21581 - SCTE Broadband August2022 COMPLETE v1

51 Vol. 44 No. 3 - September 2022 Issue from the industry middle; focus would switch from the screens to HD 4K to the delivery method.” Mike added, “5G will be a big thing this year. And the cloud for business. Media workflows and how AI can be used to to help in everything all the way through the production chain. Those are the themes in 2022.” Given the size of the show it must be a challenge to stay on top of the trends when everything is moving so fast. Mike smiled. “It can be! We’ve got a session which is cheekily entitled, The Future of Linear, which looks at the various new business models that have emerged of late. Not that long ago there was a clear terrestrial broadcast model, which was paid ads. There was a clear satellite and cable model, which was subscription based with satellite box. And then OTT came along. But now actually we are seeing all these different models, where everyone’s monetising the content they’ve paid so much to produce that they’ve become more agnostic. Amazon don’t mind if they’ve got free-to-consume stuff, as it has ads in it. This would’ve been quite confusing not that long ago.” Mike explained the level of debate around that central area will focus on enabling these new models rather than running a legacy system for broadcast. “There will be less focus on delivery and display as well as how technology and the cloud can be used.” He went on, “5G enables so much - the Metaverse for a start. It enables people to set up very small broadcasts very easily and very quickly. So that will be interesting because no one’s discussed it for two- or three-years face to face. Remote production has become a theme now, through necessity during the pandemic.” He also pointed out that “So many big companies now want to differentiate themselves. It isn’t enough to just have a logo on the kit anymore. They need to have a narrative around why they’re here and what’s different. Amazon is making big noises in this area – the why behind the what is a big selling point in 2022. We’ve got a showcase theatre, which will be exploited by lots of companies telling a story, rather than just showing black boxes.” Trade shows can suffer from being a bit samey after a while; there are only so many black boxes you can get excited about. It is broadly reflective of the industry that lines are blurring and the protectionist attitude that once prevailed is giving way to something more inclusive, I ventured. “Absolutely,” Mike agreed. “We have a number of companies that are very good at providing an end-to-end solution all the way along the supply chain. But from a broadcast point of view, the cloud allows you to be scalable.” How does that impact business as whole? “If you’ve got a lot of subscribers and you’ve got a lot of content, you can go up and down. On the buying side, it’s less about buying all the black boxes up front and plugging together as a capital expenditure. Things have morphed into a subscription model now. Instead of supplying black boxes to customers, the customers are driving it and asking for the subscription to the software.” Subscription models are something everyone is already using more than they realise, whether it is for Netflix, their online newspaper or dog food via Amazon. It is good for cashflow. Mike added, “We have seen a lot of the industry therefore has had to move from a CAPEX model to an OPEX one.” I asked Mike how IBC managed the communications during the pandemic, as the show faced one cancellation after another. It must have been tough going at times. “At IBC we are experts at booking, running a show, keeping it relevant and growing it, but suddenly it had to be cancelled. We had to become experts at cancelling the show. Which was a very different thing. If you even think about all the