Exploring the future of media technology
We investigate the tools & tech transforming news
DAZN STREAMS BIG
VR JOURNALISM NEXT-GEN AUDIO
FUTURE OF VIDEO
3 CLOUD FOCUS Wildmoka WELCOME
“News is the cornerstone of democracy”, said a wise man. Or it’s the kind of thing a wise man would say. I’m sure he said it. Whoever he was. Actually, it doesn’t matter if a real man said it or not, it’s the kind of thing that could be true. In fact, I don’t care if a wise man said it or not, the important thing is I’ve
said it and I believe it’s true. Without continuous, diligent manufacture of factuality, our public discourse falls apart really quickly. With no clear facts to point to, everything becomes personal opinion. Climate change, the effectiveness of vaccines, the behaviour of governments and whether or not that really was a goal or not are all a matter of personal intuition rather than verifiable fact. If we can’t agree on the facts – or at least agree that there are facts – we’re in for a bumpy ride. So in this issue, we look at fact-finders – journalists – and the new tools and techniques they are using to keep us informed. We talk with Nonny De La Peña, the “godmother of VR” about immersive techniques for bringing people into a news story in an unprecedentedly realistic way. We look at how Al Jazeera is adopting cloud technology and how newsrooms are finding better ways to monitor and use social media. We also take a look at how news outlets are protecting – or not – their stringers around the globe. Thanks for your service journalists. We need you now more than ever! Also in this issue we give you the low down on last month’s Imagen Future of Video Summit, which invited the London media industry to learn what to expect next in tech. Presenters were the DPP’s Mark Harrison, director of online influencer agency OP Talent Liam Chivers and FEED , in the person of myself. We look forward to further collaboration at industry confabs around the globe, and we hope to see you there!
EDITORIAL EDITOR Neal Romanek +44 (0) 1223 492246 nealromanek@bright-publishing.com CONTRIBUTORS Ann-Marie Corvin, David Davies, Adrian Pennington, Phil Rhodes STAFF WRITER Chelsea Fearnley CHIEF SUB EDITOR Beth Fletcher SENIOR SUB EDITOR Siobhan Godwood SUB EDITOR Felicity Evans JUNIOR SUB EDITOR Elisha Young ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Matt Snow +44 (0) 1223 499453 mattsnow@bright-publishing.com KEY ACCOUNTS Chris Jacobs +44 (0) 1223 499463 chrisjacobs@bright-publishing.com DESIGN DESIGN DIRECTOR Andy Jennings DESIGN MANAGER Alan Gray SENIOR DESIGNER & PRODUCTION MANAGER Flo Thomas DESIGNERS Man-Wai Wong PUBLISHING MANAGING DIRECTORS Andy Brogden & Matt Pluck
NEAL ROMANEK, EDITOR nealromanek@bright-publishing.com
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06 NEWSFEED
54 XTREME
Dispatches from the world of online video
We talk to sports streaming platform DAZN about the company’s rapid growth and its ambitions for the future.
10 YOUR TAKE
How much can AI improve the content creation process?
58 HAPPENING
We visit the Vortech.by conference in Stockholm, where cloud was centre stage.
12 STREAMPUNK
TOOL OF THE MONTH A new green screen solution that aims to turn your iPhone into a complete TV station It’s not just for sports. New genres of programming are adopting fully immersive, next-generation audio.
62 HAPPENING –
FUTURE OF VIDEO FEED spoke at London’s Future of Video Summit where the emphasis was on partnerships
50 TECHFEED – AUDIO
66 START-UP ALLEY This month we look at
gamifying how we watch TV, managing rights with blockchain and making VR come alive The Christchurch terrorist livestreamed his attack. What responsibility does the online content world have in fueling hatred?
70
70 OVER THE TOP
20
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24 SEE PAGE 64
JOURNALISM FOCUS
20 JOURNALIST SAFETY What responsibilities do news outlets have to protect their stringers? 24 AL JAZEERA GOES CLOUD The network revamps its tech with cloud at the centre 30 BUILDING ON THE BUZZ What tools do newsrooms use to keep on top of social media? 40 GENIUS INTERVIEW: NONNY DE LA PEÑA
The “godmother of VR” talks about her pioneering work in “immersive journalism”
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6 CLOUD FOCUS Wildmoka
Words by Neal Romanek
BREAKING NEWS FROM THE STREAMING SECTOR
5G?
WILL TRUMP NATIONALISE
US President Donald Trump’s re-election team is backing a controversial proposal for a nationwide 5G network, sparking telecom industry fears of nationalisation. The proposal envisions the US government taking specific frequencies in the 5G spectrum and selling them wholesale to wireless providers in the US. It means no company could use exclusive control over a wireless spectrum to block competition, and providers big or small could buy capacity. In theory, this could help regulate fair prices, but doesn’t seem to align with Trump’s MO as a free-market capitalist and many wonder why his team are endorsing this open-access model.
Rivada Networks is positioning itself for the lucrative role of delivering the 5G technology. This telco provider considers Peter Thiel, a prominent Trump donor, among its investors. Trump’s political advisors believe this will provide connectivity to rural, underserved parts of the country – the President’s largest voter base. There are precedents for beneficial US government telco regulation. For example, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has prevented phone companies from taking over internet service providers and is currently trying to enforce net neutrality. The government currently makes the wireless spectrum available by
exclusively licensing the highest frequencies to the highest bidder. A network that supported 5G operating on a wholesale basis could weaken the wireless oligopoly. It enables the spectrum to be used more efficiently, allowing niche services like telemedicine and smart electric grids to buy capacity. Trump’s 5G journey kicked off a year ago, when a leaked National Security Council memo outlined a national 5G network as a means to compete with China. But there’s no guarantee rural wireless providers will rush in to take advantage of the opportunity. A project of this scale would take careful oversight and a long-term commitment by the Trump government.
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7 NEWSFEED Updates & Upgrades
Facebook is attempting to build a Patreon-style crowdfunding service, called Fan Subscriptions, to allow people to pay a monthly subscription fee for exclusive access to creator content. But all is not what it seems: the service drives a hard bargain for the creators. Fan Subscriptions began an initial testing phase last month, where it opened its virtual doors to ten creators across the UK and US. It is now inviting more creators to join the service, offering them the ability to set up a subscription for their fans with a monthly price of their choosing. Facebook claims creators will get to keep 100% of their earnings, minus relevant fees, until the test period ends. However, a document obtained by TechCrunch outlining the terms of service revealed Facebook could take up to 30% of a creator’s subscription revenue. This cut, while typical of an app in Apple’s or Google’s app stores, is mammoth for a creator-focused platform, especially considering Patreon takes just 5% of its user’s pledges. Furthermore, the
terms of service allow Facebook to unilaterally offer discounted or free trials for fans from time to time at its discretion, with those discounts/ freebies impacting creators’ bottom lines. The terms of service also give Facebook a lifetime licence to use a creator’s work, stating: ‘if you are providing any data, content or other information in connection with your use of Fan Subscriptions, then you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty- free, worldwide license to use such Supplemental Data. This license survives even if you stop using Fan Subscriptions.’ While most similar
services request licence to use a creator’s work, it’s typically for promotional purposes and expires when the service is no longer in use. The move follows changes made to the Facebook News Feed algorithm last year. Satirical website The Hard Times was among those affected and the founder, Matt Saincome, received an invitation to use Fan Subscriptions. He commented on the unusual terms on Twitter: “I asked my editors about it and the complete distrust among our team was funny.” He added: “Here’s a crazy alternative: let people who signed up to see our content see it and then we can monetise that.”
TIKTOK HIT WITH FINE OVER CHILD PRIVACY ALLEGATIONS The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a $5.7 million settlement with Musical.ly, now known as TikTok, over allegations it illegally collected the names, email addresses, pictures and locations of children. According to the FTC, it is the largest penalty obtained by the agency for a child privacy case. The agency also noted that users’ profiles are public by default and cited reports of adults trying to contact
children through the app. A profile can be made private in settings, but a private profile still displays the bio and image, and other users can still direct message. Until October 2016, the app also included a feature that allowed users to view other users within a 50-mile radius. In response, TikTok has created a separate app experience for users under 13. The company claims the new app will not permit the sharing of personal information and puts limits on what content can be posted and shared.
Musical.ly merged with TikTok after it was bought by ByteDance in 2017. The app lets users create 15-second videos, including lip-synching and dancing clips set to music, and share them with others. The FTC found that Musical.ly/TikTok violated the Federal Children’s Online Privacy Act (COPPA), which requires
online services aimed at children to obtain parental consent before collecting personal information about users under 13. Its investigation also revealed that, when asked by parents to remove data about their children, Musical.ly/TikTok deleted the profiles, but retained videos and data about them on its servers.
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8 CLOUD FOCUS Wildmoka NEWSFEED Up ates & Upgrades
STRICTER ONLINE PRIVACY LAWS FOR CHILDREN Senators Edward J Markey and Josh Hawley have proposed a bill that
of targeted ads and includes what lawmakers are calling an eraser button, or a provision that gives parents the ability to remove children’s/minor’s personal data upon request. It also bans the sale of connected toys and other child-oriented devices, unless they meet security standards and have a privacy dashboard on their packaging that shows how they collect, use and secure data. The bill follows recent allegations against TikTok for violating current COPPA regulations (see the article on the previous page). Under these proposed rules, internet companies like TikTok would need to abide by more stringent privacy protections for children aged up to 15. If the bill becomes law, internet companies have up to one year to implement these regulations, including a requirement to clearly disclose their data collection.
amends the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) to give children and their parents more control over their data, while further limiting data collection practices of apps and web services. The bill expands existing online protections that currently apply only to ‘children (under 13)’ to ‘minors (those between the ages of 13 and 15)’. These include prohibiting internet companies from publicly displaying personal and location information about children online. Current law requires internet companies to obtain parental consent in cases involving the collection, use and disclosure of personal data for children under 13, but changes to the COPPA law would require minors to also give their own consent before their information may be used for any purpose. With influencer marketing on the rise, social media services are under more pressure to police fake engagement in order to demonstrate real user activity and filter out those who are looking to swindle the system and shortcut fame. Twitter’s live streaming app, Periscope, is the latest service to clean up its platform. The company has revised its definition of spam to cover ‘any bulk, aggressive, or deceptive activity that attempts to manipulate or disrupt Periscope or the experience of users on Periscope’, which puts fake engagement, such as artificial hearts, chats and followers, directly in the firing line. Periscope has struggled to handle spam and other bad behaviour on its service for some time. In 2016, it rolled out real-time comment moderation, which was then updated last year so broadcasters could assign their own moderators, instead of relying on the crowd to handle reporting and banning. While these measures contributed towards reducing trolling and abuse on its service, spam – specifically, the inauthentic behaviour around
Furthermore, COPPA states that, under varying circumstances, it is unlawful for companies with ‘actual knowledge’ that a user is under 13 to collect their personal information. The proposal amends the quoted passage to ‘constructive knowledge’, with the aim of preventing internet companies from turning a blind eye to a user’s age. The proposal also bans the collection of children’s data for the purpose
PERISCOPE CRACKS DOWN ON FAKE ENGAGEMENT
fake engagement – is still an issue for Periscope. With the updated policy, fake engagement is now prohibited on its service and the company has advised users will start to see increased enforcement actions, which may even take place on ‘high-profile’ accounts. Periscope’s decision to crack down on influencer attempts to manipulate the system arrives just a few months after Instagram did the same. In
November, Instagram started removing the automated apps used by people to leave spam comments, or to follow then unfollow other users in the hopes of growing their audience. In addition, Periscope is focusing on proactive enforcement to help improve chat quality, and is soon launching what it calls ‘account-level spam reporting’ in order to enable more effective and efficient spam reporting.
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10 YOUR TAKE AI
Does artificial intelligence have the potential to change the content creation process for the greater good? THE AI REVOLUTION WILL BE TELEVISED
strong, compelling stories. Stories are what audiences engage with and care about most, and this is where the true value of the creative process lies. For broadcasters, the most effective role for AI technologies is to enable them to better understand the content in their live streams. Tasks that used to take broadcast facilities hours can now be handled in seconds, delivering real value in mission- critical, fast-paced production environments such as newsrooms, live sports production and breaking news scenarios. Some of the areas where we see AI being deployed include metadata generation, editing, contribution and distribution, compression, personalisation, content security, asset management, customer care and UI/UX. The possibilities are endless. AI-based tools can automatically generate enriched metadata, tag content and create new workflows where this metadata is correctly handled by MAM (Media Asset Management) solutions. Unstructured metadata, combined with highly accurate machine learning-based AI for voice and object recognition, enables video clips to be indexed, located and then shared with single-frame precision in real time. News stories can be edited and delivered faster with real-time automated
content production – content can be tailored according to user profiles, helping production staff to turn stories around rapidly and get them to air in minutes. This kind of automated content production might be good for news environments, but film, high-end drama and commercial creation still rely on translating a human vision on to the screen. Although the Lexus advert was scripted by IBM’s Watson, translating that to the screen still required the creative vision of a director. Post-production, driven by the human eye, was still needed to get the right look and feel. Creativity will always be highly subjective, and this is where AI-led automation of tasks delivers true value – it frees up creative staff to do what a machine cannot, using their imagination to push the creative boundaries. MEDIA 4.0 AI does have the potential to revolutionise the way content owners and creators maximise their assets, allowing them to engage with consumers in a personalised way. This is what we call Media 4.0. The term Media 4.0 was coined by TVU Networks to encompass workflows and solutions that meet the need to deliver highly personalised content to consumers. Based around the concept of the ‘smart studio’, Media 4.0 enables the customisation of video to meet the specific requirements and tastes of individual consumers. Content is created and distributed through an automated process. In a Media 4.0 environment, AI engines recognise video content and automate its creation and distribution to mobile phones, the internet, television and social media channels. The process of formatting content for different platforms and editing content to meet regulatory requirements and
PAUL SHEN, CEO, TVU NETWORKS AI and machine learning will free up time for creatives to focus on delivering great content and stories
The global artificial intelligence market is set to be valued at $1.2 trillion by 2020 according to a report by Forrester Research, and investments in the technology are rising rapidly as we see the first real-world deployments. When IBM’s Watson dropped its (now famous) AI-created Lexus advert, it further highlighted the question of AI’s role in creative industries such as content creation production. Does this quirky advert really predict the end of human interaction in the creative process? FINDING A BALANCE BETWEEN AI AND CREATIVITY At TVU Networks, we are strong advocates of AI. However, we are equally strong in our advocacy for human talent and creativity. Far from removing the need for human interaction within the creative chain, we see AI strengthening the role of creative staff. AI has the potential to take over the mundane, non-creative tasks and free up creatives to focus on delivering great content that tells
THE CLOUD-BASED VIDEO AND AI-POWERED VOICE AND OBJECT RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGIES NEEDED TO TRANSITION TO THE SMART STUDIO MODEL ARE ALREADY AVAILABLE
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11 YOUR TAKE AI
cultural sensitivities (or legal guidelines) in different markets is all automated. Another effective use case for AI and machine learning is intelligently searching archives to create schedules of relevant content for a particular channel or regional service. Broadcasters are already investigating how algorithms and machine learning can be used to search for the archived content that would best connect with their target audiences without human intervention. By combining AI with real-time search engine and scriptable production engine technology, content creators can focus on producing the right content for the right audience. With the downward pressure on budgets, it is critical that media organisations maximise the ROI of every piece of content they own. In the smart studio, AI and machine learning tools can handle re-editing for different audience segments at the same time as the main piece of content is being scripted, vastly speeding up the process. METADATA: AT THE HEART OF VIDEO Rich metadata is central to realising this approach. The integration of TVU MediaMind with Media Asset Management systems puts metadata at the heart of video workflows. The barriers to efficiency, erected by multiple content production workflows, are removed by creating one centralised search engine for all raw materials, which feeds all distribution channels, live or recorded. In today’s
While AI prestige projects, such as the Lexus advert, gain public attention, what we at TVU Networks are most excited about is the future potential to use AI to target, edit and distribute personalised programs in a way that suits each individual viewer. ENABLING MEDIA AND BEYOND How AI is deployed in content production is dependent upon the genre and audience. The raw material of video, audio and graphics is stored and processed in real time by a machine learning/AI engine, which embeds fine-grained metadata into all content assets. The metadata and AI- powered editing tools enable staff to work much more quickly by reducing the time taken to search and access both new and archive footage. AI can also allow editors to efficiently produce multiple versions of a programme based upon viewer profiles. The ultimate aim in some content genres is to be able to make personalised versions of a programme for highly granular subgroups of viewers. We aim to drive this through the development of AI-powered ‘enabled media’, in which AI-driven processes can take indexed raw materials, as well as AI- or human-edited programme segments, to produce an almost infinite number of programmes for which distribution and final edit are AI-powered processes. All these developments ensure the AI revolution will be televised, although we may see different versions of this exciting revolution!
AI CAN ALLOW EDITORS TO EFFICIENTLY PRODUCE MULTIPLE VERSIONS OF A PROGRAMME multiscreen environment, producers handcraft the many versions required for the delivery of a TV show. In the smart studio, they can focus their attention on the primary piece of content, which can then be automatically re-versioned according to predetermined parameters. Today, around 95% of video captured in live productions is never used at all, representing a vast untapped resource in a content hungry market. The smart studio will change this by bringing in a new level of efficiency and optimising content delivery to each target audience segment. All the cloud-based video and AI- powered voice and object recognition technologies needed to transition to the smart studio models are already available. Now, broadcasters and media organisations can begin revolutionising the way video is produced, distributed and consumed.
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12 STREAMPUNK Tool of the Month
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13 STREAMPUNK Tool of the Month
CHROMAKEY FOR THE MASSES DropKey’s Studio in a Bag is a new green screen/chromakey solution that aims to turn your iPhone into a complete TV studio
Words by Neal Romanek
ropKey founder Rockwell Scharer III began to think about the powerful production capabilities inherent to Apple’s
content. The videos will cost $0.99 each and sync directly to the user’s content from the cloud. The company is also developing a streaming feature for Twitch users. “Studio in a Bag is not just an innovation that allows live background replacement,” explains Scharer. “It’s actually the infrastructure of what we think is going to be on television, captured on smart devices, five or ten years into the future. With cloud technology, professionals can create content in the cloud that non- professionals can then use to make their content, sync it to the cloud, use whatever workflows they might subscribe to and then output the finished piece to whichever device they want.” Studio In A Bag has recently won a Silver prize at the 2019 Edison Awards in the category of Media, Visual Communications & Entertainment. The Edison Awards, launched in 1987, honour excellence in new product and service development, marketing, human-centred design, and innovation. Scharer believes the DropKey solution will help democratise content creation and open it up to a lot of first-time video
mobile technology when he had his first iPhone 3G. “I was thinking about American Idol auditions and how the producers could save 50 million bucks by not doing an 11-city tour and instead having contestants send in their auditions taken on iPhones,” Scharer recalls. “When I started thinking more about it, and about how the iPhone could run a perfect chromakey while capturing video, I realised I had something.” After several years, his efforts resulted in the DropKey Studio In A Bag: a portable, inflatable green screen system that also has the ability to swap digital backgrounds in and out of footage from a large library of HD video footage. The system is aimed at small production companies, YouTubers and even hobbyists, and is available soon via the DropKey website for £760 ($999). DropKey is also aiming to offer a complete online marketplace for backgrounds, which will allow purchasers of the system to download video loops that suit their location requirements and
Images: © 2019 dropkey.com
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14 Tool of the Month STREAMPUNK
creators, from teenagers up. What makes Studio In A Bag unique, he says, is that it is a full solution for broadcast-quality chromakey for iPhone. He believes the broadcast production power of iOS devices is only now coming into its own. “The iPhone is only missing three things that enable you to have the same power as a major broadcaster: professional lights, professional sound and professional background replacement.” Having addressed the third issue with the Studio In A Bag solution, Scharer is going to trial a full broadcast implementation later this year. “In the next six months, I’m going to take three iPads and create a sitcom in a basement and no one will be able to tell it’s not made at NBC Studios. What we have is a full chromakey solution. The other things you see out there are pieces of a solution, but ours is perfect, live chromakey,” he says. TOOLS FOR PROS Near the beginning of Scharer’s career, he worked as a recording artist, and was an early adopter of the democratising power of digital tools, including audio hard disk recording technology and audio editing software by Digidesign (which later became Avid Audio). He also wrote and produced the single Get It Together , which saw some success in the charts. “That experience led me to believe that I could marry an iPhone with those three things the iPhone is missing to create a whole, mobile-based television station. People don’t understand that 60 or 70% of what they watch uses chromakey and green screen,” says Scharer.
IFWE COULD PUT ONE OF THESE IN EVERY HIGH SCHOOL IN THE COUNTRY, THATWOULDBE GREAT
Scharer’s first iteration for the Studio In A Box centred around a tent-pole design, but he and design partner Richard Mall quickly realised parents would be reluctant to buy their children something overly rigid. The final product is an inflatable ’bouncy castle’ trapezoid shape with lights built into it. Strength and flexibility were essential features of the design. Scharer and his
development team wanted it to be able to comfortably withstand a thousand set-ups. “Although most people will probably just set it up once in their basement,” Scharer predicts. “And it will stay inflated for a year or two. It’s very stable.” The HD background store is just as important as the green screen hardware for the DropKey business model. Scharer envisions an entire mobile content capture marketplace that allows professionals to sell backgrounds they’ve shot, then others can to pay to use them in their Studio in a Bag-created content. With the prototype developed, the company’s focus is to dramatically scale up production and make Studio In A Box widely available. Scharer is especially targeting YouTubers – from basement filmmakers to major online influencers – and is showing off the product at VidCon in LA in July. He says: “We aren’t going after the professionals. We’re going to price it for those aged ten to 25 who love social media. We believe ‘likes’ are the new currency for kids, and we want to help them get there with their creativity. If we could put one of these in every high school in the country, that would be great. We’re working with some people now who I hope could make that happen.”
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16 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE AWS
The Washington Post’s Arc Publishing tools have become a guide for digital first media companies, from college papers to major broadcasters ARC LIGHTS THE WAY FOR DIGITAL
ne of the leading press institutions in the world, The Washington Post, has an impressive legacy of print
newspapers. But the digital offerings it’s been developing over the last two decades also continue to break new ground – not only journalistically, but technologically. As The Washington Post developed its online presence, it kept running into problems with vendor-provided systems for digital publishing that didn’t satisfy the needs of The Post ’s journalists or technical teams. This was particularly the case when it came to some of the digital press workflows The Post newsrooms were transitioning to, which comprised a mix of not only written, but photo and video journalism. The Washington Post ’s head of product for Arc Publishing, Matt Monahan, explains: “We realised we had a first-rate engineering team that could sit with the journalists in our newsroom and focus on building something superior.” That something superior is Arc Publishing, a digital publishing platform developed in-house at The Post , which is now being used widely by newspapers, institutions and, increasingly, broadcasters. “It started out as an experiment,” continues Monahan. “When we launched Arc Publishing as a commercial offering
four years ago, we began with university newspapers. Following this, we’ve grown to dozens of customers worldwide: broadcasters, news publishers, legacy and digital media, digital first news publishers. Today, we’re powering hundreds of sites worldwide, and video has become a really big piece of our portfolio.” The Arc Publishing content management system (CMS) was designed for ease of use, with a user- friendly interface that accesses a suite
of integrated digital tools. Ellipsis is a web-based digital storytelling tool for teams to create high-quality news and narrative content. The tool also anticipates multiple authors and editors working side-by-side. Anglerfish is Arc’s photo management system and offers control over image libraries, no matter the format, size or origin. Anglerfish includes the ability to automatically extract metadata, edit captions, location and photographer information and easily apply resizing and cropping. Arc’s video CMS, which has been getting more and more traction, is called Goldfish and has tools for enabling video version management, captioning, variant testing and coordination of different video streams across platforms. Other tools include WebSked, a tool for scheduling, budgeting and newsroom
WE’RE POWERING HUNDREDS OF SITES AND VIDEO HAS BECOME A BIG PIECE OF OUR PORTFOLIO
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17 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE AWS
JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY
Arc Publishing, partnering with AWS, offers a suite of integrated digital tools to help journalists
planning; PageBuilder, a web page development tool; Bandito, a variant testing engine; and Darwin, a tool for testing a site’s UX by managing and running parallel A/B tests. “These days, broadcasters represent a significant portion of our growth,” says Monahan. “There are a number of features we’ve added over the past year that have a particular focus on broadcasters who are looking to make the transition to the digital space first. I think many of them were using vendor-provided CMSs, or something they built themselves that was poorly integrated with their broadcast systems. So digital was this sort of afterthought. It was a bolted-on component downstream from what they were working on in broadcast.” At first, one of the product development areas Arc focused on was making it easier for live streams coming from a broadcast to be automatically converted into the requisite video on demand (VOD) clips, or clipped while streaming into VOD, which could then be used on a customer site. “Previously, a lot of broadcasters had a workflow where they waited for the broadcast to finish, then had to wait to replicate the file from a broadcast system to digital system. It meant that whatever they were trying to publish online took place hours after the broadcast finished.” Arc Publishing’s tools allow for live clipping of a live stream as it happens, including cropping the aspect ratio for delivery to different social platforms. The
OUR GOAL IS TO HELP OUR BROADCAST CUSTOMERS BETTERMONETISE THE VIDEO ASSETS AND HAVE THEM PRODUCED NATIVELY ON THEIR OWN PLATFORMS
Washington Post had been a long-time partner of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which collaborated with them on building the new video tools. “What’s been good about that partnership is broadcasters were already speaking to AWS quite a bit,” says Monahan. “The company understood this idea of moving a lot of traditional broadcast workflows to the cloud. Then, with our tools, we’ve been able facilitate some of those new workflows using AWS Elemental Media Services, making it easy for producers working at a TV station to tell their stories and make updates a lot faster than they were previously.” Arc is on the verge of shipping a number of new features, including script integration with broadcast systems, allowing producers to more easily create stories around their online video. Dynamic ad insertion will soon be available and, further down the line, features for live streaming from mobile applications, which will allow correspondents or remote
producers to create live streamed content entirely within the platform. “What we see quite a bit of is reporters who work for broadcast stations, out in the field, wanting to create a quick live stream separate from the broadcast segment they’re producing. At present, they reach for other platform’s tools, like Facebook Live. But our goal is to help our broadcast customers better monetise the video assets and have them produced natively on their own platforms,” says Monahan. “AWS is a great partner to work with, and its specific products have been perfect for the work we’re trying to do. Especially at the beginning, with some of our use cases, we were bringing more usage and more users to AWS than it had previously had. AWS was great about
stepping up and helping us work through those use cases, really scaling up the business.”
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18 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE AWS
KAYO SCORES BIG FOR STREAMING SPORTS
Kayo wants to be the ‘Netflix of sports’ for Australia. AWS helped build that dream
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19 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE AWS
ustralians have always had a special relationship with sport. In fact, in 2006 the country introduced an anti-siphoning law,
which gave Australian public broadcasters first right of refusal on covering certain sporting events, so that there would be the widest public access to those events. In Australia, access to sport is practically a civil right. After dominating traditional TV broadcasting for decades, sport is quickly making headway in the online and streaming market. Last November, Kayo Sports launched Down Under a new online media company driven by the vision of creating an Australian ‘Netflix of sport’. The multi-sport streaming service offers Australian fans a selection of more than 50 live sports, powered by Fox Sports Australia, ESPN and beIN Sports. Subscribers can stream Kayo’s library of live and on-demand content via iOS and Android devices, on laptops and PCs, as well as on TVs with Telstra TV, Apple TV and Chromecast Ultra apps. Events are streamed in 1080p HD and the service offers the ability to stream as many as three events at the same time. Kayo’s SplitView feature allows viewers to keep their eye on up to four events or camera angles simultaneously. The attention to the user experience also extends to a ‘no spoilers’ mode, which lets Kayo viewers hide stats and scores so they can catch up on game events without ruining the final result. The service also offers a feature called Kayo Key Moments, which lets viewers skip straight to highlights during on-demand viewing. The service offers up to 50 different sport events. These include favourites like football, cricket and rugby (and Aussie rules football), but also extend to niche sports like rowing, darts and drone racing. 30,000 HOURS OF SPORT Much like many new online video services, Kayo has built its video infrastructure using tools provided by AWS. “Kayo provides a new way for Australians to experience sport,” explains
GREAT PERFORMANCE Performance, scale and resilience were priorities for Kayo in building its video infrastructure. AWS Elemental Media Services and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) are designed to scale automatically with an increase in demand, and MediaPackage manages resources across multiple AWS Availability Zones as it prepares and originates content for delivery to CloudFront. A data lake built on Amazon EC2 and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) enables analysis of live performance data to support continuous optimisation. On the front end of the service, AWS Lambda and AWS Step Functions support serverless execution of sign-ups and user validation. Storage built on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud and Amazon Simple Storage Service Glacier (Amazon S3 Glacier) is used to analyse live performance data to support continuous optimisation. AWS Lambda and AWS Step Functions provide a serverless execution of sign-ups and user validation. “The time-critical nature of sports puts a premium on performance that goes beyond any other type of content streaming,” says Paul Migliorini, managing director ANZ at AWS. “AWS means broadcasters can have confidence in an outstanding live user experience,
Thomas Kaurin, director of Technology at Kayo Sports. “With over 30,000 hours of content and games, it’s critical we deliver the best possible experience. AWS helps Kayo do this through its fast pace of innovation, with constantly evolving tools that help us deliver a world-class experience.” Kayo uses AWS Elemental Live encoding on-premises to prepare live streams for the AWS Cloud, where AWS Elemental Media Services process, package and deliver HLS and MPEG- DASH streams for distribution through the Amazon CloudFront content delivery network. This livestreaming workflow delivers broadcast-quality video content with much lower delay than traditional livestreaming sports simulcasts. Kayo lets users control the action with pause, rewind and replay functionality, delivered by AWS Elemental MediaPackage. MediaPackage is supported across multiple AWS Availability Zones to reliably repackage and originate content for delivery to Amazon CloudFront.
WITH OVER 30,000 HOURS OF CONTENT AND GAMES, IT’SCRITICALWEDELIVER THEBEST POSSIBLE EXPERIENCE
while providing the library of sports that consumers expect.”
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20 NEWS FOCUS Journalists at Risk
Words by Phil Rhodes ALONE ON THE FRONT LINE Freelancers and user-generated content are now common sources for covering dangerous events around the world. What responsibilities do news outlets have to preserve their safety? When you’re risking your life for a story, who do you call?
s the TV series Jackass showed back in 2000, danger sells. Online media enthusiasts have clearly realised danger still sells:
man came running toward us. When we went round the corner, there were shots hitting the floor. We were the only white faces. Everyone else was Egyptian. The guy said ‘Run, they’re going to shoot you!’ “People have got to be looking at why they are doing this,” Parkinson says. “Are they heading toward a career doing this stuff? You can’t really deter people from trying to advance their career, but if it’s just for a social media boost, that’s not a good enough reason.” He proposes three rules to preserve life and limb: “Number one is whether you really need to be there. If the answer is no, you shouldn’t be going. Number two is that, if you’re going out to cover something, make sure you research the subject as much as you can, so you know what you’re walking into. Number three is to make sure you have a very carefully prepared exit strategy for whatever happens at any time.”
a study from the US National Library of Medicine recently identified 259 deaths between 2011 and 2017 caused by people trying to take spectacular selfies in risky locations. War reporters have been feted at least since the combat cameramen of the second world war, but the respectability of journalism might make it easy to downplay or minimise that danger. Jason Parkinson is a freelance news and documentary video journalist with 15 years’ experience. He was nominated for the Rory Peck Award for News for his work during the Egyptian revolution in 2011, which was his riskiest job. “I was there three times in 2011 at the beginning of the uprising,” he remembers. “We walked into sniper alley by accident. We were following all these other people and this
THEWAR IN LIBYAWAS EASY TO GET TO. YOU COULD JUMP ON A TRAWLER, PAY A FISHERMAN AND LAND IN BENGHAZI
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21 NEWS FOCUS Journalists at Risk
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22 NEWS FOCUS Journalists at Risk
DISARMINGLY DANGEROUS Jonathan Young agrees. He has 20 years of credits with the world’s best-known broadcasters and presenters, and is a member of BAFTA, with nominations and awards from the Royal Television Society and The Guild of Television Camera Professionals. He mentions one danger that will be familiar to any pro YouTuber: the simple pressure to produce material. “When I was a news cameraman working in Sarajevo, Bosnia, everyone starts pointing the finger at you. When everyone else has decided to hunker down, but they still want 40 seconds of pictures.” Getting into these dangerous situations, Young says, can be disarmingly easy. “The war in Libya was easy to get to. You could jump on a trawler, pay a fisherman and land in Benghazi. There were a number of people who were killed.”
YOU CAN’T REALLY DETER PEOPLE FROM TRYING TO ADVANCE THEIR CAREER, BUT IF IT’S JUST FOR A SOCIALMEDIA BOOST, THAT’SNOTAGOODENOUGHREASON
One example came from the conflict in Syria: “A young boy, a teenager, picked up a camera and somehow managed to get in touch with a major news agency. He was a local Syrian and the agency started buying his pictures and making good money from them. Eventually, the news agency gave him some training over the phone and by email, but he was killed in an air strike.” It’s not clear whether the boy’s death was work
related, but the political fallout, Young says, was significant. “The news agency took a lot of flak for the fact its pictures from that location were coming from a teenage boy they’d hired.” GATHERING STORIES SAFELY Anyone tempted to think the world of online media might get an easier ride is sadly mistaken. Henry Langston is a senior field reporter at The Huffington Post , with experience at Vice News during the genesis of high-level online factual content. “ Vice decided it was going to start its own news channel,” he says. “My focus was conflict, so Vice asked if I wanted to start hosting documentaries. “I’m positive there are organisations out there that are pushing the responsibility onto freelancers. That’s a fairly common experience. There are obviously huge risks involved, as well as huge costs. For those to be worth it, you’ve got to be sure you’ve got a media organisation that’s willing to back you up, pay for the work you’re going to produce, provide some assistance in terms of safety and vouch for you if you’re under some threat of arrest. If organisations are going to work with freelancers, they must take responsibility for their safety.” SOMEONE TO CALL The idea of making a living this way is far from new. Vice News was built on the online foundations of the related print magazine and is used to dealing with exactly these safety concerns. Sharbil Nammour, the company’s global head of security, says: “Having lived in some of these countries, I can see why a nice salary coming from a western country would be very attractive to those individuals, but we’re lucky in a sense, because we don’t necessarily have the same set-up as a more traditional news organisation.” Simply put, Vice rarely accepts unsolicited external contributions. “It’s
FACT AND FURIOUS With 20 years of experience, Jonathan Young is used to capturing footage in conflict zones. One danger is the simple pressure of producing material, he says
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23 NEWS FOCUS Journalists at Risk
CONFLICT OF INTEREST Above, Sebastian Walker, the Middle East bureau chief for Vice News, talks to Iraq Special Forces
a much more collaborative relationship with our freelancers. In terms of the solo freelancer, it’s hard to write an article about this without entirely discouraging it. In places like Iraq or Syria – the hotspots where people really want to make a name – it’s not simple anymore.” Here, Nammour reiterates Parkinson’s warning that journalists are often deliberately targeted: “You become the target by going in and wearing that press badge.” He outlines the Vice News approach to this sort of work, via meetings with journalists and editors, which is essentially one of planning and defining limits. “That’s what allows the people on the ground to determine where the story stops and where the safety starts – if you’re on assignment, what you’re there for, what you’re not there for and when to get out of there.” The problem is that journalists are keen to gather stories and not be limited, particularly as there’s a reluctance to push back to editors. As well as a proper planning process, Nammour emphasises the importance of training, particularly the approach of the ACOS Alliance, an organisation developing safety standards among journalists. As its first principle, ACOS lists: “Journalists
IF ORGANISATIONS ARE GOING TO WORK WITH FREELANCERS, THEYMUST TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR SAFETY should have basic skills to care for
“I always end up giving out my personal number to the freelancers, because I think it’s so important for them to have someone to call. If there’s no one else, call someone. But my emphasis is on building that network, doing a communications check – have some sort of network supporting you from behind the scenes.”
themselves or injured colleagues.” This implies first-aid training that everyone involved should have. This sort of work will always require quick wits, planning and research, but Nammour finishes by mentioning a surprisingly personal approach.
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24 NEWS FOCUS Al Jazeera
AL JAZEERA’S NEXT STEP The broadcaster is revamping its newsroom technology – and the cloud is at the centre of it Words by Neal Romanek
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25 NEWS FOCUS Al Jazeera
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26 NEWS FOCUS Al Jazeera
t’s easy to think of Al Jazeera as a young news organisation, but the government-funded, Qatar- based news organisation is now 12 years old – and it’s already undergoing a substantial overhaul. For the past two years, Al Jazeera has been preparing for an evolution of its newsroom systems. Central to this upgrade is a thorough commitment to the cloud. This transition isn’t going to happen overnight, or even over months. The metamorphosis of a major global news agency takes careful planning, involvement from every key team and a lot of patience. The company was engaged in thorough tests and proof of concept around a number of technology options, until finally solidifying its roadmap away from its legacy infrastructure towards one built around IP and the cloud. The transition is expected to take the rest of this year, with the aim to be fully up to speed with the news systems at the beginning of 2020. “Every newsroom is built on a legacy,” explains Miljenko Logozar, Al Jazeera’s director of technology solutions and integrations. “The first TV news channels
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27 NEWS FOCUS Al Jazeera
were established decades ago and workflows are quite solid and quite stable. It’s not easy to move them. A lot of TV channels have been forced to open a digital department and leave behind the traditional newsroom.” The migration of journalists to a new, fully digital newsroom requires the incorporation of new sets of tools and the adoption of new skill sets, including working with CMS, web publishing and social media. Piece by piece, newsrooms are adopting the advantages of cloud- based tools that were previously only the domain of a few outliers in a specialised digital department. During its research and vetting process, Al Jazeera investigated how its existing systems could be upgraded or improved using cloud-based tools. “What we realised,” says Logozar, “is that the cloud is a totally new business model. It’s a totally new technology, with totally new developers and support engineers, and totally new skills for designing and operating the workflows. And, finally, it’s a big business change – not just a technology change.”
finally get the new feature, you forgot why you needed it in the first place. We can go from a development time of half a year to half a day,” he says. Al Jazeera has been using React (a JavaScript technology for building user interfaces) to improve access to the apps its teams use on a daily basis, and is embracing the rapid pace of transformation that the cloud offers. A much faster development cycle means journalists can request features and then, in a short time, see if they work or not. It also means being able to readily publish to other digital media outlets, whether it’s the big social platforms or a new outlet or partner. Al Jazeera is now working on new ways of organising teams for greater creativity and efficiency. “In the cloud, we can start working with continuous integration and development in a DevOps environment,” says Logozar. “We can have one journalist, one operational person and one developer working on one problem. They can immediately interact, exchange ideas, iterate on ideas and then, the next day, immediately improve on the ideas.”
WHAT WE REALISED IS THAT THE CLOUD IS A TOTALLY NEW BUSINESSMODEL
One of Al Jazeera’s first steps in this overhaul was to create a cloud-based newsroom for its bureau at the UN in New York City. A NEW ENVIRONMENT Speed and flexibility are the business- transforming assets that cloud can make available, explains Logozar. “With the cloud, we can change the actual workflows on a daily basis. If you’re using a lot of those traditional newsroom applications, you can’t adapt to the fast pace of online and digital media. If you want to change them, you might have to wait months. When you
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