21923 - SCTE Broadband Aug2023 COMPLETE v1 (1)

70 Vol. 45 No. 3 - September 2023 Issue In our third instalment of our interview with Simen at his stunning offices in Oslo, we discover how necessity really is the mother of invention; in Part II Simen explained that due to time constraints, he and his team literally soldered four Avid systems together to accommodate the recording of a Norwegian soap opera in order to circumvent recording onto cassettes. Recorded directly onto hard drives, it was then networked onto shared storage. At the time it was an industry first, and with the help of a third party in Switzerland who developed the timecoding capability across four Avids, the process changed the face of production and storage in an instant. Interview (Part 3) By Melissa Cogavin, Managing Editor, SCTE with Simen Frostad, Bridge Technologies Simen K. Frostad, Chairman, Bridge Technologies Broadband: Was it an overnight success? Or did this new technique meet with some resistance at first? SF: The customer was over the moon and just said, “Wow, we want that.” So we built four more studios in Stockholm for some production companies. One or two of our larger, corporate clients weren’t comfortable. It took a long time to convince them, but ultimately their clients said, “Well, if you’re not doing it then you’re not getting the contract.” That’s fairly typical of large companies, not that agile and they like to see social proof before committing. They wait to see what others are doing then they take the plunge. SF: But in the end they capitulated, because what was the alternative? Understandable. They want to be sure that it was going to work - then once they’re in, they are behind you 100% right? SF: Absolutely. It’s natural to be a bit skeptical. I can’t understand skepticism in this day and age, because it’s so obvious that IP is the way out of anything. And if you’re not in on it now, you are not going to survive; it’s not going away. from the industry