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38 Executive Summary Taking the pulse


Embrace disruptive technologies


Bruce Tuchman President, AMC Global and Sundance Channel Global Region: Worldwide


Interviewed by: Andy Stout


Over the past two decades working in the broadcast industry, Bruce Tuchman has been intimately involved with many channels and broadcasters. Having first trained as a lawyer, he helped oversee international expansion for MTV Networks, Nickelodeon and MGM Worldwide Networks, before joining AMC Networks. He currently serves as President at AMC - Asia Pacific Global, as well as president, Sundance Channel Global, leading the strategic distribution, programming and marketing of both. An expert on international broadcast and regulation, he spoke at this year’s Leaders’ Summit and also keynoted IBC's opening debate 'Assessing the health of broadcast TV.' “In the past month we’ve been noticing that we’re over the worst of the challenges that came out of the economic crisis in 2008 and we’re now starting to see expansion,” he says. “We’re seeing markets bouncing back — and even growing — in Spain, Greece and other places. Plus operators are very keen to address the challenges brought about by new distribution technologies.”


Asked how close we are to


creating homogenous global markets for broadcast programming and whether that would be a good thing, he is clear. “No, and it may always be no, but with qualifications. If something is good it’s going to translate. The Hollywood studios have been doing that for decades; taking something provincially American and marketing it around the world. “In 1994 I could not see any channels from India in the US, and now I can see what’s going on everywhere. The barriers have come down and exposed people to more things and wider things. But that doesn’t mean that people only want to see one


type of programme or genre, there will always be a market for martial arts films in the East, quirky independents in France, and baseball in the US.” Casting his eye back over his extensive career Tuchman describes it as an unbelievably dramatic twenty years. “If you look at it on a global basis, we started at a very limited, free broadcast environment. For most markets that represented the advent of pay TV, the advent of multichannel, and now people are asking what comes next. “It remains amusing to me that when you’re negotiating or strategising in the business day to day, so much of the communication is all about, for lack of a better term, new media. But it’s the opposite for


consumers. If I use the term OTT


in front of my most media savvy neighbours, they’re like ‘Stop, what are you talking about?’ It’s all about the impact of digital technology, whether that’s in a closed or open environment, and though it may not have reverberated with the mass market much so far, it will soon. Years from now, if not sooner, we really will transform the business.”


The question for Tuchman is not whether to shift to IP distribution models but who will break through first. “Everyone will have to accommodate and move to these digital modes,” he says. “Alongside your linear offering you have to have a very cohesive and eco-system friendly on-demand offering. Those who don’t embrace that will be the ones who get disrupted in turn.”


theibcdaily


“Those who don’t embrace digital will be the ones who get disrupted in turn”


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