienced, how a show is produced, or how people Full circle collaborate across locations. Riedel Communications originally launched in 1987, but it was “For me, technology has never been an abstract thing. It is about the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer that helped put it into “a helping people create moments and experiences that were not different league” of live production, says the owner. “There was a possible before. After almost 40 years, I still find that fascinating.” problem around communication for the ceremonies, and we had to During his career, Riedel has witnessed a series of major shifts in deliver. That is exactly the kind of situation that shaped Riedel: no media and entertainment, from analogue to digital and from digital big theory, no second attempt, just a real production that needs a to IP, with each step profoundly changing the industry. But, he says, solution.” From then on, the company’s technology has been integral it’s the current pace of change in connectivity among audio, video, to countless major international events. data and control that is the most interesting. “Customers are not Fast forward to 2026, and the Lillehammer project is still paying simply asking for another product; they are asking for an environment dividends. “ARRI brought us into that project,” reveals Riedel. in which many moving parts can work together reliably. Because “Without ARRI and Lillehammer, Riedel—and my life—would probably requirements keep changing faster in these accelerated times, that not have developed in the same way. My first contact with ARRI goes environment has to be able to evolve. back to renting their lights for school events as a teenager. Looking “Riedel Communications has kept up because we were always back now, as the owner of ARRI, it feels like a remarkable circle.” close to real productions. We did not change because a trend report During all this time, Riedel Communications has remained under told us to. We changed because customers came with problems that sole ownership. Riedel explains that decision is about taking could no longer be solved with isolated tools. That pushed us to think responsibility. “Sometimes you need to invest in technology, people, less in isolated boxes and more in connected systems that solve real or a customer relationship before the result is visible in the next production problems.” quarter. That is much easier when you do not have to explain Despite its international footprint, Riedel Communications’ every decision through a short-term financial lens. Of course, headquarters has remained in the German city of Wuppertal. independence also means you carry the risk yourself. But it keeps According to the owner, the city offers a “certain groundedness” the responsibility concrete. The company has a culture, and that that fits its culture. “We have built an international company from culture is part of why customers trust us. I would not want to Wuppertal because customers cared about whether the technology lose that. Independence is not a romantic idea; it is a very practical worked, whether the people understood their production and whether we could deliver. They did not choose us because the address sounded glamorous. “Today we are a global company, but the headquarters still gives us a centre of gravity. For me, staying connected to where you come from and working internationally are not a contradiction. In our case, they belong together," he adds. Asked if there’s one thing he wishes he could change during his career, Riedel reveals he was something of a naughty schoolboy. “I was not very interested in what happened THOMAS RIEDEL in the classroom. My mind was somewhere
“For me, technology has never been an abstract thing. It is about helping people create moments and experiences that were not possible before. After almost 40 years, I still find that fascinating”
www.tvbeurope.com
SEPTEMBER 2026 | 31
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW
we look at whether we can help the company grow without destroying what made it strong in the first place. That is especially important with a brand like ARRI. The goal is not integration at any price. The goal is the right connection.” Riedel isn’t ruling out further acquisitions at some point, but says he doesn’t have a “shopping list” of companies that he’s looking for. “If a company brings something that is technically strong, culturally compatible
Both Riedel Communications and ARRI technology were used at Eurovision 2026
advantage,” he explains. “It allows us to think long-term and still make decisions quickly. In our industry, that matters. That philosophy hasn’t stopped Riedel Communications from being active in terms of acquisitions. In recent years, the company has brought SimplyLive and Embrionix under its footprint, as well as ARRI (although that continues to be run as a separate entity). Expanding the portfolio is not about becoming bigger for the sake of it, says Riedel; instead, it’s about understanding changes happening in the production sector. “Customers do not really ask for isolated products anymore; they ask for solutions that make complex productions work. That is why additions to the portfolio must have a clear logic. SimplyLive, Embrionix and ARRI are very different companies, but the underlying question is similar: which building blocks help us make complex productions simpler, more robust and better? Growth is valuable when it adds substance. Otherwise, it just creates complexity.” Before moving forward with any acquisition, Riedel's primary consideration is always whether it addresses a genuine issue for the company's customers. “A company has to bring technology, people or market understanding that is genuinely complementary to what we do,” he states. “The second question is culture. You can buy a company on paper, but if the people, the standards and the way of working do not fit, you will lose the value very quickly. And finally,
and useful for our customers, then of course we will look at it seriously. “We have enough work to do with the portfolio we already have, and ARRI alone is a very significant and positive challenge. The important thing now is to make the right connections between the capabilities we have: communication, infrastructure, video production, control, imaging, lighting and more. If another opportunity fits that logic one day, we will be open. But only if it makes sense.” As mentioned above, there are no current plans to bring ARRI under the Riedel Communications umbrella. However, the two companies will work together where it’s appropriate, especially in live production where broadcasters and production companies are constantly looking to be more efficient as well as more cinematic. “ARRI has a very strong identity, and that must remain. The cinema world is the foundation of ARRI,” says Riedel. “My vision is not to turn ARRI into Riedel, or Riedel into ARRI. The value lies in connecting the strengths where customers really benefit.” The synergy between the two companies is clear. ARRI brings image, camera, optics, lighting and creative credibility to the table, while Riedel Communications is hugely experienced in live production and broadcast infrastructure, intercom, wireless connectivity, networks, control, and managed technology. “In live environments, image quality is becoming more important, but it must not come at the cost of reliability. A beautiful picture is not enough if it cannot be
“My vision is not to turn ARRI into Riedel, or Riedel into ARRI. The value lies in connecting the strengths where customers really benefit”
32 | SEPTEMBER 2026
www.tvbeurope.com
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW
seamlessly integrated into a live workflow. That is where Riedel can help. We understand what happens behind the camera in a complex production. So our goal is clear: to make cinematic quality practical in live, sport and entertainment without compromising the DNA of either company.”
industry’s latest buzzwords, including software-defined workflows, IP, remote production, and the continued convergence of broadcast, pro AV, streaming and cinematic production. “For me, the most interesting conversations will be about how all these pieces come together reliably. The industry does not need more complexity for the sake of complexity. It needs systems that help creative Industry trends and technical teams do better work under real pressure. That is According to Riedel, the industry is currently navigating several where IBC is always valuable: you see which ideas are actually defining shifts, including the transition toward decentralised and becoming useful.” remote workflows which present a new set of hurdles: Finally, Riedel moves on to the topic of the industry “The real challenge is not just distance but making itself, and the ongoing discussion around reducing the production feel like one system for the people cost. “I do not believe that this is how anyone involved,” he adds. really wins in the long term,” he states. “We need “I am convinced AI and automation will make innovation, new ideas and the courage to invent many processes more efficient, but efficiency alone things that create value, instead of only optimising is not the answer. Especially in live production, sport what already exists. and entertainment, the human element, timing and “Europeans sometimes complain that products emotion still matter.” from Asia are taking jobs or market positions away All of these trends are likely to be major talking from us. I suggest we accept the competition, get points at IBC2026 in September. Riedel says he our act together and become better again. We can expects the show to be “very much about practical do that. But it requires action, not complaining. If we technology, not big promises”. focus on quality, creativity and real innovation, our Thomas Riedel He also forsees a lot of discussion about the industry has a strong future.”
Solid Systems are Built with Bricks
Check out the whole yellobrik line-up at
www.tvbeurope.com
IBC Amsterdam 2026 Hall 8 - StandA64
SEPTEMBER 2026 | 33
MEDIA MANAGEMENT
Time for TAMS Originated by BBC R&D, the opensource Time Addressable Media Store technology is being applied to a host of applications including newsroom production and social media content, writes David Davies
I
t’s now been three years since BBC R&D open-sourced its TAMS (Time Addressable Media Source) API, and a mere two since the technology received its public debut at IBC2024 with a demo on the stand of Amazon Web Services (AWS), one of its earliest enthusiasts. In that time it has gone on to establish an impressive profile in the industry, striking a chord with a broad spectrum of organisations seeking a more efficient approach to media transfer and storage. Built to run on standard cloud object storage, TAMS is “designed around storing media chunks in object storage, presented through an open API that enables content-centric workflows rather than traditional file-based approaches". Consequently, it allows media to be James Elliott accessed using precise timecodes or
34 | SEPTEMBER 2026
durations, as opposed to necessitating the download of complete files or clips. Earlier this year, it was announced that the TAMS project is moving towards community ownership under an open governance model, with the addition of James Elliott (Elliott Media) and Glenn Skare Pedersen (CuttingRoom) to the Technical Steering Committee revealed a few months later. The committee’s initial mandate is to define the open source strategy for TAMS and select appropriate governance to oversee its future development. Asked to consider why TAMS has already resonated with so many broadcast organisations, Elliott responds: “I think that BBC R&D is leading the way in terms of creating an open source solution, and it’s something that has been missing in the broadcast industry. We have a firm and established mechanism [in the industry] for defining, recording and sharing standards, and those standards are then adopted by manufacturers and monetised. TAMS goes another step with it being open source, so instead of having a standard that we decide upon and everyone complies with we’re also moving to a position where the industry can influence the solution.” Mature technology James Sandford, project R&D engineer at BBC R&D, indicates that TAMS has now reached a decisive new
www.tvbeurope.com
MEDIA MANAGEMENT
WIRELESS INTERCOM BELTPACK
phase in its development. “I think we’re seeing more mature implementations coming to the market this year,” he says. “As one of the maintainers of the specification, the primary way in which that shift is visible is that we’re getting a lot of feedback and bug reports. This is not to say that there are major issues with TAMS, but it does mean that organisations are really getting into the specifics and asking questions about the minutiae of the specification, which is really helping to firm it up into a properly mature technology at this point.” James Sandford One of the companies to have been fully exploring the specification is LiveWyer, which recently introduced its own Kubernetes-native implementation of TAMS. Named TAMOSS and entirely independent of the BBC, it allows any organisation to run a fully functional, TAMS-compatible media store on its own infrastructure, whether from a laptop or production cluster. “We’ve been able to build something which allows you to run TAMS on something as small as a Raspberry Pi, but then also scale it up all the way into a large cluster, multi-host installation,” says LiveWyer director David O’Dwyer. “I think its use will only widen as people
become more and more comfortable deploying, implementing and aligning to it.” Having been involved with the first public demo of TAMS, AWS has also continued to explore the scope of the technology, with AWS Elemental MediaConvert file-based video processing becoming its first media service to support TAMS. John Biltcliffe, AWS senior solutions architect, explains: “It can read content directly from a TAMS store and use it as the source for transcoding—producing any output MediaConvert supports, whether that’s VoD deliverables, broadcast-spec files, or clips optimised for social media from TAMS. "From a workflow perspective, this means a customer can have a single live feed being ingested into TAMS and simultaneously access that content for broadcast playout, editing, AI enrichment, and output deliverable creation, all while the live feed is still running. This is ideal for live-to-VoD workflows or social media teams who need to turn content around as fast as possible.” AI applications Inevitably, organisations will increasingly be keen to explore how AI
Sept 11-14 · Amsterdam
Stand 8.C55
aeq.eu aeqsales@aeq.es
Image courtesy BBC R&D
MEDIA MANAGEMENT
TAMS sits as a cloud-native media exchange layer, bridging the gap between live, fast turnaround, and file-based workflows deployments might intersect with TAMS. Sandford responds that it is “well-suited as a technology for this due to its randomly accessible nature with media. It allows any sort of automation or manual services to pull out small chunks of media, 10 or 20 seconds at a time, for example. That’s suitable for a lot of automation technologies these days as they often use small ‘fire and forget’ processing resources working on small chunks of media, because that allows you to scale very easily". AWS is among those exploring AI in a TAMS context. Biltcliffe says: “We’ve always said that the nature of TAMS—small segments of media with strong timing and identity on object storage—makes it a natural fit for feeding into AI-powered analysis pipelines. At NAB this year, we showed the first iteration of this, and then expanded on it at the EBU Network Technology Seminar in June.” Expanding on that demo, he adds that “we had a feed of all the live sessions ingesting into TAMS. As segments arrived, we ran analysis on them using multiple models hosted on Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker. We were able to both transcribe and visually understand what was happening in the content within around 15 seconds of it occurring. From that, we could identify chapters and key moments, and at the end of each session, we automatically generated John Biltcliffe summaries, key themes, technologies mentioned,
36 | SEPTEMBER 2026
and soundbites. Much of the heavy lifting was done using the Amazon Nova model, making it a very cost-effective solution". AWS is continuing to build on this, with one keystream being through the IBC Smart Stories Accelerator. “In that architecture, TAMS is positioned as the media store alongside the Story Object Model (SOM) bus, which contains all the details and updates to a news story. Attached to the bus are a range of skills that act on the story, any skill that requires media accesses it through TAMS. We're working on demonstrating how the AI-generated understanding of content in TAMS can assist journalists directly in their newsroom workflows," says Biltcliffe, who notes that AWS is also experimenting with combining agentic tools with metadata extracts from TAMS media. Meanwhile, regarding the future of TAMS within the BBC, Sandford reveals that plans are in progress to replace the underlying storage of multiple large systems with TAMS. “They include Jupiter, which is our newsroom production system. A variant of that sits in the cloud, and TAMS will be the storage layer for the media which sits on that. SuperROT, which is one of our systems that is continuously recording all of the media that the BBC broadcasts, will be continuously recorded into TAMS. And it will also be used for the Mezz 2 VoD system, which is our fast turnaround VoD solution.”
www.tvbeurope.com
MEDIA MANAGEMENT
Image: Lifted Entertainment ITV
The Voice is one of ITV's flagship series
AUTOMATING THE SIMPLE,
simplifying the complex For ITV, one of the UK’s leading broadcasters, streamers and content producers, media supply chain transformation was both a business imperative and a technology initiative
N
ew viewing habits, distribution channels, and content partnerships have increased pressure on UK broadcaster ITV to deliver more content to more destinations, in more formats, at greater speed. It needed to improve operational efficiency, simplify a complex technology environment, and create a foundation for growth. The company responded by reimagining how content moves through the organisation. The result is a modern, cloud-native media supply chain that automates routine processing, streamlines operations, and adapts to evolving business requirements.
38 | SEPTEMBER 2026
“As our content business continues to grow, we need to be able to receive and deliver content regardless of format, scale to meet changing demand, and adapt quickly to new distribution opportunities,” says Paul Kane, ITV's director of technology, content supply and distribution. “That required us to reduce complexity across our technology environment and create a more efficient operating model.” The challenge: a supply chain built for a different era Over seven decades of broadcasting, production, and distribution, ITV added systems, workflows, and integrations to meet emerging needs. Although this environment served the business for many years, rising content volumes and increasingly varied delivery requirements made it harder to scale. Content now arrives from more sources, while partner and platform requirements vary widely. Manual workflows meant that each increase in demand brought a corresponding increase in cost and pressure on limited resources. “We needed a better way to scale—a flexible, highly automated supply chain capable of growing with our business,” says Kane. ITV therefore launched its Content Supply Simplification Programme to transform operations end-to-end, rather than improve isolated workflows. The goal was to automate manual processes, establish consistent workflows, improve visibility, and create an architecture that could evolve with the business. Its guiding principle was clear: automating the simple, and
www.tvbeurope.com
MEDIA MANAGEMENT
The solution: creating a more agile supply chain At the centre of ITV’s new architecture is SDVI’s Rally media supply chain management platform, which orchestrates workflows across the organisation’s technology ecosystem. Rally integrates with content catalogue, media asset management, work-order management, and other operational platforms while providing a centralised view of supply chain activity. More than 70 applications are available through the platform, allowing ITV to select the right tool for tasks ranging from ingest and translation to quality control and delivery. Using Rally as the orchestration layer, ITV redesigned content ingest and delivery operations around two primary workflow categories: Content In and Content Out. For Content In, incoming assets move through automated quality control, normalisation and compliance workflows before reaching operations teams. Operators primarily manage exceptions, using timebased metadata to pinpoint issues and accelerate review. For Content Out, ITV grouped delivery partners by the complexity of their requirements. It then prioritised onboarding for more than two dozen partners that could accept content without significant modification. ITV continues to expand automation for deliveries requiring framerate or standards conversion, metadata transformation, ad-break insertion, and other specialised processing. Rally also centralises information from multiple systems, giving teams a clearer view of content movement, workflow status, processing activity, and operational performance. New services, technologies, and delivery partners can be incorporated more easily, while cloud resources scale with processing demand. By using Rally’s evolving platform and application ecosystem instead of building bespoke systems, ITV can integrate proven technology quickly and reduce the burden of in-house maintenance. The result: turning automation into capacity Automated ingest, processing, validation, normalisation, quality control, and delivery now handle much of the repetitive work that previously required manual intervention. The broadcaster's teams can focus their expertise on exceptions, complex customer requirements, and specialised delivery scenarios. “We’re seeing a 400 per cent increase in the speed at which we can process assets through the supply chain,” says Kane. “This frees the team to focus on the more complex deliveries and gives us the capacity to deliver against ITV Studios Global Partnerships’ targets.” The benefits of automation and orchestration extend beyond processing speed. By centralising
www.tvbeurope.com
operational information and automating workflow management, ITV has simplified day-to-day operations and improved visibility across the supply chain. The company has retired multiple legacy applications, reduced reliance on spreadsheets and email-based coordination, and implemented dashboards that provide greater insight into content volumes, workflow activity, and operational performance. The new operating model has also improved ITV’s ability to scale. Cloud-based resources can expand to accommodate seasonal spikes in demand and contract when workloads decline, helping the broadcaster respond more efficiently to changing business requirements. The flexibility of the platform makes it easier to onboard partners, support additional distribution workflows, and introduce new services as requirements evolve. By removing friction from routine workflows, ITV has improved both efficiency and scalability. Teams can process more content without corresponding increases in operational resources, helping the organisation grow while containing its costs. Those same efficiencies advance ITV's sustainability goals. Eliminating duplicate processing and matching cloud resources to actual demand allows the supply chain to do more work while consuming less energy, aligning operational gains with its climate transition plan. ITV has moved from a collection of interconnected systems to an agile operating model built on automation and orchestration. As audience behaviour, content strategy, and distribution models change, the company can respond with greater flexibility, capacity, efficiency, and visibility rather than added cost and complexity. “We're still early in the journey, but the direction is clear,” concludes Kane. “By automating the simple and simplifying the complex, we've built a supply chain that lets us scale with the business—taking on more content, more formats, and more partners without the cost and complexity rising in step.”
Deal or No Deal Celebrity Special: Nish Kumar, Paul Chuckle, Joe Lycett and Ian Watkins
SEPTEMBER 2026 | 39
Image: Remarkable Entertainment ITV
simplifying the complex. This philosophy shaped every aspect of ITV’s transformation effort.
IP MIGRATION
Broadcast’s balancing act Vincent Noyer, CTO of LYNX Technik, discusses the industry’s shift toward a hybrid mix of IP and SDI, the increasing importance of network security, and why choosing the right technology for the specific application is more vital than ever What are the current trends you’re seeing in the broadcast industry? It might be that the current trend is that there is no single trend. The industry seems to have settled into a mix of IP and broadband SDI workflows. Both are making upgrade decisions in an environment where revenues remain under pressure. Some workflows clearly benefit from moving to an IP core, while others are better served by the simplicity and ease of troubleshooting that broadband SDI provides. It’s increasingly about choosing the right technology for the application rather than assuming everything needs to migrate in the same direction. What main challenges do your customers face? One thing that has really caught my attention is the challenge of securing networks and, just as importantly, assessing the security of the suppliers and technology you bring into them. Broadcast has become much more connected, so security can no longer be treated as somebody else’s problem. In your opinion, has SMPTE ST 2110 created more problems than it solved for mid-tier broadcasters? Every technological advance comes with pros and cons. A lot depends on how comfortable the engineering team is with the technology. If a mid-tier broadcaster has a network-savvy technical team, they may be perfectly comfortable managing an ST 2110 network. That said, broadband SDI isn’t necessarily problem-free. Finding the root cause of CRC errors and addressing audio/video latency can also be difficult, but most broadcast engineers know these pain points and have developed skills to intervene quickly. Ultimately, it comes down to people, training and expertise. I’m not convinced mid-tier broadcasters necessarily have it easier or harder than anyone else. Are today’s IP-based workflows too complex for the average operator to troubleshoot under pressure? It’s definitely a different art form. Some basic routing problems can be easier to identify in IP, but once you get into more advanced traffic and network behaviour, it can become a black box for people without that background. I would say some of the simpler problems are
40 | SEPTEMBER 2026
easier in IP, while the really difficult ones can be considerably more demanding. And then there is cybersecurity, which requires another skill set altogether. What crossovers are you seeing between the broadcast and pro AV sectors, and what can broadcast learn from that? I see the pro AV sector increasingly borrowing broadcast principles and raising production quality, which is helping to close the gap between the two sectors. Broadcast can certainly benefit from some of the more accessible, lower-cost technologies coming into the market although I would argue that much of that democratisation would have happened anyway as the technology matured. How much of over-engineering is driven by a cultural clash between traditional ‘broadcast’ mindsets and the industry’s move towards ‘IT’ workflows? I’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of technical people around the world throughout my career, and I would argue that over-engineering is more of a human trait than a technology-specific one. It is surprisingly difficult to keep things simple. Technology migrations are a perfect example. They give you a fantastic opportunity to make it more complicated. The challenge is knowing when to stop. If the industry is over-engineering itself, how do you think that will impact the next generation in terms of learning the skills they need to be successful? It’s a little like computer science. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was still possible for someone to know a great deal about almost every aspect of computers. Today, that’s impossible. The individual disciplines have become too deep. A 3D specialist isn’t necessarily going to be a network specialist or a low-level hardware expert. I think broadcast is heading in the same direction. People will become very comfortable and highly skilled in parts of the production environment, but few will understand every layer. That makes support and maintenance more dependent on teams with different areas of expertise. But it also creates opportunities for the next generation. There will be niches where someone with the right knowledge can become extremely valuable.
PRODUCTION AND POST
Faced with pressure to do more with less, broadcasters are looking for ways to make their IP transition not just a technical upgrade, but a strategic advantage
WHY SHOULD BROADCASTERS PAY ATTENTION TO
E
d Calverley spends much of his working life helping broadcast engineers understand how to design, deploy and operate SMPTE ST 2110 systems. As technical director of Q3 Media, he has a front-row seat to one of the biggest changes the industry has undertaken in decades: the transition from traditional baseband infrastructure to IP. It is a transition happening against a challenging economic backdrop. Broadcasters are being asked to do more with less, while continuing to support new workflows and prepare their infrastructure for requirements that may not exist when a facility is first designed. The opportunity with IP, then, goes beyond moving video and audio differently. It is about what the network can enable: greater flexibility, interoperability and choice in how systems are built and evolve. That is what makes IPMX worth broadcasters’ attention. Developed for the needs of pro AV, IPMX is a suite of open standards and specifications built on technologies already familiar to broadcast, including SMPTE ST 2110 and AMWA NMOS. But its relevance to broadcasters lies less in where it originated than in what it can enable. Making interoperability practical One characteristic that particularly stands out to Calverley is IPMX’s
42 | SEPTEMBER 2026
IPMX?
"obsession with products being interoperable 'off-the-shelf'," he states. It's an expectation that comes from the realities of pro AV, with end users often having neither the time nor the budget to spend determining whether or not products from different vendors will speak the same language. Instead, they want to "simply buy products that work reliably in any combination". IPMX’s certification programme also speaks to the needs of users, giving them greater confidence in interoperability between certified products from different manufacturers. On the broadcast side, there is a business dimension to technical objectives like this. When budgets and engineering resources are under pressure, interoperability can translate into greater technology choice and less dependence on any one vendor as infrastructure grows and requirements change. Open standards, in other words, aren’t valuable simply because they are open, but because of what that openness enables. Accommodating different timing requirements Timing is an important consideration in broadcast, but not every workflow or source has the same requirements. IPMX supports both synchronous and asynchronous sources and can operate with or without PTP, providing flexibility to accommodate different timing requirements within a standards-based IP environment.
www.tvbeurope.com
IP MIGRATION
More choices for designing the network That same idea of flexibility extends to how video moves across the network. IPMX supports both uncompressed video and compressed transport options, including JPEG-XS. For broadcasters, the significance is quite practical. Not every connection has identical bandwidth, performance or economic requirements. As Calverley puts it, "Making JPEG-XS more accessible through IPMX hardware enables more flexibility for building cost-appropriate media networks." An operative phrase here is "cost-appropriate." In times like these, when every technology investment faces greater scrutiny, having more transport options gives system designers greater freedom to balance the needs of an application against available network resources and infrastructure costs. It is another example of how greater technical choice can translate into greater business flexibility.
That flexibility is crucial as the range of sources and workflows moving onto IP networks continues to expand. Rather than assuming every device or application operates within an identical timing model, infrastructure can accommodate different requirements according to the workflow. For broadcasters, that opens another way of thinking about the transition to IP: not simply as a new transport mechanism, but as an opportunity to build infrastructure around what different applications actually require. Bringing more of the workflow onto the network Requirements are increasingly extending beyond traditional video and audio transport, and IPMX is designed with those diverse requirements in mind. The suite supports HDMI connectivity, and the associated EDID and HDCP requirements commonly encountered when connecting real-world devices, alongside USB/KVM. KVM is particularly interesting from Calverley’s perspective. When support for KVM transport was first announced for IPMX, "I was initially sceptical". On reflection, he saw the vision. Compared with uncompressed video, the bandwidth required to transport USB signals is relatively small, but their time-critical delivery still depends on a reliable network. It's worth noting that the role of KVM itself is changing. As operators increasingly access computer interfaces remotely, broadcasters are becoming more dependent on the systems that make that access possible. Calverley describes KVM as becoming "an important broadcast-critical system”. Bringing KVM into the IPMX ecosystem therefore creates another opportunity to think beyond moving pictures and sound and consider how more of the technology operators depend on every day can participate in an open, interoperable IP environment. Ed Calverley
www.tvbeurope.com
Infrastructure that can accommodate change Flexibility also matters while a system is operating. “The handling of format changes is, in my view, the most significant new feature of IPMX for traditional television operations," states Calverley. Consider what happens when a source changes resolution or frame rate, or the number of audio channels in a flow changes. Connections between IPMX devices can automatically follow those format changes. In many existing broadcast IP implementations, a user may need to re-route the signal following a format change in order to refresh the SDP information between sender and receiver. For broadcasters, the benefit is practical: workflows can adapt to changing source formats with less manual intervention. In a live environment, where keeping signals moving matters, that can make a meaningful operational difference. Getting more from the move to IP Individually, interoperability, flexible timing, support for KVM and HDMI workflows, and choices such as JPEG XS may seem like very different capabilities. But together, they illustrate something larger about IPMX and why it is relevant to broadcasters. The move from baseband to IP is a major technology transition that comes with a number of opportunities, like supporting more workflows, accommodating different requirements, expanding technology choice, and building infrastructure with room to evolve. IPMX offers a compelling example of what that can look like. Its suite of open standards and specifications brings together standards-based media transport and control with capabilities shaped by the practical requirements of the people using them. For broadcasters, paying attention can begin with a simple question for technology partners: What are you doing with IPMX? When budgets are tight and expectations are ever-increasing, the value of open standards isn’t in the specifications themselves, but in the possibilities they create. And as broadcasters continue their transition to IP, IPMX is creating more possibilities worth exploring.
SEPTEMBER 2026 | 43
MEDIA MANAGEMENT
What Is DMF?
D
By John Mailhot, senior vice president, product management, at Imagine Communications
ynamic Media Facility (DMF) has quickly become one of the broadcast industry’s most talked-about initiatives. Despite the growing interest, however, there is still considerable confusion about what DMF actually is. Much of that confusion stems from the attention surrounding the Media eXchange Layer (MXL). But DMF is much more than MXL, and understanding the broader architectural vision is key to understanding why it matters. Much of the broadcast industry’s video infrastructure has evolved from dedicated hardware to software running on standard compute platforms. As the industry embraced software containerisation, the challenge shifted from optimising individual applications to deploying and managing multiple applications on shared infrastructure. The next step is enabling software from multiple vendors to operate together, optimising both computing resources and communications between applications. DMF, a cross-industry initiative, addresses this next step by defining an open framework for deploying, coordinating, and managing virtualised applications across scalable computing platforms, whether on-premises or cloud-hosted. As the framework matures, broadcasters will be able to build facilities around that scalable infrastructure and deploy software from multiple vendors that operate together within a common business, technical, and operational model. While MXL has attracted significant attention, it addresses only a single element by defining how software applications exchange audio, video, and associated data through shared memory. Beyond that exchange layer, DMF establishes how software resources are deployed, connected, orchestrated, and managed throughout their lifecycle. It is this broader operational framework—above MXL—that transforms individual software components into a cohesive dynamic media facility. Understanding that relationship also helps clarify a common misconception: that DMF depends entirely on MXL. It does not. MXL is an enabling technology, not a prerequisite. Many dynamic media facilities will be built using existing technologies, including SMPTE ST 2110 and traditional SDI infrastructure, integrating functions from a shared compute environment alongside existing systems. MXL enhances those facilities by enabling applications within the same compute environment to exchange media efficiently while preserving existing workflows. Keeping that distinction clear is essential because DMF is an architectural framework, not a single technology. MXL will not replace ST 2110, which will remain the industry’s established standard for transporting professional media over IP. Instead, MXL improves the exchange of media between applications within
44 | SEPTEMBER 2026
the same compute environment. The two technologies solve different problems and work together as complementary components. That relationship reflects the broader direction of DMF: an evolution of software-defined media architectures rather than a radical departure. The industry can build on proven approaches while extending their benefits across the wider media ecosystem. Moving from individual implementations to that ecosystem will require collaboration and common specifications while maintaining the flexibility that has driven adoption of software-defined platforms. This industry collaboration is taking shape through the Joint Task Force for Dynamic Media Facilities (JT-DMF), established by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA). JT-DMF brings broadcasters, technology vendors, and industry organisations together to develop the interoperable specifications needed to turn the dynamic media facility vision into reality. The transition to DMF shares many similarities with the adoption of SMPTE ST 2110. As with any emerging architecture, vendors will develop technologies that help explore how its principles can be applied in real-world environments. These early implementations inform the development of mature specifications but should not be viewed as the final definition of the open framework. Instead, they provide practical experience that helps shape the interoperable specifications developed through industry collaboration. MXL illustrates the point. An open-source implementation of the MXL library gives the industry a way to test the concept and gain practical experience as JT-DMF continues its work. That experience can inform the broader development of DMF, but the implementation should not be interpreted as a complete realisation of the framework. MXL remains one element of the larger industry effort and is likely to evolve as the project moves forward. Turning those evolving specifications into an operational facility will require more than individual technology components. It will also depend on the ability to orchestrate, connect, and manage resources across increasingly dynamic media environments. A key principle is deployment flexibility, allowing workloads to move between on-premises and cloud environments as operational requirements change. Ultimately, DMF’s value will be measured by how effectively bestof-breed solutions work together in a multi-vendor ecosystem. For broadcasters, long-term investments should therefore be guided by the broader architecture emerging through collaboration, not any single technology implementation or product roadmap.
MEDIA DELIVERY
As high-bandwidth mobile video consumption continues to surge, EE and Meta have partnered to implement congestion awareness technology, promising more reliable streaming and reduced buffering, reports Joe O’Halloran
IMPROVING
T
mobile video
o quote/abuse the Frank Sinatra song, if love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage, so does mobile video and picture quality. Since 3G networks were introduced just over a quarter of a century ago, video has been touted as one of the key use cases for next-generation mobile networks— whatever that next generation happened to be (just wait for 6G and fully immersive video experiences). And also since the turn of the millennium, the key issue has always been video quality. Short-form content is enjoying a renaissance through social media platforms, and viewing live sports content in high quality is now an expectation. Add to this the basic fact that there are billions of devices in use simultaneously, and unreliable mobile connectivity for video is still a reality. A situation that in the UK, mobile operator EE and social media giant Meta are looking to rectify. No matter how mobile networks have been fundamentally transformed, offering capacities and performance levels far beyond those first envisaged, so have the devices people use to consume
46 | SEPTEMBER 2026
video. So too is the quality of content: 4K is very much now a standard. The net result is placing further strain on networks. Anybody using any transport system these days will almost certainly be sitting next to someone consuming video content on a mobile device, a film or TV episode downloaded for a long train journey or flight, or live content such as a football match. Increasingly, social media users are also uploading content like a music concert or action at a sports match. And all this takes place despite network congestion caused by the very large numbers of those filming. The result is that network demand quickly outpaces available network capacity. Another spur to mobile video usage has been the interesting and now lucrative growth of micro-dramas. Once considered a low-end, low-value niche, the micro-drama segment is now hitting highs both in terms of quality and revenue generation as its popularity soars. Mobile devices are the major platform for consumption. All this means that data usage over mobile networks has increased significantly over the recent past and is set to maintain
www.tvbeurope.com
MEDIA DELIVERY
this trajectory, given growing consumption making better use of available network of high-bandwidth online video and social capacity. In addition, it will support a more media content over mobile networks. And consistent experience when using video as demand for video continues to grow, apps in busy areas like city centres, transport mobile networks are facing a strain, leading hubs or large events. to buffering or a drop in quality, while users Put another way, the intended result is now expect to load video instantly and play to help reduce and even eliminate those smoothly, even in the busiest places or at frustrating times when videos buffer or stall peak times. when networks are busy. Mobile video growth is also being A pilot programme set out to make fuelled by the escalating widespread global watching videos on Facebook and Instagram availability of 5G networks. In June 2026, more reliable for EE mobile customers, even EE noted that users on its high-performance during periods of high network demand. 5G+ network in the UK grew by 3.75 times It saw the two companies test what they EE is deploying Advanced RAN Coordination from June 2025 to April 2026, and network claimed was “a smarter approach” to technology to boost network performance planning is now based around the places video delivery using the new congestion and moments where demand is needed awareness technology which adapted most, rather than treating rollout as a simple coverage map exercise. automatically during busy periods. In real terms of performance This means that it is essential for network management to ensure improvement, EE revealed in June 2026 that the pilot had delivered high-quality levels of viewing. “strong” results, including a 6-8 per cent bitrate reduction when congestion was identified and around a 4 per cent reduction in traffic The congestion challenge to congested cells, all while maintaining what it and Meta regard Meta and EE’s project was essentially designed to ensure reliable as a high-quality experience for EE customers using Facebook and and high-quality viewing experiences when watching videos on the Instagram. That meant fewer slowdowns and a more reliable video former’s Facebook and Instagram platforms even during periods of streaming experience on mobile data. high network demand. The congestion awareness technology has now been rolled out EE had already been working on improving network performance across the EE network, and Meta will expand the solution to other through the deployment of Advanced RAN Coordination (ARC) markets and partners throughout 2026. What needs to be stressed technology. This is designed to enable mobile sites close to each is the overall benefit of such technologies. It can boost the viewing other to share capacity in real time dynamically, something EE says experience of all high-quality video, not just cats doing mad things on will instantly boost network performance, particularly download Facebook or holiday videos on Instagram. Technology such as ARC speeds, by up to 20 per cent without the need for additional masts. spans all use cases, and sports video content viewers will be ahead ARC has already gone live for EE users in Edinburgh, Manchester of the game. and London and is being rolled out in Liverpool, Sheffield, Cardiff, Glasgow, Newcastle and Leeds. Revealing its collaboration with the social media giant, EE owner BT said it’s important to work with content providers such as Meta to tackle what it calls “a shared challenge”. The firms stress that their shared ambition is simple: to help more people enjoy a smooth viewing experience, while at the same time reducing impact on the network. Meta’s congestion awareness technology is designed to intelligently respond when parts of the network are under pressure. By making small, real-time adjustments when detecting high cell load during peak moments, it can reduce EE and Meta are the amount of data needed without noticeably affecting working together video quality. to ease pressure on networks while This was built to ease potential pressures on networks maintaining a highwhile maintaining a high-quality video experience for quality video exprience customers. The partners say it will help ease congestion for customers so more people keep watching without interruptions, while
www.tvbeurope.com
SEPTEMBER 2026 | 47
PRODUCTION AND POST
rough-cut ready FROM
TO
For editors facing constant delivery pressure and rising footage volumes, the rough cut has long been a bottleneck. TVBEurope meets Matthew Cooksey, founder and CEO of Nice Touch, an AI edit assistant that aims to turn hours of assembly work into minutes Where did the idea for Nice Touch come from? Nice Touch went through a few different iterations before we landed on an AI edit assistant. The thread running through all of them was the same though: we wanted to automate the repetitive, boring work that sits inside creative processes. We had spent years building internal tools to solve exactly that kind of problem in our own work, so we knew the pain was real and we knew it was solvable. When the LLM moment arrived and we had the freedom to build something new, this felt like the obvious place to focus. The creative industry is full of skilled people spending too much time on work that should not require their skills. Why is it called Nice Touch? One of our original co-founders used it as a kind of personal catchphrase. It stuck early, long before we settled on this version of the product, which tells you something about how much a name can take on
38 | SEPTEMBER 2026
a life of its own. Looking back it fits well. Whatever we were building, we always wanted people to feel that what we did for them was genuinely a nice touch. Something useful, considered, and a bit unexpected. That spirit ended up shaping the product as much as the name. Who is it aimed at? Editors and creative teams working at speed and scale on paid video content. That means people for whom delivery pressure is constant, footage volumes are high, and the cost of a slow rough cut is felt in the margin. Freelance editors managing multiple clients at once, in-house teams with regular output cadences, video agencies with back to back projects. The common thread is that these are professionals who edit for a living and need the mechanical parts of the process to move faster so they can spend their time on the work that actually requires their judgement.
www.tvbeurope.com
PRODUCTION AND POST
How was it developed? Through a lot of conversations and a lot of our own experience. We have spoken to over 300 people across the video industry: freelancers, editors, post supervisors, production managers, studio owners and business owners at every scale. Some were pilot customers, some tried early versions and gave us honest feedback, and some were just people willing to talk through the problems they face day to day. That fed directly into what we built and continues to shape every decision we make. On the technical side, the product is a local desktop application that connects to a cloud server handling all of the AI and inference work. That architecture was a deliberate choice. Editors work locally, inside their NLE, and we did not want to change that. The AI runs in the cloud but the experience stays in the room. How does it work? Nice Touch connects directly to the editor's NLE, currently DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Premiere Pro. The editor imports footage from their existing project and Nice Touch analyses it, extracting audio and running transcription with word-level timestamps, speaker identification and diarisation. For multicam projects, the editor confirms the audio source and the system computes a coverage map, so the AI can only ever select ranges where picture exists. Once analysis is complete, the editor opens the AI assistant. Rather than requiring a detailed prompt, it asks the editor a short series of contextual questions, pulling candidate answers directly from the content. Alongside the transcript analysis, the editor can feed in anything relevant to the project: a brief, client emails, feedback notes, reference cuts. The system uses all of that to build the edit. The output, whether that is a rough cut, an assembly, a stringout or social cuts, is imported back into the NLE as a new timeline. The editor reviews and refines manually, and can return to the assistant for further iterations. Nothing is destructive. The original project is always intact. Where does it sit in the post production workflow? Right after ingest, at the point where editors are reviewing footage and building their first rough cuts. That first assembly phase has always been necessary but it has also always been slow. Watching back hours of material, identifying the usable moments, building something coherent from it. Nice Touch sits exactly there, compressing that phase so the editor arrives at a creative starting point in minutes rather than hours or days. What are the biggest problems you see editors facing right now, and how exactly does Nice Touch step in to solve them? The business pressure on creative teams is significant. Revenues are competitive, margins are tight, and editors are typically running multiple projects simultaneously, all with demanding delivery timelines. The time it takes to review footage and build a rough cut has not changed even as footage volumes have grown. That first phase, which can take hours or even days on a longer project, is where Nice Touch has the most direct impact. We take that
www.tvbeurope.com
work and do it in around two minutes. That is not a figure of speech. The time the editor gets back goes straight into the creative work, which is where their value actually sits. Are there plans for an API or other integrations to get Nice Touch embedded into larger-scale broadcast or pro AV systems? Yes, absolutely. We have a big vision for where this goes and our roadmap is constantly evolving. The current product is a desktop application with a direct NLE connection, which is the right entry point. But the longer-term direction is deep integration with the broader creative ecosystem: project management tools, communication platforms, and the existing infrastructure that broadcast and pro AV operations already run on. We want Nice Touch to connect to the tools teams already use rather than ask them to work around it. That is a consistent principle for us and it shapes how we are building the technical foundations now. What's the timeline looking like for adding visual analysis and editing features, and how big a difference will that make for an editor's efficiency? It is very high on the roadmap and we are hoping to get it out this year. We already have a working prototype, which is encouraging. The honest challenge is not the technology itself, it is the UX and user flow. Making sure editors can guide the visual analysis in a way that feels natural and that the results genuinely surpass their expectations rather than just being technically impressive. Getting that right takes more time than building the underlying capability. When we do get it right, the efficiency gain for editors working on anything where the picture matters as much as the dialogue will be substantial. Transcript-driven editing is powerful but it only tells part of the story. How is your roadmap being driven by user feedback? And what do you hope to include in future iterations? We're constantly speaking to freelancers, editors, post supervisors, production managers and business owners. Those conversations have driven the product, but nowhere more directly than in the shift from V1 to V2. The consistent message was that AI tools feel like a detour from the edit rather than part of it. V1 required a well-formed prompt to get a useful result. V2 asks questions instead and pulls context from the content itself. That is a fundamental design change and it came entirely from listening to real people doing real work. Looking further ahead, we want Nice Touch to connect to the full breadth of the creative video ecosystem. Visual editing is the next major capability. Beyond that, integrations with project management tools so it can track budgets and automate timesheets, connections to communication platforms, and eventually more agentic editing where users can direct their workstation remotely through the assistant. The ambition is for Nice Touch to become the layer that connects context and action across the whole production process, not just the rough cut stage.
SEPTEMBER 2026 | 39
THE FINAL WORD
Navigating AI in live production By Caroline Cardozo, VP product management, Vizrt
A
s the rise of AI adoption and development continues, so does its risk assessment and regulatory recommendations. It’s not lost on professionals that while the promises of AI’s potential have been abundant, so have the warnings of using it without proper guardrails. There are regulations and frameworks that assess the risks and make informed recommendations. The first intergovernmental standard on AI, the OECD AI Principles, “promote innovative, trustworthy AI that respects human rights and democratic values”. The OECD AI Principles were last updated in 2024, with OECD member countries and numerous global partners adopting them, and recommendations of practical guidance on AI. The EU AI Act assigns applications of AI across four categories: unacceptable risk; high-risk applications; and applications considered limited, or minimal risk, which are left mostly unregulated. Broadcast and live production technology mostly falls into the last two categories, but the multiple ways AI can play a part in live production workflows is only growing and we must be committed to navigating that growth securely.
AI adoption: dialling up and down Being practical, there’s no one-size-fits-all application for AI in the production process. For a tool to be useful, it has to be flexible, giving broadcasters the option to dial it up and down to best fit the team’s way of working. That’s the difference of having a human across the loop; the ability to have oversight and control at every point of the production as you choose. Customising AI adoption can take many shapes. For instance, let’s say a production team wants to automate as much of their show as possible—so, pulling in the story, selecting imagery, perhaps even drafting the piece for broadcast. They can train AI agents to understand their brand and tone of voice, and the type of stories the show tells. A fully automated workflow can look like this: a journalist writes a few prompts, and then the AI workflow finds the assets that could be associated with the story, writes the story in the journalist’s tone of voice, and puts it straight to air. A different team might not want that; instead, automating to a point where a human checks it, proofreading the copy and
50 | SEPTEMBER 2026
images. Another team might want to automate the copy but do a final check on the assets before it goes live. Those decisions still put editorial control in the hands of humans. Regardless of the extent each team adopts AI in its workflow, people still own the oversight.
Agentic AI in compliance: self-flagging workflows With Agentic AI, transparency is still a necessary part of compliance, regardless of the levels of risk. Categorically, minimal risk includes spam filters or content recommendation engines. We’re used to this, for instance when a streaming platform communicates to its viewers that their data might be used to make recommendations when they’re watching content. Limited risk can include chatbots or AI-generated content, and people need to know when they’re interacting with AI. At this point, we generally know—you see these things every day. With high-risk activities, there needs to be human oversight, but also audit trails, where the agents themselves can justify the decision-making and show the reasoning. For example, when an agent pulls an image or starts writing copy, it can simultaneously provide the reasons as to why a particular image is appropriate for the story. People can decide where their input is needed for the agent to progress to the next step. From a regulatory perspective, there are specific controls and transparency duties depending on how AI is being used, whether it’s the agents or the services being provided. At Vizrt, we’re being very deliberate in our approach with a central hub. This works as an operations centre where the user sets the guardrails—if the next step isn’t within the scope set for the agent, it flags itself, requesting human approval.
How we can promote innovative, trustworthy AI A significant caution broadcasters have in adopting AI tools is prioritising the trust they’ve built with their audience. But adopting AI into workflows doesn’t require obscurity—across AI regulations and frameworks, the main recommendations are safety and transparency. As AI adoption grows, and as broadcasters remain steadfast in the commitment to transparency, people will become more comfortable with its use. But it’s a continuous task: authorities should update the regulation as AI adoption progresses and users should remain discerning when interacting with the technology.
www.tvbeurope.com
9000