The Educational, Informational Side of IBC

“The story you are about to see is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.” Main Title Announcer, “Dragnet,” Mark VII Productions, 1951-1970

Major trade shows like IBC and CES always have a hook/theme they use to attract exhibitors and attendees. Mike Crimp, IBC CEO, proved their multi-prong pitch worked with more than 1,350 exhibitors and 45,000 attendees from 170 countries.

But this year, Crimp’s team’s focus seems to be more than a passing theme – Accelerator Media Innovation – but a global set of initiatives the industry will have to work on for years to come.

Many of the key stakeholders – companies, governments and individuals – have already committed to helping in areas including AI (naturally), news/information disinformation, live/programmed production workflow/distribution, content accessibility, global talent provenance and personalization and ad standards as well as cybersecurity and sustainability.

After checking out a few of the sessions and talking with moderators and participants, we think we’ll be seeing a lot of standards and guidelines being rolled out that we think the industry and world can support/implement.

As Crimp said at the opening of the event, the IBC community needs to explore/closely examine the technological advances and market dynamics that are shaping the industry in a period of dynamic change. 

NVIDIA and AMD, the two foundation players for AI, had a strong presence in their own stands as well as almost every stand and session during the show. 

While we might have a black leather jacket preference, the attendees and industry don’t and simply wants to get a firm handle on the technology’s leap from theory to real-world applications and their affect/effect on tomorrow.

The AI Tech Zone and a number of sessions explored how AI can be integrated into everyday operations to help them be more efficient and successful.  The processor producers and software producers emphasized that AI is going to be a real game changer in terms of how it touches, influences and affects every piece of content that is developed, distributed and consumed.

At the same time, several governmental and industry speakers emphasized that the technology demands that rules and regulations be established at the outset that protect the integrity of how it is applied to operation/workflow automation, accessibility, storage and accurate viewer experiences. 

That is a helluva burden for an industry that simply wants to educate, inform and entertain people around the globe.

National elections showed that the industry must be proactive in aggressively using AI to fight disinformation in news and that it will be an ongoing challenge and one that can’t be abdicated to social media providers.

By the end of the year, nearly half of the world’s population will have participated in elections that have experienced an unprecedented volume of disinformation that threatens democratic processes and public trust.

Judy Parnall, head of Standards & Industry at BBC, emphasized during one of the sessions that the rise of deepfakes and overwhelming volume of AI-generated social media content presents a significant risk of impersonation, misinformation that can be overwhelming and that the industry and international governmental regulators must work together to stay ahead of the developments. 

A key industry initiative that was unveiled at IBC was the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) and Project Origin that will foster closer industry collaboration and information sharing, the development of anomaly detection tools/processes and uses media provenance signals. 

Following IBC, Allan McLennan, president/chief executive of PADEM Media Group and one of the members of one of the working groups, cited their work on cracking down on sexually explicit deepfakes and the requirements for AI watermarking. 

He noted that members of the cross industry working group feel it’s time to set aside the competitive nature of  the news industry and work together to identify and address the problem of easy fakes which used to be called propaganda and develop tools and solutions that can instantaneously counter the messages with facts that are real and true.

“It’s a tremendous challenge,” McLennan emphasized, “but IBC has the full support of all of industry participants, major governmental powers and industry standards groups to make it happen.  In addition, since the EU has been so aggressive with its web accessibility activities, there seemed to be a consensus that other free world governments will establish similar standards.”

But it’s also important to remember that despite all the advanced technology that is being focused on the problem, it will still require skilled journalistic professionals to verify and interpret the news content for viewers and listeners. For more information on the subject check IBC Accelerator Project: Design Your Weapons in the Fight Against Disinformation and IBC Conference: Beating fake news – inspiring trust in the age of disinformation.

Preparing for Tomorrow – Industry players and IBC conducted a series of educational/informational sessions designed to help organizations help prepare tomorrow’s creative/production workforce. 

IBC, in conjunction with the EU, hosted its inaugural World Skills Café and sessions to foster international knowledge sharing to address the industry’s skills needs and the aging white male workforce. 

The policy group noted that only a third of managerial and director roles are held by women and more than 90 percent of professionals in the sectors are white. 

To address the skills gap shortage and underrepresented in the media technology sector, the program held a series of next-generation recruitment/mentoring sessions that would encourage companies and organizations in developing tomorrow’s workforce with the skills, education and diversity necessary to handle the needs of tomorrow’s industry.

In the months and years ahead, the talent manifesto group made up of executives around the globe will be developing and compiling a series of living documents and programs that will pace and measure the skills advancement activities in the coming years.

To paraphrase a proverb, it takes a village to prepare tomorrow’s workforce.

It’s only logical that cybersecurity would be a dominant subject at IBC since cybercrime – including content theft – will cost an estimated $9.5 T this year and is projected to reach $10.5T next year.

AI and LLMs (large language modules) are double-edged swords that can be used to create breathtaking video content but also steal and share personal communications, work in progress and completed programs/projects/activities.

The attendee-packed IBC sessions offered AI-enabled ideas as well as processes and procedures that could identify deceptive patterns, detect abnormalities and isolate potential threats with automated defense tools/systems that can also adapt in real-time to minimize and perhaps even eliminate vulnerabilities and losses.

As one speaker noted, “AI has the ability to generate highly authentic and personalized communications and workflow and at the same time it can create scams and malicious attacks that can bypass cybersecurity measures with alarming sophistication and speed.

“It requires constant vigilance to keep abreast of their activities and perhaps ahead of their efforts to protect our content investments,” he added.

With the aggressive shift of content distribution and pay TV shrinking – but still very viable/necessary – and streaming becoming increasingly popular with content creators, distributors and consumers around the globe, there was also a lot of interest in sessions that focused on the profit side of the business. 

Several of the sessions discussed how marketers and service providers could unlock and take advantage of opportunities to maximize reach, efficiency and revenue with the new IP-based networks.

They also outlined how participants – providers and marketers – could now develop and deploy solutions that will scale and evolve with market/audience changes. 

Several new interactive advertising technologies were discussed that would allow real-time interaction with ads across multiple devices to create a more engaging and seamless viewer experience.

A number of the panelists noted that ad-supported and FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) services are already well entrenched in Europe with more than 200 services, more than 600 in the APAC (Asia-Pacific) region and nearly 200 in the Africa/Middle East. 

According to Statista, revenues approached $7.6B last year and would increase to nearly $16.5B by 2029. 

Panelists discussed how the combination of IP-delivered content and AI will be able to increasingly capitalize on personal data to custom tailor ad messages to each specific viewer to improve the ad experience without disrupting the viewer and without sharing personal data. While a few of the folks explained interactive advertising technology with reasonable success, we thought it might be interesting/useful to the younger generation. The idea didn’t really appeal to us since we’re more of an ad-accepting passive viewer.

But there was one IBC educational topic that did interest us, especially after seeing and reading about the volume of great content that is being produced around the globe.  

Oh, sure we knew there were great films/shows being produced in the EU, APAC, SEA and African/Arabian regions – basically everywhere in the world – but the number of projects that were actually shown on screens in the Americas was few and far between to say the least.

“Global streaming and AI changed that almost overnight,” PADEM’s boss McLennan told us after IBC.

“In addition, the EAA (European Accessibility Act) put additional pressure on the content creation/distribution industry to make video content available to nearly everyone who wanted to watch/listen to it,” he added.

While it has been unofficially in place for major and blockbuster films, localization wasn’t widely used because of the cost of translation and lip-sync postproduction.  But with AI-enabled localization, studios and producers are able to maintain their production’s creativity, reduce production headaches, save time/money and offer content that can be viewed and enjoyed in a person’s native language.

“The EU may have mandated localization for content shown in its member countries,” McLennan observed, “but it’s really global streaming services like Netflix, Amazon and Apple that carried it out and perfected it to appeal to viewers/listeners in the more than 190 countries around the globe. 

“It was in their enlightened self interest to offer films/shows with multi-language captioning, subtitles and occasional perfectly synchronized dubs to grow their subscription bases,” he added.

Frankly, we don’t give a d**n who takes credit for the decision.

We’re just happy that we now get to watch, enjoy, understand and experience films from French, German, Kenyan, Nigerian, Indian, Japanese, South Korean, Brazilian, Mexican and other creative teams around the world.

Sustainability and energy efficiency that spanned devices to delivery systems was another important message at this year’s IBC and we were rather pleased to see OWC recognized for their product reliability and reusability at the show.

Not a lot of folks are aware that Larry O’Connor, who started the firm, was one of earliest in the industry to build a facility that received LEED platinum certification.

The company’s sustainability efforts also include 94 percent solid waste recycling, solar/wind power that produces more than it consumes, geothermal heating/cooling and recycled wastewater.

At this year’s IBC, O’Connor (and the company) was recognized for its free Innergize app that cleans and restores flash memory cards as well as OWC’s new Thunderbolt 5 SSD solutions.

IBC had a number of sustainability sessions that addressed what the industry can do to continue to produce high-quality content while adopting green practices that minimize environmental impact including energy efficiency, improved data center enhancements and production set guidelines/recommendations.

There was a lot more to see and learn about at this year’s IBC beyond cutting-edge technology, new/shiny products and new content creation/delivery processes and methods.

This year’s educational/informational program proved that there is value beyond the hype.

The event also showed how the industry, how the M&E industry can improve every piece of content people watch and how it has an impact on our daily lives.

And to reiterate what Sgt. Joe Friday said in every Dragnet show, “All we know are the facts, ma’am,” IBC is a great excuse to visit Amsterdam.

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