admin To be attributed to Sanjay Duda, Chief Operating Officer, Planetcast
The media and entertainment industry experienced a historic shock from the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has forever changed the way media and entertainment businesses operate. Social distancing has forced media companies to rethink the entire media supply chain from content creation to distribution. The remote workflows which were slowly getting popular, became the only option for broadcast operations during the lockdown and the pandemic has dramatically accelerated the transition to cloud based workflows, remote playout and remote production.
Worldwide lockdowns led to a paradigm shift in the media consumption pattern. TV viewership saw a massive increase along with high consumption of content on OTT platforms. As the world entered the lockdown phase, people were glued to their TV and digital screens which resulted in increased entertainment hours. Comcast reported surge in linear TV viewership by 6-7% in the US and OTT video up by 38%. Netflix gained 16 million subscribers in Q1 and Disney+ subscribers were up by 225% in the first week of shutdown (source: capgemini report). In a post pandemic world, OTT will be too hard to ignore and it will be highly critical for media companies to have a long term strategy in place for OTT services and products. Cloud adoption will enable instant delivery of content across OTT platforms with virtualized workflows and top end security.
Content production came to a grinding halt during the lockdown which resulted in a major shortage of new content library. Warner bros halted production of more than 70 series and Netflix shutdown all scripted TV & film production across US and Canada. It will become extremely important to create pandemic proof content banks, improve production workflows and reduce lead times. Creating safe production sets with remote production at its core will be the top most priority for every production company. Hub and spoke production will gain significant momentum in 2021.
The work desk at home is the new normal and having access to content and playlists from any location is a great power to have. Major focus will be on creating long term cloud based workflows which will enable production teams to create, manage and deliver content remotely from any location. The broadcast operator doesn’t need to be in the PCR to manage the output, instead they can operate the content playout from any location across the globe with the power of remote playout based on cloud, ensuring business continuity in every situation.
Cloud enables more flexible and hybrid storage infrastructure which is capable of absorbing fluctuations in the capacity needs. Media companies can reduce operational cost significantly with hybrid storage infrastructure by holding frequently used content on premise, thus minimizing frequent downloads from cloud. Global availability of content becomes easy with cloud based media asset management which will create a highly cost effective ecosystem within the organization.
Cloud adoption will bring better accuracy in targeted advertising and increase ROI on the advertisement expenditure. The complex advertising workflows involve the access of same content by agency, broadcaster, brand, online platforms etc. in multiple formats at a global level, cloud based workflows are capable of simplifying the convergence of multiple stakeholders in the advertising industry and reduce operational cost across the advertising delivery chain.
During the pandemic video gaming saw a humongous jump of 75% in the US according to Verizon (Capgemini report). Media companies must leverage the huge business potential of the gaming sector, this will not only create more revenue streams but will also open up new possibilities for technical collaborations with game publishers. Cloud adoption will prevent piracy in the gaming sector as there will no physical copy of the games. The game players will also benefit from cloud adoption as they will not have to buy expensive equipment to play massively multiplayer online games.
Before the pandemic, cloud adoption was looking like a decade long journey but in the post pandemic world the journey to cloud adoption will be much shorter. By 2025, the companies which are not using cloud today, will have their entire workflows and archives on cloud. The M&E sector will never be the same again in the post pandemic world & the entire workforce will have to reskill/upskill to adapt to the new normal.
About Planetcast
Planetcast is a leading media services provider offering technology-led Managed Services to the Broadcasting industry in India & Neighbouring Nations with rapidly growing its footprints across Southeast Asia. PlanetCast was founded in 1996 and has revolutionized the media and entertainment industry ever since. They are managing 200+ channels with offices in New Delhi, Noida, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Cochin.
About TLG Media
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