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 #19 – Sweden OTT Special

    Sweden – in common with its Scandinavian neighbours – has long led the OTT charge. SVT, the national broadcaster, launched its first VOD product, SVT Play, in 2007, HBO Nordic and Netflix have been active in the region since 2012, and Disney+ went live last month. Now, the country has

  • OTT Question Time #18 – Assessing OTT Pay Models

    All the world seems to be moving to a subscription model – music, editorial, books, gaming, groceries and now even coffee (with Pret a Manger), furniture (with John Lewis) and cycling (with Brompton Bikes). And, of course, TV and movies. But as more film studios, cable channels and broadcasters launch

  • OTT Question Time #17 – OTT Piracy & Content Protection

    As viewers increasingly shift from watching linear to OTT, piracy and content protection become ever more important topics of discussion for broadcasters, film studios, operators and service-providers. This isn’t just an “interesting” conversation – one industry vendor, for example, told us that “In some countries, the scale of piracy is such

  • OTT Question Time #16 – The Future of BBC iPlayer

    Tim Davie started his new job as Director General of the BBC last week and amongst the many items in his in-tray will be what to do next with the BBC iPlayer. That was the focus of this OTT Question Time too where, together with Gulliver Smithers, CTO of RampRate

  • OTT Question Time #15 – Building an OTT Service from Scratch (Part 2)

    At this week’s OTT Question Time (Thursday 3rd September, 4pm UK) we talked Part 2 of how to build an OTT service from scratch. In the previous session we focused on first principles, backend strategy, building for where the audience is and using data to help make decisions and form

  • OTT Question Time #14 – Building an OTT Service from Scratch (Part 1)

    During this episode of OTT Question Time (filmed on Thursday 20th August 2020) we talked about how to build an OTT service from scratch. Sure, many of the biggest players already have suites of mature VOD products but the subject is still absolutely relevant for, amongst others, operators, film studios,

  • OTT Question Time #13 – PVOD & The End of Pay Windows

    Premium VOD isn’t exactly new (remember Tower Heist in 2011?) but this year’s lockdown may have accelerated a growing trend amongst film studios and content owners to test simultaneous cinema / OTT release or even go VOD-first. NBCUniversal’s Trolls World Tour, for example, has reportedly generated D2C sales of over

  • OTT Question Time #12 – Is OTT UI / UX Now Fully Evolved?

    VOD services all over the world are usually built using a toolkit of common features including content discovery and recommendation, personalisation tools (like recently watched, single sign-on and device synchronisation) and player controls (like live restart, forward ten seconds and subtitling / closed captions). In this episode of OTT Question

  • OTT Question Time #11 – The Environmental Impact of OTT Streaming

    At this week’s OTT Question Time we assessed the impact of OTT streaming on the environment. This is a complex, multi-faceted issue and we covered a lot of information including:

    • The current lay of the land: how much OTT streaming is actually going? How has this increased over the past few
  • OTT Question Time #10 – Taking Stock as Lockdowns Ease

    In this episode of OTT Question Time we looked at the TV and on-demand industry through a wide-angle lens as lockdowns in many parts of the world started to ease. Together with Gulliver Smithers, former SVP of Product & Technology at Sony Pictures Entertainment and now CTO at RampRate IT,