A Vision for Media 1 – A Day in the Life

You are a manager of a large media organization responsible for current affairs. It's not too far in the future. Would a day in your life look something like this?

You’ve just gotten up in the morning and are having breakfast at home. As usual, over your morning coffee, you start your work day by viewing a dashboard on your phone which presents you with the current trending topics of local interest relevant to you and your organization. Facial recognition on your phone seamlessly authenticates you in the application. The system highlights a trending topic regarding protests about funding for a local university as it has significant engagement on Twitter and Facebook. Still using your phone, via voice instructions, you enter the "Breakfast TV " production team’s collaborative space as a potential follow-up item for today's show. The team agrees to send a journalist to the site with one of the mobile production units which delivers content via a 5G connection.

You contact another colleague who is the producer for a local affairs debate program to suggest the protests as a topic for that morning's show. She agrees and proposes a round table discussion be held with the protesters and university staff. She then creates a quick voice conference with her team and pulls you in via her mobile. Her assistant producer suggests that the round table would also be ideal for steaming as an interactive Q&A session on the associated radio site. You agree and so he checks availability in the multi-purpose Loft Space in the building using the online resource scheduling tool. Seeing that it is available, he books the space along with the production support team. The tool offers a number of predefined layouts for the flexible space so he chooses the informal discussion arrangement and the number of guests. The production team receives this booking in their workflow queue automatically and starts preparing the space.

While you are arriving at the office, an entire workflow has been set in motion. The on duty marketing manager begins to liaise with the local affairs producer to ensure that there is a campaign across the entire schedule, website, and social media accounts referencing this topic for today. The discussion guests are booked into the visitor system and they automatically receive a visitors pass on their phones. One of the guests is only able to join via remotely, and the Skype stream will be seamlessly interfaced into your organization’s IP based video/audio systems as a SMPTE 2110 stream.

Later that morning, a notification arrives from the production team that the Loft Space has been set up along with a photo of the space as laid out for final confirmation via a simple link in the message. As the production infrastructure is based on an AMWA IP solution, the production teams have been able to place cameras anywhere in your work place as they utilize a high-speed wireless network ensuring maximum flexibility.

As the production starts, live feeds can be previewed on any device and during the live production, these same devices can provide a simple interface to switch between cameras, Skype, and the video feed sent from the mobile team on site at the university. The production output can be “cast” to one of the screens in the Loft Space.

It's mid-afternoon and all has gone off without a hitch. You can check your Social Media analysis tool and confirm that the discussion piece is getting significant engagement on all platforms and that the marketing team have put this at the top of your social media activity, especially targeting Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter which the students use more. Finally, you create an “thank you” Instagram story for the team.

This entire sequence is based on technology available and widely used today. Unfortunately most media organizations are still not taking full advantage of analytical and collaborative tools, that can unleash the creative power of media organizations while at the same time reducing costs and increasing employee engagement and satisfaction.

In further blogs in this series we will look at the evolution of both the media industry itself and the future media workplace environment.

For more insights, we’ll be showcasing practical expertise on how we help broadcast and media companies meet their enterprise IT challenges. Meet us on our booth from 13-17 September at IBC 2019. More info