At IBC2024, Grass Valley CTO Ian Fletcher told attendees at GV Forum that broadcast is now an IT industry. During our discussions at the show, TVBEurope heard varying degrees of agreement with that statement. Here, industry stakeholders share their thoughts on the subject
By TVBEurope Staff
Published: December 20, 2024 Updated: December 23, 2024
At IBC2024, Grass Valley CTO Ian Fletcher told attendees at GV Forum that broadcast is now an IT industry. During our discussions at the show, TVBEurope heard varying degrees of agreement with that statement. Here, industry stakeholders share their thoughts on the subject
target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin>
Ian Fletcher, chief technology officer, Grass Valley The shift from traditional broadcasting to an IT-driven operation hasn't happened overnight, but it's been in the making for years. The broadcasters who have successfully adapted to this shift are those who recognised early on that the worlds of broadcast engineering and IT were not separate entities but interdependent ones. Historically, these departments operated under very different rules and conditions, which sometimes led to conflicts - like the infamous Friday afternoon firewall changes by IT, leaving broadcasters scrambling over the weekend.
However, as we move towards software-based processing and cloud-based solutions, it's become clear that these two fields need to work more closely together. Some broadcasters are essentially transforming their on-prem facilities into data centres, making them face a critical decision: should they continue owning these infrastructures or outsource them to the cloud? It's a balancing act, with pros and cons to both.
But while the technological evolution towards Kubernetes and microservices is inevitable, it's crucial to acknowledge that these systems require much more attention than the old hardware setups. I've seen broadcasters who haven't touched their systems in a decade because they simply didn't need to. With modern tech, though, it's a different story - you need to feed and water your Kubernetes clusters, applying security patches and keeping everything up to date.
The reality is that not every broadcaster has the resources or technical expertise to manage these complex systems. That's why it's important to use the right technology at the right place in the chain. For enterprise broadcasters with in-house expertise, a deep dive into advanced IT systems makes sense. For others, a more simplified, broadcast-friendly solution is essential to ensure they're not bogged down by complexity, allowing them to focus on what they do best: broadcasting.
Andy Bell, chief engineer, Channel 4 There are many reasons why we could label the broadcast Industry, as another part of the IT industry. If you look at the last decade and our industry's transition away from traditional bespoke broadcast infrastructure to everything having an IP address and deployed in the cloud, you can see why the argument is made.
Having experienced the transition from analogue technology to digital in the 1990's, where video and audio signals took a giant leap from a broad level of variation to zeros and ones', I accept that switching to a digital world was quite straightforward to understand. Of course, switching from broadcast to IP could also be argued in the same way, as that transition has been relatively fast. Only ten years ago, nobody would have dreamed of trying to deliver broadcast signals via anything other than broadcast-grade kit from a specific manufacturer. Fast forward to 2024 and the first decision is how you architect your platform in the cloud, not whether you should try and use the cloud.
With all of this said, and with nothing but respect for the IT industry, there remains quite a difference between running an IT operation and running a broadcast operation. In broadcasting you require specific craft skills to create, editorialise, prepare, convert, localise, add accessibility and market content. The differences between broadcast and IT are closing, but are still vast.
Robert Ambrose, managing director and co-founder, Caretta Research The broadcast and media industry has adopted software and IT solutions at scale for 20+ years, and the rise of public cloud providers means more and more workflows are running efficiently and reliably on standard IT infrastructure - from live production to linear playout and streaming. That's helping to drive down costs, and increasing innovation and agility.
What makes us different as an industry is scale - or rather the lack of it. We've seen some vendors adopting a standardised SaaS model, especially where there's scale across other industries like with Adobe Creative Cloud. But for most products, a one size fits all approach is too much of a challenge in a very heterogeneous industry.
What a major public broadcaster needs is different from a telco pay-TV operator or a small content distributor. They can all use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 to run their business, but they each have quite different needs and budgets when it comes to MAM, rights management or streaming platforms.
But, and it's a big but, we need to get away from the we're different mindset. There's still far too much reinventing of the wheel by buyers when an off-the-shelf product will meet 80 per cent of the requirements much faster. When it comes to ROI, time-to-market wins every time.
At the same time, some technology vendors need to do much more to invest in keeping their products up to date. The IT industry delivers multiple releases a day. Some broadcast products are lucky to see a few updates a year, and frankly, too many vendors have underinvested in their products for too long, leaving them to wither on the vine, b
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
19/11/2025
Sphere Sound Kicks Up Its Heels at Radio City Music HallUltra-immersive system from the singular Las Vegas venue is also ready for sportsBy Dan Daley, Audio Edi...
19/11/2025
The Future of Stadium and Arena Video Control Rooms: Tech Leaders Talk 4K, IP, a...
19/11/2025
One Year at Intuit Dome: Walking Through the Stunning Arena's Advanced Video...
19/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: IMG's Francois Westcombe Goes Inside IMG's Annual Digital ...
19/11/2025
Inside Brighton & Hove Albion's fan-first media machine By George Bevir
Tuesday, November 18, 2025 - 10:10
Print This Story
Brighton & Hove Albion'...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 1: Kansas Athletics Brings New Production Power to Rebu...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 2: A Pro's Guide to Kansas Athletics' New Video...
19/11/2025
MLB Media Rights Shakeup: NBC Inks Three-Year Deal for Sunday Night Baseball, Pe...
19/11/2025
Rohan Parashuram Kanawade attends the premiere of Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Egyptian Theatre on January 26, 2025, in Pa...
19/11/2025
Awards season is heating up, and the International Documentary Association just ...
19/11/2025
Aerojet Rocketdyne President Ken Bedingfield and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders were joined by state and local officials to celebrate the groundbreaking o...
19/11/2025
L3Harris and PentenAmio formalise their teaming agreement at MilCIS 2025, streng...
19/11/2025
Calrec gives Phoenix Broadcast Solutions its full support in strategic multi-year enterprise partnership New Singapore OB company invests in Calrec technology f...
19/11/2025
October brings a larger audience in front of TV screens. The cooler autumn weather and the continuation of new programming schedules brought increases in both t...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Vitec has acquired Datapath, a developer of real-time video processing for large-scale video walls, AVoIP content distribution and KVM control in mission-critic...
19/11/2025
NEVADA CITY, Calif. Telestream has introduced ARGUS Version 2.3, which introduces Live Look, a feature that lets operators inspect live and on-demand streams vi...
19/11/2025
STAMFORD, Conn. and NEW YORK Charter Communications, Inc. has announced a major deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) that establishes AWS as one of Charters stra...
19/11/2025
TOKYO Atomos has announced a major firmware update that brings integrated camera control to the Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX its new CFexpress-based monitor-recor...
19/11/2025
Berklee's Signature Series Reimagines the Musical and Visual Artistry of Col...
19/11/2025
PlayBox Neo departed the NAB Show New York 2025 on a high note. The company's all-new PlayBox Neo Suite made a splash on the show floor, drawing strong inte...
19/11/2025
AAVBR (American Audio Visual Baton Rouge), a leading full-service event production company serving Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region, has enhanced its product...
19/11/2025
In its mission to deliver live event services combining advanced engineering with a creative approach to captivating live sports and entertainment experiences, ...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK Short-form vertical video has exploded across platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, but a new survey commissioned by Media.net, a provider of c...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK YES Network, the regional sports network home of the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Nets, and CAMB.AI have struck a partnership they said will leverage ...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has issued detailed guidance on filings that were disrupted by the government shutdown. While many of those fil...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK The popularity of NFL games is largely responsible for continued seasonal momentum in TV viewership into October (measured Sept. 29-Oct. 26), according...
19/11/2025
DirecTV has announced that its MyFree DirecTV streaming service has added seven new channels. Those include four sports services, NBA FAST, Red Bull TV, DAZN Ri...
19/11/2025
SURREY, U.K. Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) has launched Flair Bridge, a compact device that transforms how operators control the company's motion-contr...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission, which is continuing to rapidly ramp up its operations after the end of the federal government shutdown, has se...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Martin Freeman, Jessie Buckley, Wu-Tang Clan's Raekwon, Eddie the Eagle and ...
19/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz collaborates with Broadcom to enable testing and validation of n...
19/11/2025
Back to All News
Innato, starring Imanol Arias and Elena Anaya, arrives on Netf...
19/11/2025
Back to All News
Guillermo del Toro Sits Down With Troll 2 Director Roar Uthaug...
19/11/2025
Some projects feel monumental from the moment the first phone call comes in. When BCE, the host broadcaster appointed to coordinate the national coverage, asked...
19/11/2025
November 19 2025, 08:00 (PST) BAY AREA HOST COMMITTEE AND DOLBY PARTNER TO DELIVER IMMERSIVE FAN EXPERIENCES
During the Week of Football's Biggest Game...
19/11/2025
Michael D. Higgins: Ireland's Ninth President features RT Archives footage and interviews across seven decades
Watch Wednesday 19 November at 9:35pm on RT...
19/11/2025
Scripps Research scientists receive $1.1 million to advance AI modeling for HIV vaccine development New AI system helps scientists rapidly pinpoint the most pro...
18/11/2025
Independent media across Central America are operating under intensifying financial pressure, yet there is a clear appetite for models that can sustain both ind...
18/11/2025
NBA Debuts New Comms Infrastructure and Systems for RefereesTwo-phase rollout is intended to improve game flow, enhance officiating accuracyBy Dan Daley, Audio ...
18/11/2025
Platinum White Paper: How Aggreko Delivers Certainty For Broadcasters On The Wor...
18/11/2025
Kiswe Extends DTC Products With Kiswe Core Cloud-Based Tool for Distributing Con...
18/11/2025
Spanish Basketball Federation partners with ScorePlay to power digital transform...
18/11/2025
HBS selects BBright encoders and decoders to connect ST 2110 live production wor...
18/11/2025
Ashes to Ashes: Inside TNT Sports' hybrid and maverick' production plan...
18/11/2025
SVG All-Stars: Mimi Fotopoulos, Director, Talent and Production Operations, Tenn...
18/11/2025
SVG LIVE! Conference Explores the Tech Side of Sports and Entertainment ConvergenceLive sports and music productions increasingly share gear and infrastructureB...
At IBC2024, Grass Valley CTO Ian Fletcher told attendees at GV Forum that broadcast is now an IT industry. During our discussions at the show, TVBEurope heard varying degrees of agreement with that statement. Here, industry stakeholders share their thoughts on the subject
