Tech Innovations In Broadcasting Media And Entertainment Industry

WE HAVE COME A LONG WAY

At the very heart of our humanity is the unflinching need to both create and communicate, to tell stories and gather listeners and communities to be the audience of our words, our art and our narratives. From the age of the cavemen who painted on walls and canyons to pass across the stories of their battles and bravery to today’s big screens and NextGen TV-ATSC (Advanced Television Screen Committee) Systems; from our ancestors who gathered at dusk to tell ‘tales by moonlight’ to a 2021-chartburster Korean Movie that gathered 1.6 billion streaming hours; from the humble beginnings of African hunters encrypting certain messages in wrapped items as a way of ‘ breaking the news’ to ‘news on-the-go’ broadcasting platforms and technologies…one thing seems to be clear as day; human society has always employed and developed tools and technologies needed to create content and meaning, to entertain and educate, and to seek ways to broadcast that which we create to others.

3 GROUNDBREAKING TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS IN
BROADCASTING MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY

If the story tellers, entertainers, tale-bearers, jesters, sculptors, painters, dancers, balladeers etc of the past centuries were to time-travel to our current post-covid Age of AI, what technological innovation in the area of broadcasting and entertainment would thrill them the most? What would stun Shakespeare the most? What would dazzle Pablo Picasso? What would daze Thespis and what might fascinate Aesop and Homer of Greece the most? Well we can never be sure, but here’s a peek into three groundbreaking Technological Innovations in broadcasting media and entertainment technology that is redefining the way stories are being told and received.

OVER-THE-TOP (OTT) TECHNOLOGIES

OTT technologies refers to a suite of platforms and services where content is streamed directly over the internet rather than through traditional broadcasting avenues such as television and radio. The OTT revolution has birthed streaming platforms such as Netflix, Disney +, Amazon, Hulu and many others that are less expensive than cable and offer the convenience of binge watching shows without the interruptions of commercials. With OTT, reaching different demographics of audience and communities of people has risen to a staggering scale and speed hence what mankind celebrated as milestones years ago when Chinese Soldiers transmitted messages as far as 750kMs in few hours has reached unprecedented levels as experts now predict that media revenue from OTT platforms alone is expected to surpass $210 billion by 2026 which is almost double the amount in 2020 ($106 Billion). Africa is not left behind in the OTT Revolution as Netflix marked its entry in Nigeria along with other countries in 2020.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

While it seemed like a stretch to imagine Aesop or Shakespeare time-travelling to marvel at the wonders of Technological innovation in 2022, the age of AI has brought back musicians like Whitney Houston and The Prince ‘from the dead’ to sing to a teeming number of audience in recent years…through the wonder of Holograms of course. But beyond Holograms and AI-generated songs, the real systemic and tech disruption AI brings to the broadcasting and entertainment landscape spans across two major areas;

Recommendation Technology:

Recommendation Technology is radically redefining the transactional relationship between creators and consumers in the media space. Unlike previous broadcast media and content advertisement in the entertainment industry, most AI now offers data-driven bespoke content suggestions that perfectly match and mirror the viewer preferences and consumption history. 80% of Netflix content is achieved through recommendation tech thereby increasing consumption and subscription volumes for media platforms and likewise keeping audiences served with tailor-made niche-driven content categories.

Content Automation Tech:

It’s the age of KISS. Keep it short and simple. Tech disruptors on broadcast and entertainment are not sleeping on the huge wave of opportunities available to reach a vast number of Gen Z audiences through bite-sized, snippetform, 1 min content forms. A 1-hour news broadcast can now enjoy millions of views through a 30-sec snippet or extract that focuses on the most important or controversial information. Memes, Challenges, Trends and many more have brought far-reaching paradigm shifts in what it even means to be an entertainer. What it took years for entertainment legends like King Sunny Ade, TuFace Idibia and many more in Africa to achieve in their age now takes perhaps 100 thousand views to taste in terms of overnight stardom and achieving celebrity status. While this may threaten the honing of skills and the general standard of quality, one may also look at the bright side; bottlenecks, greedy power brokers can no longer stand in the way of the emergence of creatives and creators who truly have a gift or art to share with the world.

METAVERSE

Keeping it simple, the Metaverse is an umbrella term to describe digital experiences that help us interact borderlessly through the technologies of augmented and virtual reality. What impact does and will the Metaverse have on the entertainment landscape of film studios, video streaming services, online gaming and more? The same way the World Wide Web affected the broadcast of news, the Metaverse is set to have a heavy impact on new broadcast media and journalism. It used to be that TV, Radio and Newspapers were the only ways people could catch up with news, and important developments, but with Metaverse tech, the stage is being set for people to receive real-time news and reports done by journalists through VR headsets and experience these reports in such a real way. News outlets like the New York Times and the Guardian are already using VR, 360° videos and augmented reality to create engaging, user-interactive news content that make audience have a sense of ‘being there’ through 3D and immersive technologies.

TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS IN BROADCASTING
MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT: GOOD, BAD OR UGLY?

The rise of technological innovations in the media space does not all call for a party, it also calls
for questions and probing and certain concerns; ranging from the rise of Deep Fake News to
addiction culture to binge-watching and even to ethical questions. It calls for reflection on what this all means for us in the future, and for our moral values and communal life. Our fathers in Africa had tales, these brought them together; some thought leaders fear that while our screens and entertainment platforms bring us together, they also keep families apart. Clearly, technological innovations solve problems, but they also creates new ones.
While these concerns and questions are for another day, we know that technology will continue to serve a great deal and there will be need for all stakeholders to have access to quality tools that can help us continue to tell our stories, the stories of our battles and bravery, tools that will continue to help us send messages not through items wrapped in clothing, but through high power equipment, broadcasting and production infrastructure and many more.
We all have a part to play in the innovation conversations that will redefine our media and
entertainment, and at Holocene Innovations, we simply ask how we can play that part better by
making cutting-edge broadcasting media and film equipment available to those who have stories to share , and those who have stories to hear.
To the future and beyond!