Media Supply Festival 2024

We set the scene by assessing the key developments in supply chain over the previous year - and the most anticipated ones to come.

Imagine an industry that wasn’t really sure what would be arriving at its factory when. Incredible? Well that’s the media industry. So why is our understanding of the content pipeline so poor; and what does the content pipeline actually look like today?

We’ve spent years building supply chains for certain kinds of content, in certain business models. But what if consumer demands change? What does that suggest for the business and technology models of the media industry of tomorrow?

It’s more than twenty years since The World Poker Tour transformed poker into a mainstream sport. But what does it take to extract value from all the bets it’s placed on broadcast, live streaming and on demand?

Few organisations have to manage such supply chain complexity as Warner Bros. Discovery. Not only simplifying and driving efficiencies following the merger of major media companies, but also positioning the company for a streaming first, global future. This session explores successes and challenges across workflow, technology, and data.

Our case studies explore media companies that have merged to combine the strengths of different offerings. But vendors too must consider the right scale and scope to best meet market needs. Backlight brought together a number of successful smaller software companies, so we ask their CEO why they believe that’s the best path, what it means for customers with a variety of media workflows, and ultimately whether the sum is greater than its parts.

In 2022, TelevisaUnivision brought together the media, content and production of Mexican brand Televisa with the American company Univision. The result is a valuable collection of television channels, digital properties, and content assets, and also a complex set of supply chain technologies, platforms, and processes. In this session we explore the strategy, technology, and workflow governance approaches that TelevisaUnivision is using to bring unity to its supply chain.

At a time when revenues are challenged, but demand remains high, efficiency matters. But where do the opportunities sit – and what do media organisations need to do to realise them?

It’s been discussed many times that we are in an industry of constant change. For Paramount, changes in content processing, licensing, and distribution have resulted in a disparate collection of content libraries, which the company is now bringing together. So as the business models of media continue to be rethought and evolved, is it ever truly possible to be agile enough to manage the inevitable change?

What does it take to turn an ocean of user data into a steady stream of successful product improvements? We take a deep dive into how Meta fine tunes its customer experiences by running A/B testing at a scale few other organisations could conceive of.

It used to be that English speaking countries exported content and rarely imported it. But all that’s changing, with audiences now excited by content from around the world. So how does a Korean streaming service get its content to US audiences in double quick time?

What a difference a year makes. In this special session we look at real world examples of where AI has taken a giant step forward to becoming an indispensable assistant.

The future of localisation will undoubtedly involve AI. But the application of AI to complex tasks like dubbing still seems ambitious. So how close is the technology to reaching the mainstream?

In a special workshop, the DPP works with the attendees to define key supply chain insights for 2024.

No other media organisation featured at the Media Supply Chain Festival reported on the American Civil War. You don’t thrive for this long without innovation. In this in depth interview we hear how AP is leveraging the latest technologies to maintain trust, while delivering faster and further than ever.

In an age of AI, media companies have much to consider. Two of the most important factors are trust and value: how is content provenance assured, and how can the correct value be ascribed to quality content? With the launch of the open source protocol Verify, BCL aims to help address these challenges.

Everyone says people are more important than technology. But suppose a media company put that into practice? RTL Nederland has delivered major business change ahead of its technology transformation - with dramatic results. So what did they do, and how did they do it?

As technology has become essential to turning great content into great revenue, the relationship between the technology and finance functions of media organisations has never been more important. In the first of two executive interviews we explore how that relationship works at A+E Networks.

In the second of our technology and finance interviews, we look to a very different type of media organisation. We’ll go inside the relationship between these two functions with the CFO and CTO of Sinclair.