The world's most influential media, entertainment & technology show
13 - 17 September 2019
RAI Amsterdam
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Great experience, great content and great networking!
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One great place to have all those conversations, to see what's next and to show what's working.
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An excellent opportunity to network with peers and hear the challenges in our industry!
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5 Days -
55,000+ Attendees -
300+ Speakers -
100+ Sessions
2018 Highlights
Free feature areas & events
Invitation only events
IBC365
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Leaders of the most influential content studios address the liberties of production amid the burgeoning digital landscape and the challenges to the craft of television.
Leaders of the most influential content studios address the liberties of production amid the burgeoning digital landscape and the challenges to the craft of television.
Speaking during the Global Content Gamechangers: Creative challenges and digital giants, All3Media chief executive Jane Turton said: “We don’t slavishly follow the OTT dollar but importantly create high quality content with a range of breadth.”
- Read more: Interview with Jane Turton
The likes of Netflix, Amazon and Hulu with “huge global budgets and platforms have changed a lot of our sector,” Turton explained. All3Media has produced more than 20 programmes from scripted to factual entertainment for Netflix in varying formats but “in the old days this would have been developed exclusively for terrestrial British, German or American broadcasters.”
All3Media was sold to Liberty Global and Discovery in 2014 with a “very commercial producer” focus, Turton said: “Varey rarely do we buy IP, we make and distribute the programmes as a full 360-degree developer, producer and exploiter of the content.”
Backing the theory that it’s a golden era for content, she acknowledged that with risk comes change and disruption.
The increasing opportunities for production companies with Global giants is today unparalleled.
BBC Studios managing director UK Production Lisa Opie is more than familiar with change, heading the UK production unit after management decided to become a commercial entity two years ago in a move to expand creativity, attract talent and produce on a global scale.
Opie said: “It has been really liberating for our creative teams to pitch to third parties because every platform and broadcaster is slightly different, and we need to solve a different challenge.”
Recently securing its first Quibi commission, Opie explained the shot-form offering is different but it’s important to remain relevant with these platforms.
“We have a very broad business offering to the market from natural history and drama. Where we have been successful with streaming video on demand services (SVODs) is the talent relationship.”
Turton and Opie explained the importance of growing its content portfolio respectively. Turton added: “Get smart in how you attract talent and adapt to the evolving market, today you write the show for the budget for the platform.”
- Read more: Interview with Lisa Opie
Opie admitted she is proud of the team success and the development of a vibrant creative culture that is now externally facing, she added: “It has been transformative for many of our teams and a really exciting journey but not without its challenges, within the market changes.”
Competing in a way which Turton described as “strangely companionable” she said it is “more about demonstrating the value of IP” and “as far as I am concerned I want to sell programmes to the BBC, I like the competition because it keeps me honest and our business hungry.”
Content today is designed to be global and multi-territory, production companies are forced do “smart deals” without aggregated amounts of money coming in, however the ability to push the creative boundaries and tap into a market traditional broadcasters otherwise couldn’t reach is part of the “golden era,” Turton said.
With Fox playing the same licence fee Netflix does for one hour of content, long-term partnerships are fundamental albeit fluid.
Opie added: “We won a lot of BBC business and business in the market with over 30 third party commissions in the last two years, from National Geographic to Discovery, Apple, Spotify, Quibi, UKTV, Channel 4, 5 and ITV, It is a really exciting period of change.”
On the opportunities and partnerships, Turton and Opie echoed each other and with plenty of players and innovation and the opportunity to find new audiences the breadth of creative content is golden.
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IBC2019: Regulators need to respond faster to changing viewer habits and the rise of the FAANGs, according to European broadcasting chiefs.
Regulators need to respond faster to changing viewer habits and the rise of the FAANGs, according to European broadcasting chiefs.
In IBC’s Friday afternoon keynote session ‘Global Strategy Gamechangers: Can public service broadcasters stay relevant?’, Noel Curran, director general of the EBU, claimed that for broadcasters to stay relevant, they gain access to data that social media companies hold, especially on their younger audiences.
- Read more: Interview: Noel Curran, EBU
“We need to have access to the data social media platforms hold on our output and we need to get to a position where we get due prominence on those platforms,” he said.
Calling for regulators to get tougher on Silicon Valley giants such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, the EBU head asked: “Why is there no regulation in terms of data? Right now we have an unregulated social media sector, dominated by four or five big companies that have an unprecedented amount of control.”
Paul Lembrechts, chief executive of Belgian public broadcaster VRT, added that if social media platforms continued to deny broadcasters access to data they simply won’t work with them. “It will get to that point,” he admitted, “unless we find out the data they hold on our viewers. Right now we are not operating on a level playing field.”
According to fellow speaker Dee Forbes, director general of RTÉ, the inability of regulators to keep pace with the industry has caused a crisis point for the broadcaster in Ireland. RTÉ is currently running on a deficit and a loophole in the law which means that viewers watching the channel on digital devices do not have to pay a licence fee is partly to blame, according to Forbes.
- Read more: Interview: Dee Forbes, RTÉ
“We’re led by a Broadcasting Act passed when tablets and mobiles didn’t exist and it’s hindering us in terms of monetising an audience. We’re operating at a crisis level.”
While the Irish government has announced a tender for collection of the licence fee and a move towards an independent device charge, Forbes describes this measure as “not fit for purpose”. She added: “We’re operating on 100m [euros] less than 10 years ago – we would like a quicker reform of the system and a tightening of the law to reflect the viewing habits that are going on right now.”
Lembrechts added that VRT is facing a similar funding crisis – with budgets falling by 25% as they decreased in line with inflation over a 12-year period.
He said: “We are making more media for different platforms but on less money – it’s not sustainable and it’s gradually building a hole.”
In the same session NPO board member Martijn van Dam revealed that the Dutch broadcaster was also facing 10-15% budget cuts, which he described as “disastrous for our task in society”.
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IBC2019: Kicking off IBC2019’s Tech Talks in the Forum’s Lounge area was a presentation from Mike Haroun who talked of the challenges involved in restoring over 180 locally produced classic films dating from the 1940s to 1990s.
Haroun, who is manging director of Haroun Studios explained that when he returned to Lebanon in the early 2000s following a 15-year hiatus during the Civil War, the US-trained chemical engineer wanted to bring some new concepts and technologies to his family’s film studio business.
After finding a “treasure trove” of predominantly Lebanese film archive in the studio’s warehouse, Haroun – the grandson of the studios’ founder and legendary film maker Michel Haroun – wanted to preserve this cultural legacy for future generations by digitising this archive and converting it to high resolution formats.
Haroun talked about the process involved in digitising the footage – which hails from Lebanon, Syrian, Egypt Turkey and even India. The workflow, he added, followed an order of physical inspection, repair work, film scanning and digital processing before being exported to 2K and 4K and archived on LTO5 storage.
Haroun explained that the inspection part of the process was painstaking: every reel is inspected using old 35/16mm moviolas or editing tables and every defect listed in a data entry form to the corresponding frame count.
The film was then washed to remove dirt from the film surface. According to Haroun the washing process also removes any chemicals the film may have gather due to inaction. “Unused film builds up acid after time which causes it to start breaking up,” he explained. The film is also stablised on its last “bath” to help protect it from further deterioration.
After the washing process each reel is scanned. For 35mm movie, the resolution of the image is 4k while for 16mm film the resolution is 2K.
Haroun added that each film is taking, on average, about three weeks to restore.
Challenges for the team have included having to work with the original negative, which is normally not colour graded or colour corrected.
Because intermediate negative was never used in Lebanon, a bespoke scanning machine was needed to be built to address the project’s unique requirements.
Haroun has uncovered some remarkable material from his country including 16mm war footage of battles shot by several of his father’s own lab technicians.
- Read more: Regional focus: Middle East and Africa
Several of the restored films have now been published on YouTube and Haroun’s channel has over 3,000 followers, with views of up to 310K per clip.
While You Tube viewers are hungry for more material, the project is not publicly funded which limits the volume of archive that can be shared.
He said: “Our ultimate goal for a public institution to preserve these movie as part of the country’s heritage. Right now the government says they have other priorities, but that things might change. So while that’s not a yes it’s not a no either”
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IBC2019: Building a positive environmental movement to educate and empower audiences and activate global change lies with broadcasters, a panel agree during the IBC Lounge Talk.
Building a positive environmental movement to educate and empower audiences and activate global change lies with broadcasters, a panel agree during the IBC Lounge Talk.
Sustainability is one area of change that needs to be top of broadcaster’s agendas, along with diversity, carbon neutrality and fake news.
Speaking during the panel session ‘Creating content for environmental change,’ A Plastic Planet co-founder Sian Sutherland called for broadcasters to use their power for good and “embedding a new normal in our content is an incredible opportunity.”
Speakers agreed the term ‘sustainability’ has significant negative connotations, particularly with “non-traditional suitability audiences,” however Sutherland explains “broadcasters are not giving audiences the content they want.”
She warned if you don’t change your business acumen “you will be the next dinosaurs because you won’t be relevant.”
The new genre of documentary filmmaking and production of content are empowering the topic of sustainability in film and TV programmes and is at the forefront of the modern broadcasting.
“As a media company we have to use a voice for good,” says Fiona Morgan head of inspiring action at Sky, “we’ve been doing that for a long time and became the first carbon neutral media company with 31,000 staff and 23 million customers.”
Working together with partners to collaborate is the key to successful campaigning Morgan explains, “adapt content for different audiences across different platforms, make it cool and engage young people.
“We as broadcasters have huge influence of talent on screen and the opportunities to negotiate new contracts to ensure sustainability is in there, we have such a huge voice.”
Jacomien Nijhof is manager innovation and fiction at Dutch Public Broadcaster EO she says changing public perception on sustainability topics perceived as left wing is critical.
“Most our viewers are in the middle [of left and right] and our challenge is engaging audiences, so they’re not confused,” she adds “budgets are tight, and we need to make good and firm decisions.”
Speakers echoed the importance of changing audiences’ perceptions and expectations while bringing awareness on environmental issues to the forefront of the media.
Sutherland adds: “We have a reasonability to reimagine a new future, not one of climate catastrophe but we all have a responsibility to reinvent content and broadcasters are key to this.
- Read more: Creating content for environmental change
“For brands and businesses if you are not an activist you are part of the problem.”
Broadcasters needs to redefine their purpose of business with a new business model set to transform the planet.
“The information needs to be accessible and tools to start this upswell,” says Ellen Windemuth who founded production company Waterbear and urges broadcasters to install this change from the top down and focus on democratising content.
“We are documentary producers and our audiences need to be offered solutions.”
To date, Windemuth has harnessed about 64 large NGOs and made films about what they are doing in the field.
“NGOs have been effective to more of an extent that you would think because they have money to do the conversation work but don’t have the money to invest with the media,” she says.
Calling on broadcasters to democratise and “give access to the truth” and the change and solutions that is occurring to empower audiences to create their own content for positive environmental change.
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