LTN – How to manage operational convergence with smart automation — and smarter IP technology
Rick Young, SVP Global Products, LTN
The media world is transforming fast. Broadcasters are rethinking how they produce, manage, and deliver content to bring their most valuable assets to the widest audience. Reaching viewers with tailored live news and sports experiences across multiple platforms has never been as important — or as challenging.
The age-old imperative of ‘doing more with less’ is being accelerated with changes on the ground. Technology and workflow innovation means broadcast job roles, departments, and the technology solutions that bridge them are increasingly coming together. The remit of skilled editorial professionals is expanding to include wider operational responsibilities not previously included in their beat. Non-technical, content-oriented teams now delve into operations and engineering functions across channel creation, configuration and playout. These new team configurations require the right technology mix for a new operational reality to succeed. The key here is deploying technologies that make workflows simpler, easier to use — and more efficient at an organizational level. Automation is a key enabler, helping teams work smarter, drive efficiencies, and focus their resources where it matters.
Powering live content versioning
Viewers set the tone. All eyes are on live sports (from tier-one leagues to up-and-coming or ‘niche’ sports) and exclusive and original content. These assets are seen as the most sought-after investments that drive revenue and ROI. But live sports is simply the most expensive and complex genre to manage at scale. Content owners and rights buyers are laser-focused on making the biggest bang for their buck, increasingly finding ways to tailor and scale live content versions for new takers to drive maximum monetization. Automating some of the time-intensive, mundane tasks that take up time, limit creativity, and hold back innovation frees up talent and resources to unlock growth. Automation tackles operational complexities, allowing teams to focus on areas of growth like delivering premier sports to new platforms, investing in fast-growing local sports properties, and creating and launching new FAST and digital linear channels.
From a channel creation and distribution perspective, automation is a game-changer. With extensive automation and content versioning capabilities embedded at the network level, organizations are now creating and customizing secondary versions of core linear channels for OTT and FAST with custom ad signaling and content replacement to enable revenue-generating, differentiated experiences on a per platform or per consumer basis. Meanwhile, opting for a more intelligent IP distribution system means channel creators can automate and simplify complex rights management and blackouts for local affiliates depending on varying content rights and local restrictions.
Let’s look at a prime example. One of our customers is a major US TV network that uses intelligent versioning and rules-based, automation-driven switching to manage growing affiliate ecosystems across FAST and digital platforms like Hulu, YouTube TV and their owned and operated apps. In the past, these types of workflows would require a huge amount of time and heavy resourcing to make possible. However, workflow automation and business intelligence, seamlessly integrated at the core of the network, can transform these intricate processes to alleviate operational burden and drive a more cost-efficient, sophisticated distribution strategy.
Simple, supported, outcome-first IP distribution
In a world where organizations can’t afford to experiment without returns, time equals money. Automation should empower teams to accelerate timelines, reduce time to market, and ensure new digital products and services are worth the investment. That means rightsizing the cost of digital channel creation against its expected revenue returns. Folks need to know the juice is worth the squeeze. Live content versioning tools that allow media companies to produce once but deliver and monetize in infinite ways — without bearing the costs of additional operators, channel creation, ad enablement or playout infrastructure — set a new precedent in live media distribution at scale.
Automation is a critical connective tissue that enables teams overseeing editorial and engineering workflows to go beyond what was deemed possible and powerfully scale live events or create new digital channels. A highly sophisticated IP ecosystem approach is the best way to bring together disparate workflows across production, programming, advertising and playout to drive new efficiencies and operational innovation. Customers tell us they’re looking for more simplified IP solutions that deliver better tooling, visibility, and control to unify fragmented systems and workflows and sidestep unnecessary and margin slashing, unexpected, charges from some public clouds. Simple, easy-to-operate solutions win every time over complicated, costly, multi-vendor systems that require deep technical skills and resources that not all media companies can support.
All eyes on revenue enablement
You can find automation in almost every broadcast department today. The trick is being able to elevate automation beyond cost reduction and operational efficiency to pure revenue enablement. Live content is and will remain the premium asset. Automated live event versioning workflows can turbo-charge growth by scaling content to more rights buyers and audiences than ever before, powering multi-platform, multi-market rights deals and localized ad revenue.
The true challenge for broadcasters and their technology partners is to leverage technology that is interconnected and delivers the automation, simplicity, and effectiveness modern broadcast teams need. This is the time to work harder and smarter, lead with outcomes and drive growth.
