20 THE VOD FILES Content Discovery
is also quite complicated. There are a few different APIs that Reelgood uses, but data can come from the platforms through different feeds, FTP dumps, or emailed XML files. This solution to such a messy problem has brought the company an unexpected, new area of business. A lot of big companies are now licensing that cleaned- up and matched programme data from Reelgood, among them Microsoft, Verizon, Roku and CBS Interactive. algorithms and AI liberally, both for its own cross-platform content recommendation engines, and to manage the mess of data created by multiple services. “For the description field, we may have ten different descriptions for the same movies stored on our database. But which is the best one? We’ve had to build algorithms for every single field that will look at those and say, ‘This is the best description. This is the one we’ll show.’” Those differences can also appear in the quality of the content itself. One platform NIGHTLY EXPERIENCE FOR THE USER , I THINK, IS SUFFERING TOP-QUALITY AI The company is employing helpful WE’RE GETTING BETTER CONTENT, BUT THE ULTIMATE
may be streaming a new, remastered version of a film, while another could be streaming a lower res version from 15 years ago. “We are in the process of adding that information now. Part of it has been because Disney, from what we can see of their new streaming service, is flagging content so you know what is an oldie, what the different quality is. Netflix does
a bit of this, too – it will tell you whether something is 4K. So we’re adding that feature right now, so people can filter that.” Reelgood does its very best to nurture and respect its relationships with all of the platforms currently providing VOD. The company wants to be ‘like Switzerland’, Sanderson says. “In fact, there was one of the major services that was interested in investing in us. And while it was flattering, we turned it down because that could be seen as playing favourites with the content. So we keep a completely neutral status with all the providers.’ “In the past year, for the average US household, the number of streaming services they use is now over four,” says Sanderson. “I think that number could go to five, six. But I think at a certain point it will top out. People will only pay for so many services. But I do see the problem getting worse and fragmentation becoming a bigger problem. You have all these walled gardens and it creates that fragmentation. And while we’re getting better content, the ultimate nightly experience for the user, I think, is suffering.”
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