Remote Production: The Jewel in the Creative Collaboration Crown

The broadcast industry has changed at an extraordinary pace. Both the underlying technology and consumers' viewing habits have evolved into a complex and varied market. Broadcast news has been no exception, from both the production level and the end result for viewers. To empower production teams to maximize efficiency, media companies have reorganized their operations to drive collaboration with remote production at the heart of it.

Why Remote Production is Here to Stay

The industry continues to expand its use of remote operations, a trend which has only accelerated in recent years. It enables broadcasters to reap the benefits of improved flexibility by removing geographical barriers, bringing remote teams together in new ways to meet the demands of today’s 24/7 newsroom and enhancing the collaboration process.

Remote production is here to stay. Now, broadcasters can produce more content without many of the traditional costs or logistical challenges of on-premise production. Another demand for production teams to meet is dealing with the inherent time-sensitivity of news content, which is valuable in proportion to how quickly it gets delivered. From the perspective of the teams working on this basis, remote production capabilities are an indispensable addition to their collaboration tools: with the aid of 24/7 ubiquitous and immediate access, production teams will be prepared to meet the fast-paced demands of the digital age. Organizations benefit from leveraging their resources efficiently - without recourse to owning and maintaining large-scale facilities to manage and produce content. Apart from cost-saving, the flexibility of the cloud is significant in its contribution to collaboration. With location-independent work here to stay, flexibility is not only a boost to efficiency; it’s baked into our new industry concept of what a newsroom is and how it functions.

New Avenues for News Content

The content ecosystem has grown in complexity, with most households in the U.S. owning multiple connected TVs and other devices such as computers, tablets and smartphones on which consumers are viewing content. The upshot of this is that operators can widen their net and reach new audiences through social media and other OTT channels, which, although were once a separate entities, are now crucial outlets for the news industry.

To get the right stories to the right audiences on the right platforms, operators need to embrace flexibility, which means identifying the right tools to adapt to a multi-platform news media landscape. To achieve this, optimizing content for the widest possible applicability is also a necessity. The full value of content can be realized by repurposing and adjusting it to suit individual platforms and the viewing habits of different demographics.

Having such flexibility is not only critical for today’s new way of working, but in the ever-demanding marketplace, it gives broadcasters the control to mitigate the challenges of getting content out there at scale.

Having the appropriate technologies in place is essential for organizations to take full advantage of the available opportunities. An integrated, browser-based proxy editor is one such technology that enables media companies to enhance collaboration and increase the value of their media assets. With this type of editor, creative teams can effortlessly access their projects from any device with internet access, enabling them to edit videos remotely or work collaboratively from different locations. Additionally, the editing infrastructure allows for multiple users to access it simultaneously, making it more efficient for team collaboration. These editing tools are typically designed for ease of use, ensuring that a broader range of personnel can utilize them effectively. By leveraging this technology, media companies can effectively navigate the constantly changing landscape of 24/7 news and remain competitive.

Leveraging the Cloud

Additionally, with the benefits of cloud storage, there is scope to automatically future-proof your content. Remote production has widened the net of cloud capabilities. Essentially infinite scaling capabilities and the newer technologies available from cloud services allow additional metadata to be applied to content, whether it’s new or old, and can be continually updated for continuous, automated optimization. In this way, one of the essential factors in creative collaboration going forward will be leveraging more scalable solutions for content storage. Cloud-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies such as speech-to-text, scene detection and facial recognition can provide significant efficiencies in surfacing content. Operators will have more time to focus on their production tasks rather than manually organizing and categorizing their material. Creative collaboration can be complex, but it doesn't need to be. With cloud-enabled tools, factors such as time, location, access - even cost - can all be made simpler or, in some cases, irrelevant.

There are a multitude of factors for broadcasters to consider as they adapt to current requirements of producing and distributing news content across the wide array of distribution platforms; and finding a solution that encompasses creative collaboration, cost-efficiency, speed, and flexibility may sound like a daunting checklist to cover.

In the short term, critical gains can be made to secure key outcomes: reach, cost-efficiency, and overall agility are immediately and decisively important for any media company looking to compete in today’s market. However, there is also a long-term view to consider: futureproofing for tomorrow’s market is a process that begins today. With the rapid pace of change showing no signs of slowing down, media companies that build for the future will stay ahead of the curve by unlocking the full potential of collaboration.

[Editor's note: This is a contributed article from Bitcentral. Streaming Media accepts vendor bylines based solely on their value to our readers.]