The Top 3 Trends That Will Define Broadcasting In ’23

Last year, we started to see what “normal” might feel like going forward. Even with some challenges of the pandemic abating, the new operating environment has not returned to what it was pre-pandemic, and most of the industry does not see a complete return to the old ways of working. Instead, it has evolved and worked around the challenges of a dispersed workforce, which have laid the foundations for another exciting year ahead, with cloud-based sharing and collaboration, as well as personalized viewing experiences, at the heart of it.

Cloud Archiving Capabilities

The rise of the cloud in recent years will take on even greater importance in 2023. The cloud provides many significant benefits, notably economic savings and opportunities to enhance content in more flexible ways. With its unlimited scale, broadcasters now have a chance to seize on its potential. By accessing cloud storage, broadcasters across the value chain can enjoy greater flexibility that gives them better access to content that is perfect for today’s demanding market.

Cloud storage also provides the ability to future-proof content. In this data-hungry industry, as new metadata technologies emerge, operators can apply new metadata to whatever content is in the cloud, regardless of how old it is. This ability creates significant efficiencies compared to traditional, “static,” videotape storage. One of the meaningful use cases for enhanced metadata is understanding viewing habits. This information can be used in a variety of ways, such as content recommendation strategies to retain and attract new viewers and using that data to drive content production.

More Regionalized Viewing Experiences

Another trend that has gathered momentum is regionalization of content, specifically through localized news. The basic model for producing regional versions of news and weather is well established. Now, many broadcasters are looking to take advantage of cloud-based content sharing, which makes regional content a lot more accessible to more people, to license local news stories to content aggregators.

As content moves increasingly to the cloud, the possibilities widen. The cloud provides instant access to news stories wherever you are in the world, so breaking news in one region can be broadcast over multiple channels to anyone that has an interest in that story. Local news has more appeal than just local viewers. The topic of licensing content to aggregators is currently being explored by broadcasters and the industry will hear more about it as the year progresses.

Continued Growth Of Remote Production

One significant impact of the pandemic is a fundamental shift in the way we work. Remote work has significantly increased, and media companies need to continue to adopt this into their new strategies as virtual collaboration becomes more critical than ever.

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, the industry was successfully able to deliver collaborative tools and we can only expect this evolution to continue in 2023. Now, broadcasters are looking for ways to provide increased flexibility to day-to-day operations.

The transition to the cloud has inevitably helped remote production become more efficient and effective, and the possibilities are growing. Expect to see media companies reduce production costs while in turn, enhance productivity through remote production, which is largely due to the rapid technological advancements made in this space in such a short period of time.

With remote production, newsrooms are in a better position to handle multiple events at once. As the production system will be reused for the next event, production staff can manage two different productions during the same day. Remote production is providing the essential tools to help media companies manage their media and data effectively and the shift towards remote production will only grow and result in a more dynamic broadcasting ecosystem.

Sam Peterson is COO of Bitcentral.