As the broadcast and media industry reflects on another year of change, IBC365 wishes its readers Season’s Greetings. 

IBC365 team IBC2019

IBC365 team at IBC2019

It’s that time of the year when we look back and reflect on the events of the past 12 months, before attempting to make some predictions about the trends and themes that might emerge next year.

It’s been another year of rapid change and transformation. One of the trends that has dominated 2019 and encapsulated many of the changes affecting the industry is the ongoing launch of direct to consumer services, from niche offerings to those from the likes of Apple, Disney and Britbox with more planned, most notably from HBO, early next year.

This increased competition has resulted in a boon for production, and for viewers it feels as though there has never been more choice – sometimes bewilderingly so.

All that choice makes for a more complicated landscape for those responsible for handling and delivering content. The consensus that 2019 has been another year of incremental change would have been welcomed by CTOs grappling with cloud-based supply chains, componentised media workflows and the push for increased automation.

As one of the contributors to our review of the technology developments in 2019 says, technology leaders at broadcasters and platforms want “agile, distributed global storage and compute environments, with multiple commercial infrastructure providers and large-scale private clouds. They want to be able to choose the optimal resource configuration for each workflow or asset class, based on cost, performance, and adjacency to other services.”

That has undoubtedly increased the pressure on vendors and the news that Grass Valley, one of our industry’s biggest vendors, had been put up for sale, was one of the biggest stories of the year. It also ensures that the theme of M&A will continue into 2020 as Belden seeks a buyer for Grass Valley.

For those on the supply side of the industry, 2020 being an even year with the European Championships and the Olympics should help to make it a buoyant year. And with the European Championships taking place across the continent it will put the concept of remote production front and centre.

Remote production has been highlighted as one of the ways for the industry to reduce its impact on the environment, which is an issue which has really come to the fore in 2019. It was notably high on the agenda at many conferences throughout the year – IBC2019 included – with programme makers encouraged to use their platforms for good, and vendors told in no uncertain terms that their green credentials will be thoroughly examined.

The IBC365 team and our band of freelancers has worked hard to keep you on top of all of this news, and we’re looking forward to delivering even more comprehensive coverage of the industry next year.

We want to hear from you. What were your highlights in 2019? What are you looking forward to in 2020? Drop a comment in the comment section or let us know on Twitter where our handle is @ibc365 

2019 has  been a year of growth for IBC365, with a growing editorial team, the publication of twice as many articles as last year and the amassing of 78,000 registered users. We have lots of exciting plans to bring you even more in-depth analysis of the industry with articles and video that help to make sense of this ever-changing industry.

Today’s ebulletin will be the last of 2019, with the next ebulletin arriving in your inboxes on 10 January.

On behalf of the IBC365 team, I would like to wish you all Season’s Greetings and a very Happy New Year.