IBC Q&A: Globecast’s Mark Logez and Peter Elvidge discuss remote-production opportunities
Marc Logez is Globecast’s head of marketing, global contribution.
Globecast’s new remote-production service is offering content owners the ability to select from multiple sources and create bespoke programming on their own production systems remotely to prepare their broadcast feeds. SVG Europe discussed some of the issues raised by these new approaches with Globecast Head of Marketing, Global Contribution, Marc Logez and Head of Global Media Management Peter Elvidge…
Remote working is something that many broadcasters are now looking at. How soon do you think it will be before it becomes used regularly?
Logez: In football, for example, where you have broadcasts twice a month at least from the same location and with multiple sources — maybe 10 cameras – it already makes sense to set up a remote location. I would not say that this is going to be common for the next football season, but I would say, in two or three years, it will be more common, especially for the big venues and big events.
The business has moved on from simply delivering content to multiple devices, to providing specific content for different devices
At the beginning, everyone wanted to broadcast on multiple devices, but the question was how to monetise that. People now don’t want to pay to see exactly the same content [on] the screen, the mobile, and the tablet, so it has to be customised. Now broadcasters are able to provide live via VOD services, and we are packaging VOD to be able to select ingest from one feed to deliver specific content to address one specific device.
Would you say the world is moving toward the idea that multiple delivery platforms have to support different income streams?
Logez: We have moved on from the idea that using multiple camera feeds for multiple platforms means transmitting the same content on all platforms. We need to provide a solution that supplies multiple programming from one event, with multiple-device and pay-per-video applications. An example in motor racing is to have multiple feeds from on-board cameras in the cars. If you want to see the race on the on-board cameras, you pay a small fee, and you can view that on your device.
Elvidge: One big challenge that a lot of the industry faces is that, in the past, [it was dealing primarily with] technological challenges but [now has to place more emphasis on] end-user experience.
One of the things we have been doing is to dig into the user design to establish what we are trying to achieve, who are the user groups, what they do, and how they interact.
When you start looking at the end-to-end business process, the media workflow gets easier as you understand where the data that drives it is coming from. If we only considered our own technical background, it wouldn’t work. So we have brought in designer agencies to help us understand this.
The big thing is that technology isn’t the block anymore; it is not the bottleneck it once was. In most cases, the technology can do it, but it is then a question of how you are going to apply it.