White Paper: The media supply chain’s need for speed

media supply chain need for speed
 Andy Warhol once said, “The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting.” But somewhere in the early years of this millennium, that’s an idea that seems to have gotten well and truly lost.

There is more audio-visual content being generated than ever before, with every expectation that each year will bring more still. And at the same time the preparedness of audiences to defer the gratification that waiting for such content is supposed to bring, is rapidly diminishing.

The consumer demand for more high quality content – delivered more quickly than ever – is presenting fundamental challenges to the media supply chain.

Perhaps this instant-media culture was brought on by the rise of rolling news; perhaps by the rise of streaming video services; perhaps by the commodification of the tools of content creation. Probably it was all three. But whatever the reason, it seems non-arguable that consumers want and expect content to be brought to market faster than ever before. But if this is the new reality of audience demand, what does it mean for content supply?

Broadcasting can still be a profitable business but many established media and entertainment players are now having to focus on the bottom line in new ways.

Internet delivery has challenged this complacency, and accelerated the pace of change. But perhaps we’ve seen nothing yet. There are strong creative, financial and operational arguments for the move to IP production and cloud services. But the most compelling reason of all may simply be that audience behaviours will now require any content provider to be able to turn on a dime.

To misappropriate a quote from another cultural icon, Howlin’ Wolf, broadcast has traditionally been “built for comfort, not for speed”: resilient and reliable but not agile or fast. So what will it mean for the media supply chain to re-engineer itself to be highly responsive? What will be the success factors? And how will the supply side of the content equation be changed by the process?

This special report summarizes the key themes to emerge from the discussion at the DPP/Ooyala NAB 2017 event that was initiated by short presentations from Paul Cheesbrough, CTO for 21st Century Fox, and Julie Sterling, Head of Broadcast Partnerships for Google. The wider group of attendees then built on these contributions.

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