45 GENIUS INTERVIEW Andreas Jacobi, Make.TV Right now when it comes to news, the local station is used to showing something that is delivered by its parent network. We think the opposite way makes more sense. At the local station, the journalist is closer to the field and is able to make the story and validate all the stories more quickly. And that can easily be popped out nation- wide if it’s relevant. FEED: Make.TV do a lot of esports, as you’ve said. When we spoke at the IBC Show earlier this year, you mentioned that the solutions for handling multiple news contributors and working with big esports events are exactly the same. Can you talk more about that? ANDREAS JACOBI: Yes. Even our team sometimes doesn’t believe that this is true. But talking to our contact at Al Jazeera and talking to the streaming engineer at ESL, they’re totally different conversations, everything is different, but in the end, the feature requests are totally the same. It’s all about low-latency transmission of high-quality content from A to Z – wherever A is, wherever Z is – and with no limit on the amount of inputs or outputs, and with the ability to route in real-time, frame accurate streams. That’s the base foundation for everything broadcast needs in the future. When it comes to post-production, graphics and the variety of third-party solutions, they are all necessary still, but they are going to need to be plugged into that workflow. FEED: You have customers like esports companies being free of the legacy of linear TV and being able to try new things. How do you see cloud-based content developing in the coming years? ANDREAS JACOBI: It’s so easy to start a new station now. At first TV stations were afraid of YouTubers, but then they thought, well, they’re a different thing from us, and they are feeling more or less comfortable now. But now five, ten or fifteen YouTubers in one genre could collaborate and create a station. They can bring all their viewers into the game with them. TV stations need to be fast now. There will be a new wave of digital creators who are in the great position to build new content platforms. It’s hard to do it on YouTube alone, but you can with groups. The Young Turks news channel is one example. The technology and the new behaviour can bring that small group into a position to be a real competitor.
Cologne. We talked for a whole day about how to solve the situation in the Middle East for journalists. The biggest problem for journalists shooting with their mobile phone in the Middle East is that they have to transfer the footage right away, because their phones are always confiscated once someone realises they’re a journalist. Khashoggi said, in the Middle East for journalism we need to be live to be sure that we get the feed. Al-Arab turned out to be the world’s most expensive TV station in regards to minutes, because after only four hours of broadcasting, the Saudi king called the king of Bahrain and said to shut down the station – because it was an opposition station. So that was $140 million for a four- hour television programme. FEED: Local and regional news sources have been drying up world-wide, with negative results. Do you see cloud making it easier to launch sources of local news? ANDREAS JACOBI: One interesting case is Seattle News , a newspaper in Seattle in the US, with an online presence. They’re already earning their money with online video advertising at the front of a licensed Reuters feed. But the Reuters feed, of course, is not covering Seattle-based content. For Seattle News , they’re not a TV station. It doesn’t make sense for them to build up infrastructure to become a TV station. It will never be profitable. But with cloud-based production technology, they’re easily able to realise a unique video strategy with local journalists, or with random local people, parents, kids who are playing in local football clubs. Because the technology is so flexible, it’s very easy to start small and to become big. If they are just starting with a four-hour programme, they only have to pay for that four hours. That local news content becomes prepared from a local station, and a local journalist is easily able to qualify and validate.
WINNING WAYS The cloud enables broadcasters to quickly scale up and offer more content during major events such as the FIFA World Cup
IT'S ALL ABOUT LOW-LATENCY TRANSMISSIONOF HIGH-QUALITY CONTENT, FROMATOZ
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