The Media Odyssey

TMO - CTO v3
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Evan Shapiro: [00:00:00] This is the Media Odyssey podcast. That is Marion Ranchet.

Marion Ranchet: And that is Evan Shapiro.

Evan Shapiro: And we're here at IBC again with our second episode from IBC.

It's been a really interesting show. I think we've had some fascinating conversations, not just on the pod, but at dinners and around.

We've got two great guests, one recovering CTO, the other current CTO, both for public broadcasters here in Europe and what used to be Europe. Shout out Brexit.

We've got Simon Farnsworth from ITV, and we've got Adde Granberg from SVT. Welcome.

Adde Granberg: Thank you very much. A pleasure to be here.

Evan Shapiro: Thanks for having us. So what the fuck does a CTO do for a public broadcaster? I, that is my great question of the day. Simon, let's start with you.

Simon Farnsworth: I think the true translation of the acronym is probably wrong.

Evan Shapiro: What should it be?

Simon Farnsworth: It should be Chief Translation Officer.

Marion Ranchet: [00:01:00] Fascinating.

Simon Farnsworth: Translating technology to your peers and management board members of actually what the power of this stuff can actually do for their businesses and grow. And then probably also Chief Transformation Officer 'cause what we're trying to do is drive transformation within our organizations, both from a sort of business model end and an actual operating model end.

Adde Granberg: And I think from my perspective as well to adding on to that, I think my biggest concern and issue as well is we are in an industry where you don't have any pause. The news should go out always to the audience at any time, at any second.

Evan Shapiro: Whenever they want it.

Adde Granberg: Whenever they want it, and we can't get down.

So that's, I think that's a new status of our mission as well. It's not only to transform the industry, it's to keep up as [00:02:00] well what the audience needs at that time that they need it. It's a new thing for especially public broadcast, I think.

Simon Farnsworth: Yeah, I think I heard a really good term this morning, which kind of summed it up is: we are driving beyond human scale content creation.

Adde Granberg: Yes.

Simon Farnsworth: You've gotta drive an ecosystem that can produce more content to more consumers where they want it at any time.

Marion Ranchet: Faster.

Simon Farnsworth: Which is something that humans, if you had a load of bodies in an edit suite just can't do. And the distribution of that has to be at a grander scale 'cause as you rightly point on your podcasts, it's, the fragmentation of the audience is happening whether we like it or not.

Marion Ranchet: And so why are you here, guys? What do you do at IBC? Is it a must on your conference drive? What are you looking for? What are you shopping for?

Evan Shapiro: It's much easier for these guys to get to it than for me, but

Simon Farnsworth: I think it's a great way to see a huge amount of technology in a very short period of time.

And there's only this, an [00:03:00] NAB for us as Europeans is very expensive to get to, similar to your here.

Marion Ranchet: And it's very US centric. I've been told.

Simon Farnsworth: Right. Correct. Whereas here we get a lot more Asian vendors and that comes with its own challenges from a geopolitical standpoint of view. But it's a great way to see a lot of technologists, meet a lot of peer groups, and discuss actually what we collectively do as an industry to drive this forward. 'cause the kind of, if I look at the UK market and we go, Channel 4 was a competitor, BBC was, a wrong question.

The competition's coming from the. The death stars or what do you call 'em on your cut?

Evan Shapiro: That's it. Yeah. Yeah.

Simon Farnsworth: The mega stars.

Evan Shapiro: Our friends at Google don't like it when I say that, but yeah, the big tech death stars, the trillion dollar companies. It's very difficult.

Marion was just saying to us on the previous episode that there's no way for the public broadcasters to compete with even Netflix on a global scale 'cause they have a global scale, right? They're bringing all content in, but then you add YouTube to it and you add, TikTok to [00:04:00] it, and all this content's coming in.

She's hoping, her big wish for the industry would be much more collaboration between all the public broadcasters in Europe and in the uk you look at things like freely, right? Which is an operating system where all the public broadcasters or an operating platform.

Where all live broadcasts and on demand from the UK public broadcasters can be found in one place for BBC, channel five, channel four ITV and that's. That's interesting, but.

Adde Granberg: But I need to say as well. What you're talking about now is the output of our industry. IBC for me, still is more the input, it's production as well.

Unfortunately, we haven't gone so far there. The digitalization have happened as far as making consumer, making content for the industry. So we need to collaborate much, much more than we have done before.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Across the entire chain, right?

Adde Granberg: Yeah. Yeah. But we are not there.

If you look at IBC today, it's still major of the vendors are accelerating their own business, not the [00:05:00] industry. Optimize for their own processes and now we, we need to disrupt that totally. And they are not there.

Simon Farnsworth: You make such an interesting point. 'cause I joined ITV 18 months ago and the first thing we did was we launched this digital enablement strategy. Now we were doing digital, we had ITVX, we had Freely, we were putting some content, but the content, the downstream process of that was still incredibly manual.

And you go, we wanna move from doing digital to being digital. And that's a totally different mindset.

Evan Shapiro: From doing digital to being digital.

Simon Farnsworth: Yes. As an organization.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. But I think that's a great phrase and I don't wanna, I wanna let it rest there is that

Simon Farnsworth: You can have that for free.

Evan Shapiro: No, but I think it's a cha, that's the challenge, right? That's the friction is, oh, we're just gonna throw shit up on Instagram and now we're doing digital.

Whereas you were talking about an end-to-end solution before we started the pod about where it just automatically broadcasts a new definition of it out to all the [00:06:00] other platforms. Organically without having to think about it. But you're so far from that right now.

Adde Granberg: Yeah. But you can go out and see all the stands here. It's very few that focus on our audience. They focus on CTOs buying a system. Optimize it with the quality.

Evan Shapiro: What you call the the picks and shovels problem.

Adde Granberg: Yes. Yes.

Evan Shapiro: There's this kind of ingrained, institutionalized idea that we have to sell this stuff to people and that's our job. Not make the interface better, make the experience better.

Simon Farnsworth: I, you don't wanna criticize anyone but you look around you now and go,

Evan Shapiro: I wanna criticize everyone, but go ahead.

Simon Farnsworth: Yeah. It's full of white, middle aged males. That's not the population.

Marion Ranchet: Well, look at this podcast.

Simon Farnsworth: Yeah. No, exactly. And I'm

Evan Shapiro: Who are you calling middle aged?

Simon Farnsworth: But we are not thinking about a diversified audience. And diversified audiences are consuming content in so many different ways, and probably in ways that we don't even know is happening right now.

Evan Shapiro: On roadblocks, on Fortnite, these are new areas that are worth explanation. [00:07:00] I did a panel yesterday with Theresa Wise from Royal Television Society and I talked about the two different media ecosystems.

One for Xers and older and another from millennials and younger. And there is this, I think institutional belief, and I would say this especially in the UK television ecosystem, but I think you're facing this as well where you're from. First of all, your two countries really innovated very quickly to streaming.

But then it feel like, it felt like that's that, alright, we're done, we're in streaming. We're this, these things called social media. We don't do that. That's beneath us. And one of the questions I got was, well all the wealth is with the people who are over 50 anyway, so shouldn't we concentrate on them?

I'm like, holy shit, you don't hear the problem with that question. So what is the resistance? What is the resistance to skipping into this new generation? You both work for very storied organizations in very storied ecosystems. Where's the friction for [00:08:00] change when we all know it's necessary? What's stopping us?

Adde Granberg: I can have a personal more than there may be official list.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. You're very outspoken about this.

Adde Granberg: Yeah, because I think we, we still think that we as a company and platform are the star of the universe. I think the content that we should do should be the star of the universe. So the entry point to our content, we should expand that.

If maybe not on all platforms uncontrolled, but we need to cooperate with the end users much more and release some of the belief that we, our platform is handling everything for everybody. That's not the case.

And as well, the development now in the software industry is so fast. So I think SVT as a company should go to maybe other convention and IBC to have a look at what's happened on the software industry, adopt that to the distribution side, and really focus on the production side.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, you were talking about this earlier, Marion, about the [00:09:00] walled garden problem people want. Will you tee that up? What does that mean?

Marion Ranchet: I think what you're trying to say at is that you are building something amazing in the hope, well, one, you believe it's amazing, but maybe it's not. That's number one.

Number two, you are hoping that everyone will funnel through that

Evan Shapiro: That destination, that owned and operated platform. Yes.

Marion Ranchet: And but the question is. Number one, if you were to do things differently, what would you do? Because at the end of the, you're coming to IBC, you're here to shop for new tech. Are you buying, are you building? What would make you leaner? And to a point,

Evan Shapiro: I think he's here to stir the pot. That's what he does.

Marion Ranchet: And more, more attuned to what you're saying. Which is that, it is fragmented. So let's stop treating this fortress of ours that is our platform.

Adde Granberg: Yeah. But we need to collaborate in different shapes that we have done because I think it's somewhere close to 5,000 different OTT players in the world. 5,000 OTT players.

Evan Shapiro: And that doesn't include social media?

Adde Granberg: That's, no that's just, that's

Evan Shapiro: Television OTT players.

Adde Granberg: That's [00:10:00] television content of OTT players.

Evan Shapiro: FAST, AVOD.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Any platform.

Adde Granberg: And that can be a different differentiation though. It need to be the content.

And if we cooperate that and let the audience choose and pick what they would like to actually watch and make an algorithm around that and really focus on the content. Because we should never, ever come up with ID to our boards to say, we will build the new terrestrial network because we think it's the future for SVT.

What we do that when it comes to the digital platform. And believe that's the North Star. And I think we are really losing it when we, the content is the North Star. And then of course we should gain from the technology. But we are so upset with watching 2110 standards into our system that have nothing to do with the ordinance.

We are born and raised as a tech company today, we are not a tech company. We should be a content company.

Evan Shapiro: An intellectual property.

Adde Granberg: Yeah. Yeah. Because this is quite expensive to buy this kind of [00:11:00] equipment, but now I'm for those surround listening I'm having a smartphone.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, you're holding your phone.

Adde Granberg: Yeah. This is not any TV standards at all, but it can do whatever vendor in here and TV standards can do, and this cost a fraction.

Evan Shapiro: To shoot, to produce, and watch.

Adde Granberg: And distribute. And you can do it in one box without any audience at SVT or any other channels to see that it's done with this one. And we are still going here and by TV standards, uncompressed 4K for what reason?

We make it so complicated.

Simon Farnsworth: I was walking around yesterday and some of the vendors still these massive audio mixing desks, massive hardware.

Evan Shapiro: They look cool.

Simon Farnsworth: They look really cool, and they are expensive. I'm scratching my head going, guys, I think you're missing the point here. All this can be done in a software domain.

I think our job here, to go back to your point, is to put the most simple tools with the most creative [00:12:00] fire power in the right creative hands. And then understand where the audience is.

Like we, at ITV now we're experimenting with putting content on Disney plus we're sharing content with them. We put content on YouTube that was more of a commercial fight than it was a desire. We've got past that. Now. We've got ITVX, we've got freely we're on, distributed on way more platforms than we are. And now also thanks to some good lobbying, we've got protection on government. So ITVX now has prominence on all Smart TVs and we are now starting to argue potentially that should YouTube be a platform, should we have prominence on that? We need protection 'cause like to your point earlier, us trying to fight toe to toe with Google, good luck with that when they're taking data from Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube.

Evan Shapiro: And it's the wrong fight, it's the wrong fight. It's like saying, ITV should go to war with Sky when you're distributed on Sky.

Simon Farnsworth: Exactly. It doesn't make any sense.

Evan Shapiro: And if you look at them as the new broadcast standard [00:13:00] not just YouTube, but also TikTok and Instagram, and by the way, the only reason I, we focus on YouTube so much is because YouTube's the only social media platform that is on TV.

But TikTok is coming to the television. And Meta is only minutes away from figuring out what their television strategy is.

Simon Farnsworth: Spotify will turn podcasts into video documentaries

Evan Shapiro: and some kid is inventing a rough beast in his garage or her garage right now. Rise. Her garage right now. And that, that'll be the next TV platform.

But I talk to folks in the UK in particular, right. And one of the problems is, as you said, we can take these production standards and put them in the cloud and make it less expensive and faster.

But there is also this thing where why should we even put, let's say you could get a priority spot on YouTube, right? So you could get government mandated what you call it a priority.

Simon Farnsworth: Prominence.

Marion Ranchet: Prominence.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, prominence. Thank you. But there's so many in your ecosystem who say, we don't get attribution when we go there. We, it's not in our [00:14:00] player, so we don't control it. We don't control the relationship with the end user, so we're not gonna distribute the nightly news there live when it's on the telly.

And I, my response to them is, you're getting zero attribution now. So even 50% attribution, last time I checked you guys are math wizards. 50 is better than zero, right?

So how do you change that mindset? You said you're a Chief transformation officer. It's the culture that actually needs to change.

Simon Farnsworth: I think what we're seeing now is the data starting to show there is what we've seen from YouTube is that we've had very little cannibalization on ITVX with our partner.

Evan Shapiro: Zero, I would argue.

Simon Farnsworth: Yeah. Because your generation analysis that you did, Z's, Millennials,

Evan Shapiro: The Generation Gap and Media. Thank you.

Simon Farnsworth: They're all consuming content on different content. Our YouTube revenues are growing

Evan Shapiro: Fast.

Simon Farnsworth: Fast and it is margin, it's money.

Evan Shapiro: It's all new money.

Simon Farnsworth: It's all money that

Marion Ranchet: From the same concept.

Evan Shapiro: Can you repeat that again for the people in the back of the fucking room? Say it again.

Your YouTube revenue [00:15:00] is growing exponentially year on year.

Simon Farnsworth: Yeah. It's still got a long ways to grow.

Evan Shapiro: But it's all additive.

Simon Farnsworth: It's all additive. Disney plus is additive. It's consumers that we don't have.

And you look at what Netflix has done with TF1 in, in France. Experiment, learn, experiment, learn.

Evan Shapiro: Test and learn.

Simon Farnsworth: Yeah. Test and learn. So we are doing so much more of that now and we're learning a lot, we're getting more data. We are able, we're building ad sales packages that incorporate YouTube and people are buying them because they want distribution. And actually, interesting.

Evan Shapiro: And you're selling it as part of the partner program?

Simon Farnsworth: Yeah, so we've developed this technology called Planet V Ad Sales. Where we control all the data. It's a self-service model for agencies,

Evan Shapiro: including a plugin with YouTube as well?

Simon Farnsworth: Yeah. So we can, they can buy YouTube through that. We've now done a deal with Comcast for Universal Ads, so we're starting to push into SME advertising.

'cause [00:16:00] historically, ITVS money came from agencies. We had four big deals.

Evan Shapiro: So SME you mean small media?

Simon Farnsworth: Small media enterprise.

Evan Shapiro: Enterprises, SMBs in the United States. But yeah.

Simon Farnsworth: So for example.

Evan Shapiro: So some small coffee shop can go in the back end and buy a thousand dollars worth of advertising.

Simon Farnsworth: There was a chain of 35 travel agencies in South Wales.

Good on them. Doing a great job. We used Gen AI to create ads. Cut the creative process from 50,000 dive to 500. We're able to get really targeted of audiences through YouTube, through ITVX.

Evan Shapiro: It is money that we wouldn't have had.

Evan Shapiro: And those businesses traditionally would've only bought YouTube or Instagram or Facebook because it was too hard and too expensive.

Adde Granberg: Correct. Too expensive to do.

Simon Farnsworth: And interestingly now what we're starting to do is suck in data from retail loyalty programs, say Walmart in the US or Tesco in the UK. So when you buy this program, we can predict what it's doing at the tills or, smart or smartphone data.

Adde Granberg: They start [00:17:00] to be like, go.

Simon Farnsworth: So what we're able to do is keep the majority of the money rather than pay away.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Let's go back and press on that because retail media is gonna be one of the fastest growing. It's first of all, retail media on the planet Earth is now generates more advertising dollars than all television of the planet Earth.

But the money wants to move to the television set. That's why Walmart bought Vizio. So what you're doing is you're taking the shopping data of consumers. And you're creating a predictive model on who the best target is, and then you're tracking to understand whether it turned, you're attributing, whether it turned into a transaction.

Is that right?

Simon Farnsworth: Yeah. And guess what that allows us to do? It allows us to pour more money into the original content prep creation.

Which allows us to create more premium content, generate more eyeballs across a more distribute, more distributed landscape. Guess what? We're gonna have much more sustainable businesses moving forward.

And all our senior management leadership at ITV [00:18:00] are really starting to get that now.

Evan Shapiro: And it feels and I'm turn this to you in a second, but it feels like to us when you look at ITV Studios, BBC studios it feels like a lot of the innovation, I think you hinted at this is driven by the commercial end of the business to a certain extent. They're the tip of the spear to test and learn first 'cause they have a financial incentive to do it.

But it seems like it's beginning to influence the non-commercial end of your business as well. Is that right?

Simon Farnsworth: A hundred percent. So example, and I don't want this to be misunderstood, Love Island popped on Peacock in US this year. We've got 27 versions of Love Island going around the world now.

Evan Shapiro: It's also a massive hit on YouTube too.

Simon Farnsworth: One small part of the creation process is historically we'd screened 500 potential contestants. We literally had to create a three minute edit of every person so the producers could look at that and go we want that one. Then you check the mental well being and all that [00:19:00] kind of stuff.

We used AI this year to just shoot all those screeners. So instead of doing 500, we did a thousand Wow. UK version, 7% increase on our net on air.

Now the producers would argue, oh yeah, we introduced a new game in episode four or whatever and they're right to do that. But there has to be a correlation that these tools can go beyond human scale production.

To create better onscreen products for the same, if not less.

Evan Shapiro: In in this case in particular, reality shows is all about the casting. It's a hundred percent about the cast because the, you need a good heel and you need a good hero. And that's ultimately how it works. You had a wider pool to choose from because of AI, so you actually got a better cast as a result of it, and that probably had a huge impact.

Simon Farnsworth: So one of the things we're looking at here, interestingly, back to your earlier question, is. And I'll come to ADE in a minute 'cause I'm completely monopolizing the conversation. Is how about we could take those cameras on those [00:20:00] reality sets directly into the cloud, use Gen AI to sift through all of that content so that then you could the choice moments, create more content for TikTok, more content for YouTube, build that franchise so all ships essentially rise to the top.

So we are creating better content for the consumer at a more cost effective price point that differentiates ourselves from the YouTube mass of content. Is that gonna allow us to win more?

Adde Granberg: And then you can see the next step. That's why I'm really heading on to the production value chain as well, because then you can personalize the content for me or for you depending on Sweden, UK, we will have two different angles of it, and that's impossible today to do with the content with the processes we have today.

But if we go into the cloud for real and adopt to a standard with focus on the end users, devices and distribution chain, then we can really do personalization for real. [00:21:00] But it's it's impossible today. We can't do it.

Simon Farnsworth: What we talk about there from a technology perspective, ultimately if you strip it all back, what we're trying to do is get complete control of our data. Video, audio, metadata. Take advantage of modern tools like image recognition, speech to text, then your semantic search can be so much more powerful. Consumers can find much more of your content faster in a personalized way. That should be a good thing for a consumer and a good thing for our business.

Adde Granberg: And that's I think next step for IBC and this kind of convention need to confirm this collaboration between distribution and production.

And one of the industry I used to say, need to actually fade out. And I think it's the broadcast production industry need to fade out to the advantage of producing a distribution quality to get to that step. And I think we are our own barriers to get there.

Simon Farnsworth: Yeah. I think the biggest challenge is change management. Like it [00:22:00] is. We saw what happened in the US right? With the writer strikes. It was a, it's a massive problem for the industry.

But what we've tried to say at ITV is this isn't about taking away jobs, it's putting more creative tools in your handset with the right creative talent. Surely that's a rocket ship for growth.

Evan Shapiro: And to the point you made, and you make this all the time, is, there are certain things that humans shouldn't be doing 'cause it's not scalable from a human standpoint, but the reinvestment back into the content, we will ultimately hire more creatives to make more content because we're making the whole ecosystem more efficient.

That's the whole thesis. That's why you change jobs from CTO to CIO, right? And, you're very outspoken. Like I, I've had people say to me like, he's gonna get his ass fired.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, he got a promotion and that's amazing.

Evan Shapiro: And he got a promotion instead. Good for you. Why? What was the thinking between this new gig, about this new gig, [00:23:00] both from the organization standpoint, but also why did you agree to take it?

Adde Granberg: But it, it was actually our CEO that pointed it out to say that you are, you're having to tough time to do this transformation officer as a CTO. It's easier for you if you work with innovation, present a table of options and then we can decide how we make the operation handle it, because we are going to massive shifts when it comes to change the way we produce and distribute and make content in the future.

I think it's really a massive shift and that makes, the company needs to have courage to do that and may have me as a speedboat and take some projects around that. So that's what I'm scouting actually when I'm here.

And then implement it in project forms instead of trying to change the anti company in one step.

Marion Ranchet: Drive the boats and then change everything.

Can you tell us, give us a few examples of things you've been thinking about ahead of IBC. Things that you were looking in particular. And then second question, [00:24:00] anything that you've seen here you did not expect? And then you're, you are bringing it home and you're thrilled and excited.

Adde Granberg: Yeah. But what's, we talked about Firefly and Adobe Firefly story now where you can use AI to actually prompt a story and AI will make your story.

Marion Ranchet: So for those who are listening to us who may not know what that is, do you mind saying?

Adde Granberg: Adobe have a product now, it's which is Firefly, which is an AI engine that make AI content from speech or from text.

But the problem with AI so far have been resilience in actors and shots and everything like that. Now they have sought out that problem. So in next release they, you can actually do a story, you can do a full story, a four minute story in Firefly, just by prompting. Anyone can do that.

Evan Shapiro: It's creating the video?

Adde Granberg: Yes. Everything from scratch with speech, with everything from

Evan Shapiro: And it looks like real human beings. It doesn't

Adde Granberg: Yes, unfortunately. Yes. So that's why I've, I'm really, that's really I,

Evan Shapiro: Game changer?

Adde Granberg: Game changer. [00:25:00] It scares me actually from my own perspective. It really scares me.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I heard great, but expensive was what I heard.

Adde Granberg: But it depends on what you

Simon Farnsworth: It depends what value you're driving.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: But I do think there's this misperception that AI, you just plug this magic box called AI into your operations, it's gonna start saving you money.

Adde Granberg: No, it's not.

Evan Shapiro: And people don't understand there's these all huge costs associated with these software packages and the energy and everything else as well.

Adde Granberg: Yeah, so we, coming back to that because I think we are coming from an industry with boxes doing fixed thing for 10 years and they'll be moving boxes and moving processes. We are going to every search cost money now inside SVT. Every search of searching content, making something cost a few cents because we exploring new things and we gathering metadata. So that's an issue.

But when I get here for real I'm now seeking how can we disrupt the broadcast standards with 5G technology? How can we get into the cloud and make the [00:26:00] production in the exact right format for distribution? So don't have a production format that we are working in the production mode, and then have a distribution format.

So I would like to make now for real 5G production with 5G connected camera into the cloud. Yeah, virtual sound.

Evan Shapiro: And the reason for that is you want the standard to be able to adapt onto a phone if necessary? Is that what you mean as well?

Adde Granberg: It's so much waste because for, if we talk about standards, 4K in this area here is four gig per second. When we talk 4K for the audience in a, in an iPhone or in a television, it's seven megabit.

So in the process now, we are doing one process for production and a total other process for distribution. And that's a huge amount of money that we need to, that is waste.

Simon Farnsworth: We've all been in those conversations, haven't we? There's a massive [00:27:00] screening room. We've got a producer going. Maybe there's a 10 meter audio wall. Audio civil sorry, a vision wall.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, it's this massive screen.

Simon Farnsworth: I can see a pixel that's out of that. I said, yeah, but sorry, but they're watching it on this.

Adde Granberg: They're watching on the 50,000K monitor. And who at home have a 50,000K monitor?

Evan Shapiro: To be fair, on the other end of it the cost of television is plummeting so I can get a better and better television screen at, for less and less money on an ongoing basis. So the use case has to be, to your point, it has to be for both.

You have to produce for the television on the wall that looks great in the great sound, but you also have to produce it so that it looks good on an iPhone or worse an Android and sounds good in an earbud.

But you need intelligent production design so that it can, it can automatically decide where is this screen going?

What's the,

Simon Farnsworth: Yeah. Beyond human scale.

Adde Granberg: Yeah. That, and then, and I have an practical example to just understand that we are running a, every [00:28:00] year a big cross country competition called Vasaloppet at 90 kilometers. One way 14,000 people are doing it every year.

Evan Shapiro: Running or driving what?

Adde Granberg: Cross country.

Evan Shapiro: Oh, skiing.

Adde Granberg: Yeah, it's the biggest show

Evan Shapiro: I hear that's a good sport.

Adde Granberg: It's fantastic. And it's 14, 15,000 people doing that every year, and it's 3 million people in Sweden watching it. So 30% of people, inhabitants watching it at the same time.

Evan Shapiro: 30% share. Nothing gets that anymore.

Adde Granberg: And we have done that in broadcast standard with helicopters, links, uncompressed 4K for every year.

And last year, this year we did it with drones over 5G. Everything. The audience loved it. They did. They couldn't see any different in picture quality. And we are getting closer to the skiers. We can have, reporters going and the entire route, and it's done with the total other standards and the audience doesn't see it. And the price was very low compared to last [00:29:00] year, the carbon footprint.

Evan Shapiro: So you dropped the cost of the show dramatically, and people enjoyed it just as much.

Adde Granberg: And carbon footprints, investments, everything.

Simon Farnsworth: I think this show is a, the construct of this show is probably an indictment of that.

I haven't been here since pre COVID. Yeah, IBC pre COVID. There was probably about 20 OB vans outside the front. None.

Adde Granberg: No, you have two actually

Evan Shapiro: But so what's an OB van really quick?

Simon Farnsworth: Outside Broadcast van. The big trucks that they send to NFL games or whatever else. You can do this stuff at a completely different scale

Evan Shapiro: On a laptop.

Simon Farnsworth: Completely different budget now and arguably produce more.

Adde Granberg: Yeah, but it, that's super interesting because in November 2019, I was in a stage on an convent in London saying that remote production, what we're talking about is the future. It was maybe 500 in the audience. Broadcast specialists said, [00:30:00] yeah, maybe before the lower tier three. Shit, actually. Never, ever for big leagues, big sports.

Three months later, the COVID hits. It's totally changed and it all changed remote. Yeah. It's totally changed the industry.

Evan Shapiro: That's a really good point.

Adde Granberg: And during three months, everybody asked me how can we do remote production with everything, because I've done it in 10 years.

But the industry wasn't shifting at all if it wasn't for the COVID.

Evan Shapiro: But Marion, you and I talk about this all the time. The answers are staring us in the face if we want. But when a crisis came along, we figured it out.

And I think this is, you're, this is your hometown. You say you're Europe and I'm US.

So what is the mindset? Is it the broadcaster mindset? Is the European mindset? What do you see here? And is it shifting?

Marion Ranchet: I have to say when I'm here, I can see that the tech is here and they can do anything, but mindsets are shifting much slower. So when you are saying you are a CTO, as in not technology officer, but [00:31:00] ransformation officer. I think what you need to do, and I'm assuming this is what you meant, what needs to be done, is changing people's mindsets.

People see what's staring in their face. They're not changing in a single thing. So when Adde says, or when you say that someone is in the nitty gritty of every little thing as if you, they were doing TV like 20 years ago, I think this is problematic, right?

So I think the number one focus should be on that. Making people management changes. And mindset wise, and again, you've said it multiple times, the big challenge and we're seeing here is that our audiences are not at this event.

The audience that we're supposed to target,

Evan Shapiro: They're not represented here at all.

Marion Ranchet: They're not represented, not in the staff, not in the age-wise.

Evan Shapiro: The attendees.

Marion Ranchet: The attendees.

Evan Shapiro: The speakers in particular.

Marion Ranchet: They've done an okay job, but I think

Evan Shapiro: We're all laughing 'cause we're all speakers but it, how many millennials or young Gen or Gen Zs do we see on stage?

Adde Granberg: No. And but, and how many [00:32:00] content producers do we see here?

Evan Shapiro: Almost none actually.

Adde Granberg: No, because they're using other technology. And I can go back to my point because this is a camera with 5G connectivity. Go out on the stands here and please bring me back one single professional camera with 5G connectivity to it because the vendors here would not let in that ecosystem into the ecosystem.

Evan Shapiro: It's dangerous to them.

Adde Granberg: They, it's so much money here, which really upset me because you can't find a single camera that can do. I need to build the system back home to get it work in the proper way.

Marion Ranchet: So do you think that this event, actually a lot of what it represent is what everything is wrong with the industry? In a way?

Adde Granberg: Yes.

Evan Shapiro: The middle name is broadcasting.

Adde Granberg: Yes. Yes. We need to remove that word.

Marion Ranchet: I see.

Evan Shapiro: Actually we were, we just talked about this.

Marion Ranchet: Let's do it next year.

Evan Shapiro: IC, international convention. That sounds like something different. I actually think rather than change the word, I think we should change the definition of the word.

Yes. Because broadcasting, if you're on TikTok, [00:33:00] going TikTok, that's a mint. If you're on TikTok going live, you're broadcasting. If you are screaming to a crowd, you are broadcasting. So if we can put, adopt all the meanings of that word into that word, then this convention could,

Simon Farnsworth: It's kind of like super broadcasting now, isn't it?

Historically, you'd go, you'd have your remote channel 1, 2, 3, whatever that was broadcasting, right? Whereas now we're super broadcasting, oh, 1, 2, 3, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat.

Evan Shapiro: And it has to be that way. It has to, because that's the only way you can reach a hundred percent of your audience. Exactly.

But I think you people are still

Marion Ranchet: hung up on what it means. I think where I agree the, on the old definition. On the definition, people are hung up on what it means. Actually, and there's still that, gap between what. Can people consider tier one? You've said it. Tier two premium. Non-premium.

Adde Granberg: The audience is not there.

Evan Shapiro: But there's a difference between a definition, because if you Google broadcasting, it does not mean what we're talking about in the middle of this conference. It is one to many, right? One to [00:34:00] infinite to a certain extent.

What broadcasting has come to mean, which is what Amanda Lotts writes about, is an industry standard, right? An industry production standard. And we have to shake that and re go back to the original definition of the word.

Which brings me to my most important question Adde. How's my hair look? Does my hair look good?

Adde Granberg: Perfect. Perfect. Always.

Evan Shapiro: I'm intimidated 'cause you have really good,

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I love Adde's hair more.

Simon Farnsworth: Pretty sweet, both of you.

Fuck yeah. I'm gonna throw my headphones down If I didn't think it would mess up my hair, I would throw my headphones down.

Adde Granberg: That's the key.

Marion Ranchet: For those who are listening and not watching, he looks like a Viking.

Evan Shapiro: He does look like a, he looks like Barry Gibb back in the day. Which is a reference only so many of us are gonna get.

So true, you were, we were at dinner last night. And I threw a prompt to the room which was, if you could change anything about our industry, what would it be? And we weren't sitting at the same table. So I'm actually super interested if you could change one thing, not [00:35:00] everything, which is what you wanna change, pick one thing that would be your highest priority, what would you change? If you were all, if you look like a God, if you were one, what would you change?

Adde Granberg: Yeah, but it's quite simple. I can talk about huge of thing, fine things. I would like to remove the broadcast standard into a consumer viewer standard and make production there.

Then if the consumer needs are on compressed 4K, we go up to that and really for real, change that industry and adopt to that.

Marion Ranchet: So you are eliminating everything and starting from stretch, from the ground up.

Adde Granberg: Yeah. But

Evan Shapiro: If you were starting today, wouldn't you?

Adde Granberg: Yeah. Then I would do that. Yeah. And if you talk the most watched content are still on YouTube and it's not in broadcast standard and it works fantastic. And then we can accelerate from that if we need to have what we consider high quality content.

Marion Ranchet: You would wanna be

Adde Granberg: Rephrase quality.

Marion Ranchet: You would [00:36:00] wanna be in a creator's phase right?

So funny, I've heard again, YouTube creators, social media creators, guys in their room with a phone. So you would wanna be that.

And when you see the speed of how these guys came from this and they actually have full professional gear and a very lean way of producing content. Yes. This is what you wanna be.

Evan Shapiro: No. Look at what we're producing here.

Marion Ranchet: That's fascinating.

Evan Shapiro: We're producing on the floor of a convention. We're gonna put this out on YouTube.

Marion Ranchet: We have four mics. Four cameras. Cameras that we go and you were talking about those huge consults were paying 200 a year for Riverside to reports.

And then

Evan Shapiro: Totally flat rates.

Ranchet: Another two, 200 to distribute on transistor. This is all it took for us to start a podcast six months ago.

Evan Shapiro: They should give us money. Instead of us paying them, we just promoted them. Simon, same question. What, if you could change one thing about this industry, what would it be?

Simon Farnsworth: It's one word. It's mindset. It's, these modern day [00:37:00] technologies can completely transform the way we distribute content and the mindset that the audience is in many different places. It's not just your big transmitter infrastructure in the UK or in Sweden, that we've distributed content. That's gone.

We all have to get into this mindset that modern day technologies and generative AI is gonna completely change. If we don't, it's gonna be hugely problematic,

Evan Shapiro: But it's not change for bad. I think that is the, I think there's this binary thing, this black and white mindset.

Marion Ranchet: People are afraid.

Evan Shapiro: There's fear of finding out FOFO.

Simon Farnsworth: If you put the right technology in the right creative hands, it is a rocket ship for growth.

Evan Shapiro: And it'll get better. The content will

Simon Farnsworth: Rocket ship for growth. Growth is job stability. It's job creation. It's good for governments, more income tax, more corporation tax.

Evan Shapiro: There's this perception that technology [00:38:00] which is disruptive is gonna eliminate jobs and be bad for our industry. And that, by the way, that happens every time there's an industrial revolution. The fear is this is gonna cost people their livelihoods and their jobs.

But we've moved from an an agrarian economy into a technological economy and the mindset in a lot of these, in the United States, we still run the television season by the farming calendar.

Adde Granberg: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: We, the upfront season, the whole television season is still driven by the school year, which was driven by when the crops were ready to be taken out of the fields.

Simon Farnsworth: You look at the US Farm Road Roll Payroll in the 1800. It was the biggest employer in the US right? Then tractors came along and combine harvesters came along.

Whoa. People stopped starving.

Adde Granberg: We had more food. It was a good thing.

Adde Granberg: Yeah. But looking in, in our industry, we never ever done so much [00:39:00] content as now. So we are not in a dying business. I think what we are thinking is that we are in a dying business, but the business overall is exploding.

But we are maybe thinking in the wrong way.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And when you say we mindset, it is the traditionalists, it is the traditional media players. The mindset.

Adde Granberg: It's a mindset question. Yes. It is.

Marion Ranchet: But we get a lot of pushback on that because we talk a lot about mindsets change, et cetera. But everyone, every time we're talking to people, a lot of people are pushing back.

They don't wanna change anything.

Evan Shapiro: And I think

Marion Ranchet: And then you have people who do wanna do that, and they're frustrated in companies where they cannot make any changes. Where is that big disruption gonna come from? Because you guys are trying, everyone's trying

Evan Shapiro: it I do

Marion Ranchet: But it feels like we're still a minority.

Evan Shapiro: I do. So last night, Addie is very outspoken. Simon, you've been outspoken here on the pod. But we had this dinner last night with people from various companies, some of my favorite companies, as you said, Simon and some of the big tech players were there as well. And they were [00:40:00] incredibly blunt and honest about the problems inside their own company.

I don't know if they'll be as brave when they get back to the headquarters. But I think Marion, that's the thing, is those of us who work in, who are charged with transformation have to be braver because there are no safe jobs in broadcasting anymore. There are no safe jobs in media anymore

Marion Ranchet: In streaming anymore.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And so if you're gonna hold your tongue and try to play it safe, it's probably gonna wind up the same for you either way. And if you can take a risk and speak truth to power like these two gentlemen have here, like you do all the time, like I try to all the time, at least maybe you can try to change the mindset.

This has been a great conversation. Thank you gentlemen for coming here, giving of your time. You've been wonderful guests. I wish everybody were as blunt as you are when they come on our pod.

Marion, I think we just asked our question of the week. This is our last conversation on mic at IBC.

What's your one big takeaway from IBC?

Marion Ranchet: So I think the biggest [00:41:00] takeaway for me,

Evan Shapiro: Hang on, I'll tee it up again.

So Marion, we've been here, this is our last conversation on mic at IBC. What's your one big takeaway from IBC?

Marion Ranchet: Okay. The one thing I think I saw this year, I had never seen before in terms of those who were present, both, at booth and on stage.

We had Snap. We had TikTok, we had YouTube multiple times. And so I think

Evan Shapiro: Amazon.

Marion Ranchet: There is a bit of a change happening in the way IBC sees itself beyond broadcasting, beyond pure tech. And so I've had discussion with them and their big question for next year, and hopefully, they will have us on to help them do that, but they wanna find a way to tee it up with a creator economy. The affinity economy. Whatever you call it.

So we can bring back, add in next year with,

Adde Granberg: I would love this.

Marion Ranchet: Or anyone. I think actually, but we're gonna go, I think this is, I think I haven't seen anything that blew my mind, but at the same time, I'm not a tech person, so bear with me.

But I [00:42:00] will say that I feel that those streams of being more open and going beyond that, the B word.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, this, look, they were brave enough to have each of us here. They knew that I was gonna come and throw truth bombs from stage. Yeah. So credit to them, and I think you're right. I think this convention wants to shift into a change convention into a convening of transformation as it were.

But I think you stumbled upon if we are gonna change the B in IBC, maybe it's the International Beyond Conference.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: But I think my one big takeaway is, and I, and it really jelled during these conversations on the pod, is I think we have to change or revert the definition of broadcasting to its original intention when it was coined for this business in the first place, which is one to many or many to many.

And I think if we can agree to all go back to our headquarters. And to our bosses and to our employees [00:43:00] and to our peers in the industry and say we need to change, to speak truth to power, to be brave enough to speak about what we need to do to survive, then I think we can be the change internally in our organizations.

This has been super fun. I love Amsterdam. You know. I love you too, and I'm great to see you here.

Marion Ranchet: Ditto.

Evan Shapiro: It is been great to do this on the floor of IBC. I hope we get to do it again next year.

Marion Ranchet: A hundred percent.

Evan Shapiro: That is Marion Ranchet,

Marion Ranchet: and that is Evan Shapiro.

Evan Shapiro: And this has been the Media Odyssey Podcast at IBC.

Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you again next week.