On Tap For IBC: IP, AI, OTT, Cloud

As television hurtles forward in the throes of sweeping innovations and changing audience behaviors, those headed to IBC 2018 in Amsterdam from Sept. 13 to 19 should find plenty of insight into the transformational currents.

On an IBC webinar previewing the week-long conference and exhibition, vendors and their representations identified some of the main subjects.

Tim Felstead, director of strategic and operation marketing at Rohde & Schwartz, cited the IP transition, along with how to enhance operational efficiencies and adopt more intelligent storage management.

Kathy Bienz, director North America, International Association of Broadcast Manufacturers, said the integration of AI in traditional workflows will be another “hot topic.”

Jeremy Dujardin, CTO of global management and entertainment at Tata Communications, said he thinks the show’s biggest buzz will be about remote production, media cloud services and OTT’s evolution.

Dujardin said OTT is moving toward primary screen status with many viewers as opposed to a secondary screen. As that happens, he expects to see a transition in the level of experience consumers can get on an OTT platform.

“They’re not just rivaling broadcast but quickly surpassing it,” he said.

Bienz said a supply trends study that IABM will release at the show supports Dujardin’s sense of where things are going. While most client revenue still comes from traditional distribution models, she said, clients’ focus is shifting to augmenting that revenue with OTT distribution models.

IBC’s conference program comprises seven conference streams with some 400 speakers, in addition to a series of keynote sessions and “lounge talks” slated for early mornings and lunch breaks.

Conference streams will engage some of the industry’s thornier challenges, such as a session on “Trust and Technology: Telling the (Real) News” happening as part of the Global Gamechangers stream on Sept. 13.

Featuring panelists from NBC News International and The New York Times, it will look at how news organizations are fighting back to rebuild trust with consumers and engage them on a variety of platforms with compelling content.

One such platform is voice, and “Future Interfaces: How Voice Transforms Content” will examine how broadcasters like Channel 4 are turning to platforms including Amazon Alexa to reach audiences in entirely different ways. That panel runs in the “Audience: Engage. Influence. Grow” track on Sept. 14.

The IP transition and the cloud will be a major theme across the conference and the exhibition floor this year and will be the subject of “Tech Talks: Head Firmly in the Cloud” in the “New Platforms: Innovators and Disruptors” stream on Sept. 15.

Tim Claman, CTO and VP of product management at Avid, joins Michael Rizzo, head of TV and broadcast solutions architecture at BT and others for this dive into cloud-based TV delivery systems.

A series of panels in the “Smart Connectivity and Multiplay Devices” stream on Sept. 15 will look at the enhanced bandwidth and network capacity that will be ushered in with 5G.

They include “Road to 5G,” which will follow the transition and its impact on OTT, AR, AI personalization and voice recognition, among other emerging technologies. “Are We Nearly There Yet?” another panel in the day’s same track, looks at how close we are to delivering on 5G’s promise.

Artificial intelligence will be the focus of “AI in Production” in the “Cutting Edge Tech Innovators” stream on Sept. 16. The panel will look at AI’s role in live broadcasting and its potential to create cost efficiencies and introduce “smart production” into coverage, leaving hardly any task left to human producers.

Craig Wright, project research engineer at the BBC and Hiroyuki Kaneko, senior manager or NHK, are among the panelists.

Also on Sept. 16, the “Advertising: The New Attention Economy” stream will feature a panel on “TV Ad Tech: The State of Play.” Panelists include SpotX’s Allen Klosowski, VP, mobile and connected television and Thomas Bremond, GM, international of FreeWheel, who will look at vital new technologies including dynamic ad insertion.

For those looking to see some of the most cutting-edge work in immersive content experiences, “The Best of Immersive Content: Evoking Creative Transmedia Productions With Groundbreaking Techniques” will be an essential panel.

Dropping in the “Next Gen: Interactive and Immersive Experiences” stream on Sept. 16, it will feature experts from Al Jazeera, Sky VR and more sharing case studies, audience insights and creative techniques.

IBC’s conference keynoters will help frame out a picture of television’s next era. Chief among them will be Neal Mohan, YouTube’s chief product officer and Google SVP, who on Sept. 14 will look at how his platform’s technology can help broadcasters reach new audiences in more ways.

Kelly Day, president of Viacom Digital Studios, will address how iconic TV brands can be recast for social- and mobile-first audiences in a Sept. 15 talk. And Jean-Briac Perrette, president-CEO of Discovery Networks International, will look at how the company is building global momentum in its growth.

Meanwhile, IBC will once again take over 15 halls at the Amsterdam RAI Exhibition and Convention Center. It will be open Sept. 14-18 and feature more than 1,700 companies and organizations exhibiting.

Featured areas of the exhibition floor include the Big Screen, Launch Pad, Partnership Pavilion and What Caught My Eye, where experts share their favorite products in a 45-minute breakfast session.

The IBC Future Zone, another specially-curated area inside the exhibition, focuses this year on how technologies grow from inception, move through R&D and mature into groundbreaking new apps and products. Featured companies will showcase their latest work in VR, customized TV viewing experiences, HDR and AI.

This year the show also spotlights a number of executive forums including an invitation-only, one-day Cyber Security Forum bringing together CTOs, CIOs, CISOs and others within media and broadcasting for a candid conversation on anticipating cyber threats and managing breaches. A Leaders’ Forum will convene a small group of C-level electronic media and entertainment industry leaders to help shape future strategies.

Once again IBC will present a range of awards, the most coveted of which are the Innovation Awards, which are presented in three categories. This year’s Content Creation Shortlist includes The Eurosport Cube, an AR- and VR-powered immersive reality studio presented by Discovery, White Light and Deltatre; the world’s first glocal news service used by Euronews; and CCTV’s networked 4K production for the Winter Olympics.

The Content Distribution Shortlist includes Econet Media’s TV Everywhere for Africa; Discovery and Eurosport’s Mediabank for the 2018 Winter Olympics; Medialaan’s live streaming with reduced ad loads; and Vodafone’s multi-national cloud-based television.

The Content Everywhere Shortlist includes RTE’s Saorview Connect, one of the first DTT platforms to adopted an advanced managed user interface; the World Rally Championship’s All Live, which enabled more than 25 hours of coverage from each of the event’s rallies as a continuous live stream; and ESPN’s Shortstop Live, which uses custom technologies to serve sports fans anywhere, anytime at impressive speed and scale.

Other IBC awards include the International Honor for Excellence, Exhibition Stand Design, Best Technical Paper and the Judges’ Prize, which can be drawn from any of its three Innovation Award categories or another project which has caught judges’ eyes for its imagination or innovation.

IBC 2018 registration is still open and available here. Lodging information is available here.

You can read all of TVNewsCheck’s IBC 2018 news here.