OTT Question Time Online

OTT Question Time Online is our weekly debate show on Thursday afternoons where we explore the future of television with broadcasters, film studios, service providers, vendors and analysts from all over the world. 

There’s always so much to talk about in the industry! Guests from, among others, the BBC, BBC Studios, Channel 4, Foxtel, Hearst Networks, ITV, Sky, SVT and Warner Bros Discovery, have joined us to discuss everything from advertising models and technology budgets to content discovery, sustainability, and market dynamics across Europe and beyond.

We continue the conversation in person each year at our annual conference, OTT Question Time Live.

Watch all episodes, free and on-demand. And join our mailing list to find out about upcoming sessions. 

  • OTT Question Time #39 – The Transition from Broadcast to IP

    Despite the resilience and stability of the infrastructure, the defined quality of the output, the guaranteed geographical coverage for audiences, and the decades of client and supply chain experience built up in the process, there was always going to come a time when it became cheaper to deliver content via …

  • OTT Question Time #38 – Content Rights 101

    If you’ve ever found yourself confused about content rights, you’re not alone. I’ve been working in OTT since 2005 and I still don’t really understand why, for example, the Tom Holland Spiderman movies aren’t on Disney+ (Disney owns Marvel, right?), why I can’t find the 2019 season of Masterchef UK, …

  • OTT Question Time #37 – The TV & AVOD Advertising Recovery

    Following the huge upheaval in the television and OTT advertising market last year, broadcasters and AVOD service-providers are now cautiously optimistic about the prospects for recovery and growth. ITV, for example, reported that its total ad revenue was down 11% in 2020 despite a 17% rise in VOD advertising. The …

  • OTT Question Time #36 — Industry Mega-Mergers

    Consolidation isn’t new in the OTT industry – think AT&T and Time Warner (2018) or Comcast and Sky (also 2018) – but the last couple of weeks has seen a flurry of activity including the AT&T / Discovery deal, the acquisition of MGM by Amazon and the coming together of …

  • OTT Question Time #35 – How Young People View OTT

    Whatever date we choose – 2005 when YouTube went live, Christmas Day 2007 when the BBC iPlayer launched, or even 2004 and my own first experience of on-demand video via a classic Homechoice set-top box – it’s safe to say that VOD was born into a linear world. For older …

  • OTT Question Time #34 – Metadata 101

    Whether we’re consciously aware of it or not, metadata makes the OTT world go round. Technical metadata powers the distribution of video files, integrates them with asset management systems, enforces digital rights and renders them perfectly on viewer’s screens. Editorial metadata, on the other hand, makes content discoverable in VOD …

  • OTT Question Time #33 – The Build vs. Buy Debate

    Whilst many of the first OTT services (circa 2006/7) were built in-house, with existing staff and perhaps using repurposed broadcast systems, by the third VOD product development cycle (around 2012), broadcasters and streaming providers seemed to have shifted to deploying external vendor solutions. This was especially true of automated processes …

  • OTT Question Time #32 – Football & OTT

    In the OTT world, content is king and one of the most popular content types of all is football. Best enjoyed live, football transcends pay models and is watched via AVOD, SVOD and TVOD (pay-per-view). It crosses national and international boundaries in terms of where the fans are. And as …

  • OTT Question Time #31 – Talking about AI & OTT

    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 discussed at …

  • OTT Question Time #30: Talking about Live-to-VOD

    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 …