#IBC2025
03
THE INDUSTRY HAS COME TO THE END OF A 35-YEAR CHANGE CYCLE BY MONICA HECK
After the democratisation of distribution and a shift in funding models that added to a sense of disequilibrium, we have arrived at our destination: a television world with no distribution bottlenecks. A bold statement from Mike Darcey, media industry commentator and advisor, as AI sweeps the world and YouTube grabs 13% of views on the TV set. “The fundamental framework of the industry and the rules of the game remain largely unchanged and, aside from AI, I see no other technology with any serious prospect of disturbing the structural equilibrium at which we have arrived today, after 35 years of completing the democratisation of distribution,” he asserted. The core underlying technology drivers of change have plateaued, new disruptors are minimal and even if AI removes the remaining production
Darcey: ‘Whoever controls sports controls a lot more besides’
bottlenecks, Darcey doesn’t expect YouTube to have serious structural implications for the industry, despite the creator economy being perceived as signifi cant and growing. He also believes AI will not impact the advertising-funded side of TV, but rather restore the balance between the pay and free
IT’S TRUE: AI DRIVES EFFICIENCY BY ADRIAN PENNINGTON
A series of case studies exploring how AI is in practical force across media were showcased at the ‘Mythbusting AI: Demonstrating the impact on the bottom line’ panels and demos session, part of the IBC Conference yesterday. For example, delegates
learned how streaming service Tubi is leveraging the latest in multimodal AI to achieve a deeper understanding of its content and audiences.
“Folks spend 100 hours a year
fi nding something to watch on streaming services,” said Blake Bassett, VP of Product for Tools & Infrastructure, Tubi. “[Using AI] we can describe the vibe of a particular scene to categorise content in entirely new ways and surface fresh content to audiences.” In tests this has outperformed third-party data. “We’ve seen
models.
“In a world of infi nite content and a vast sea of mediocrity unlocked by AI, sport is immune to oversupply and replication, which is why it is attracting streamers,” he added. “Whoever controls sports controls a lot more besides.” This is not an argument that
things will remain static, however. “If the framework and rules of television are stabilising, the skills for success could be quite different,” he said. “It is less about making big bold bets and more about eking out marginal gains. You can stop saying things are changing faster than ever.” Perhaps, fi nally, they are not.”
double-digit increases in watching, conversion and retention,” he added. Tubi is using similar multimodal AI to match the right ad to the right person at the right time. “Do that in a way that works for brands and audiences, and we can charge an elevated rate to advertisers.” Another presentation saw Sannuta Raghu of Indian start- up
Scroll.in and former Head & Journalism Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, discuss how AI can “version journalism dynamically, so it best fi ts the user’s needs”. For instance, if you have a 3000-
word longform story, you might not have time to read it before work, but you could listen to it as a podcast on your way.
Scroll.in’s AI tech can do this instantly. Another trial concept is to send news consumers “down a rabbit hole into our archive, they
Bassett: ‘Categorise content in entirely new ways and surface fresh content to audiences’
get more semantically relevant information per story, increasing time spent and the engagement”, Raghu added. A third session outlined how AI can support multi-territory content distribution and audience protection. Paul Dale, Director of
Innovation Emerging Technologies, BBFC revealed that the UK fi lm certifi cation house is offering an ML and genAI platform called Cleard, allowing content owners to submit content once and distribute it on a global scale with appropriate age ratings localised per country.
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