Changing viewing habits ‘number one challenge’ for broadcasters
Published: MEA
WORLD: ‘Changes in consumer viewing habits’ is the greatest business challenge and ‘content management and distribution across multiple platforms’ is the largest technical and operational issue broadcasters are currently facing according to a recent survey from Marquis Media Partners.
‘CTOs, directors, VPs and other industry executives were asked to rank a series of statements in order of the degree of challenge faced by their organisation,’ explained Tom Hassall, marketing communications manager at Marquis Media Partners. ‘This showed that responding to viewers’ changing demands for content: whether that is the variety of material or distribution platform preferences, is broadcasters’ main concern, over other issues such as cost or resource management.
‘55 per cent of the respondents said “changes in consumer viewing habits and preferences” was the greatest business challenge facing their organisation compared with 32 per cent who stated it was the “increasing cost of servicing and maintaining the expanding variety of consumer platforms”,’ confirmed Mr Hassall. ‘Interestingly, only 3 per cent ranked insourcing versus outsourcing as their number one issue suggesting that broadcasters still have their focus firmly on satisfying their customers’ needs.
The survey covered business challenges as well as operational management issues. ‘From an operational perspective, 25 per cent of respondents cited “content distribution to multi platforms” as the most significant challenge facing their organisation, compared with 18 per cent who selected “managing change in the broadcast IT world”, Added Mr Hassall. ‘We also questioned the senior executives about technology issues and again “content management across multiple platforms” was the key issue, with 55 per cent ranking this as their number one IT challenge, followed by “end-to-end integration and standards from commissioning through production to consumer delivery” (15 per cent), “servicing regionalisation requirements - long-form and advertising” (7 per cent) and content security (7 per cent).’
‘The data from our survey, perhaps not surprisingly, clearly demonstrates that broadcasters’ main concerns are with delivering the right product in the right format to viewers and this driving their business and operational thinking,’ said Andrew Ioannou, partner at Marquis Media Partners. ‘However, meeting demand is only one element of running a successful (and profitable) broadcast operation.
‘Improving the efficiency of content workflow for multiple platforms and channel management projects have taken a higher profile over the last year,’ continues Mr Ioannou. ‘The partnership is focused on helping broadcasters to improve business efficiencies and assist with the strategy, planning and design of workflows and supporting technology to meet these challenges.’