Connections

The spring/summer edition of the “M&E Journal,” published by MESA and geared toward senior media and entertainment executives who oversee their companies’ digital futures, is now available online.

The 170-page publication features insights from nearly four dozen MESA members, from ATMECS to Xcapism Learning, with the issue’s main focus centered on how productions have evolved due to the challenges presented by the pandemic.

Along with the cover section — “It’s Showtime!” — the issue offers industry insights for several crucial industry areas, including “Diversity & Inclusion,” “New Workflows,” “Smart Content” and “Security.” Additionally, the “M&E Journal” also features columns from MESA’s executive leadership.

Here’s a quick look at what’s included in the “Smart Content” section:

• “Zooming in on Smart Content” with MESA’s Matt Turner and Mary Yurkovic discussing how data is at the heart of every new M&E venture.

• “What No One in Streaming Services is Talking Enough About” by engineer Giridhar Athmanathan. The pandemic has accelerated streaming adoption and direct-to-consumer (D2C) streaming will continue to grow at an extremely high rate. Streaming jumped 71 percent year on year in the UK and doubled in the U.S. Content providers now need to navigate a steep transition to enhance their D2C capabilities, and they can do so by leveraging data, artificial intelligence and engineering at scale, to enhance content distribution, subscriber experiences and monetization, all in order to deliver a truly differentiated streaming service.

• “Advancing Communication- Enabling Technologies” by AppTek’s Juan Mario Agudelo. As our lives were constrained in the physical space due to the pandemic, communication became increasingly digital. The need for accessibility in these live, virtual settings has never been greater. Language technologies, such as speech recognition and ma- chine translation, enable more connections worldwide, offering equal participation for everyone.

• “Is Automatic Captioning Good Enough to Replace Traditional Captioning Services?” by Red Bee Media’s Juliet Gauthier. Automatic captioning is on the rise. But is it really good enough to replace traditional captioning services? A look at the ways Red Bee Media has embraced caption automation, and why a little experience goes a long way when it comes to getting the most out of automatic speech recognition.

• “Applying Artificial Intelligence to IP Management Implications for the Broadcast, Media Industries” by RSG Media’s Shiv Sehgal. The integration of artificial intelligence-based tools with rights management and program scheduling technology has created new, extraordinarily beneficial opportunities for greater cataloging, utilization, and monetization of content. Rights management — which can be a simple as excel spreadsheets or one-size- fits-all, single-instance/multi-tenant solutions, to more advanced solutions required for large, global media enterprises — is no longer about simply running an availability report informing what can you do with your content. It’s about what should you do with your content.

• “Utilizing Modern Analytics to Drive Streaming Services Revenue” by MicroStrategy’s Jim Whelehan. As the media and entertainment industry transitions to a streaming-first model, the use of modern analytics has emerged as a key strategy to driving revenue. Publishers and content producers are now armed with data, not only to better understand their customers, but to deliver a better product.

• “Virtual Creative Economies: Blockchain NFTs and the Future of Digital Media” by OTOY’s Phillip Gara and Jayson Kleinman. Blockchain non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have emerged as a new medium for creators, studios and brands to connect virtually with their fans. From digital collectibles to open world gaming experiences and augmented reality, NFTs are creating an open, diverse platform for exchanging virtual experiences that will revolutionize the economics of the M&E industry in a post-COVID-19 world.

• “The Audience is King” by Deluxe’s Chris Reynolds. Streaming service providers need every edge they can find to keep subscribers. Technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, automatic speech recognition and cloud computing are giving the media companies that employ them a significant edge.

Beginning Monday, June 7, look for stories from the winter edition of the “M&E Journal” every week in the “M&E Daily” newsletter.