Reporting from the Future of Television
I’ve been working in OTT for over 15 years and started VOD Professional in 2011 with the aim of understanding how to build brilliant online video services. I conduct research and analysis, write reports and whitepapers, and help bring clients and vendors together. Catch me on our weekly debate show, OTT Question Time, or at our upcoming The Business of Future TV conference.
Featuring ITV, Sky, SVT, A+E Networks, Foxtel, Blockbuster, Nordic Entertainment Group, BeIN Media, BritBox and TVNZ, we’ve recently discussed topics including content recommendation, Disney+ SWOT analysis, the evolution of video UI / UX, OTT piracy & content protection, OTT pay models as well as India, Sweden, Australia and NZ specials.
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I stream and write about broadcasters, film studios, operators, service-providers and technology vendors: OTT products, solutions and strategies.
From personalised content recommendation to addressable advertising, predicting customers who are about to churn to routing video traffic through the most efficient networks, use cases for AI in the OTT industry are on the rise; affecting both front and backends. It’s a fascinating subject and one that we’ll be discussing at OTT Question Time this week, Thursday 22nd April, 4pm UK. Together with Katheryn Needham, Head of TV / Digital and Business Development at STUDIOCANAL,...
For me, live-to-VOD is the real-time embodiment of the “glass to glass process”: getting content from the camera where the footage is being filmed to the end-user’s viewing device. But the elegance and simplicity of that proposition masks an underlying world of complexity. During this session of OTT Question Time we delved deep into live-to-VOD and got to grips with how it works, the challenges involved and the technologies and solutions that help power it. ...
Even before the pandemic hit, and new educational content was created by broadcasters all over the world to help children keep learning while in lockdown at home, kid’s OTT was going places. In 2019, Disney had three animated features – Frozen 2, The Lion King and Toy Story 4 – that all exceeded $1bn revenue, Disney+ now has over 100m subscribers, and the company committed to spending $15bn per annum in content by 2024. Netflix...
At this week’s OTT Question Time – and after only 28 episodes! – wee finally hosted a session dedicated to talking about Netflix. Is there anything left to say about the streaming giant? Sure there is. We started with a quick history of Netflix’s origins as a DVD-based company, its pivot to online video, how it created its iconic UI and content recommendation system and its customer acquisition strategy, domestically and internationally. Together with our...
I've been working on a client project this year for a European broadcaster and part of the job has been to figure out how to take payments for their new SVOD service. Should they go direct and perhaps set up accounts with companies like Recurly and Stripe? Maybe let their new end-to-end platform partner handle it? Or how about engaging with a specialist payment solutions provider? These are some of the questions we discussed with...
