What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Or so they say – but we’re going to share our thoughts on the National Association of Broadcasters show of April this year.
A forum like NAB is a natural melting pot of ideas and concepts fuelled by technology development and sales enthusiasm. Preferred Media visits this and similarly important shows with the sole intention of keeping up with and staying ahead of the latest technology trends. We use the trade show as an ideas platform.
Our particular focus this year was to look at the features content managers can access and utilise to make their created media assets more valuable.
In the money hungry world of today, created content has to earn its keep! It’s a theme Preferred Media has been promoting to its client base for some years now.
The extensive list of exhibitors spans all areas of the broadcast and media environment, but content management solutions were certainly out in force.
Overall, we found software vendors and systems offered a great many benefits, but the devil is in the detail. When we asked about specifics like the range of formats supported, many unfortunately fell short. Other providers, usually those who have been developing their application for years, have intelligent concepts of how to archive and manage media, along with the depth of programming to support those ideas – but at a price. When you buy a system, you really do get what you pay for!
That may be one reason the Preferred Media model of renting rather than buying has been so popular. Our clients get those enterprise-level features, but without the enterprise-level price.
Our platform is built on our long term history of media asset management and provides high quality solutions to keeping content alive. For us, NAB is a chance to explore key drivers like metadata capture and search, sequencing and editing and workflows. We learn from all the specialist exhibitors what is possible and in what directions the industry is growing. We also meet with our key technology provider Empress to discuss how we work together to improve our services. (With over 20 million content assets under management, we’re a major partner and a key contributor to their development plan, so this is part of an ongoing dialogue.)
NAB enhances our understanding of what is potentially available in the technology market – and how it can help our clients in all their diversity. It was reassuring this year to confirm that our initiatives are focused on the right priorities. Just as importantly, we have the up-to-date knowledge and insights to share with clients who may not have attended NAB and had the opportunity to learn for themselves.
