Imagine Communications' CEO Tom Cotney talks to TVBEurope about his first year with the company, and being an IBC virgin
Author:
Jenny PriestleyPublish date:
Sep 13, 2018
In December 2017 Imagine Communications announced the appointment of Tom Cotney as new CEO. After a quiet first few months, Cotney surprised the industry somewhat at NAB when he announced plans to split Imagine into two business units: one focusing on playout and networking solutions, the other on advertising technology.
Looking back over his first nine months in the broadcast technology sector, Cotney says he's found his introduction to the market extremely exciting: Ive been in enterprise IT and Telecoms, those are important industries, but their products are not as relatable as the medias products. In this industry, were also consumers of the end result. So I knew this would be more exciting, he tells TVBEurope.
I knew there are parallels between those worlds and where I am now and thats proven to be true. What I mean by that is technological evolution, so going from the traditional baseband products to the IP-based products is not easy. What I didnt know is how gregarious and open customers are and how willing they are to teach you their business. Ive found that to be a really pleasant surprise, thats a little different than what Im used to where people traditionally kind of play their cards close to their chest.
IP is a major factor in Cotney's vision for the future of Imagine Communications. But he's also very aware that not everyone in the industry is excited about the change in technology as others: Ive learned that people really are looking at the change in technology in different ways, he explains.
Media companies approach that from a viewpoint of not what is available from a technological point of view but from the point of view of how ready they are.
Cotney says there are currently two kinds of customers, those that are the early IP adopters and those that are thinking about that migration differently, who want to buy into the new technology further down the maturity curve. We are in something of a tumultuous time, he says. A lot of broadcasters are merging and consolidating and they are watching to see which vendors are going to survive as well. IP adoption is not going to happen just because the technology is ready and because of that we are sort of adapting the way we do business.
If we dont evolve how do we stay in business? It could limit our revenue if were only selling to the early adopters. Weve got to monetise the wait. In other words, we have to figure out how to make a living by serving those customers.
Which brings us to the split into two business units. How has the company, and the market, reacted to that decision? The one thing the division helped me realise was that we were under invested in leadership on the ad tech side, admits Cotney. We know the workflows, we know the business, but we needed to be more efficient and make better decisions from a delivery point of view. The new leadership team really has given us a better vision about how to provide that kind of support for customers.
The other thing the split into two business units has helped us do is really clarify the return on investment for our owners, he continues. Its well documented that there is a lot of change going on in the tech side of the media industry. That change is presenting opportunity more often than not. With the separation and with new leaders, weve been able to articulate that to our owners. Its helping us to update our business plan and kind of raise our expectations for how big that business can be and how much of a contributor it can be on the client side.
Being a broadcast technology newcomer means Cotney is about to experience IBC for the first time. How's he feeling about the annual trip to Amsterdam? I think Im the most excited about road testing some ideas that we have. We talked about how people are going to migrate to new technology at different rates. We like to think were leaders in that category, were doing really well. We have more experience with IP than anybody in the market.
Cotney says Imagine has come up with a plan that features some advisory services for customers that arent ready to migrate to IP. However, they wont be ready to announce the specifics at IBC. But we think the one common denominator between early adopters that are ready to go ahead and implement IP, and the ones that arent, is that they have cost questions, he explains.
So were trying to reshape our product offerings to compete not with all of the other product sellers, weve decided that what were going to compete with is our customers' total cost of ownership. In the IP space where were virtualising infrastructure, instead of having dozens of little rooms at the BBC where youve got two people in 20 rooms monitoring 15 screens, they can go to a much smaller physical footprint, virtualise those screens and have a lot less people working 24/7 monitoring their operations. That is a dramatic reduction in their total cost of ownership.
What do you do for the person thats not ready for the cutting edge? ponders Cotney. We have three new services that were going to be road testing at IBC with clients to sort of get them into a beta-phase. Thats what Im looking forward to and Im not trying to be coy but we are still learning. We think weve got three pretty solid advisory services to offer but before we go too public I think we just need to go through the customer validation period.
Looks like the plan's already in place for IBC2019.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
28/08/2025
IBC stand 5.F81
Wowza to Reveal Next-Gen Video Streaming Innovations at IBC 2025
Amsterdam, August 28, 2025 Wowza, a leader in video streaming infrastructur...
Imagine Communications' CEO Tom Cotney talks to TVBEurope about his first year with the company, and being an IBC virgin
