Chris has been a driving force in the technology industry for over 20 years and has worked closely with executives from many major corporations and entrepreneurs who have relied on technology to support the growth of their businesses.
His current position as Executive Vice President and Co-Founder of NeuLion targets the revolution currently underway as the television and internet video industries converge.
Chris has held numerous executive positions in the technology sector. Over the last seven years the growth of internet television on computers, tablets, mobile, and internet connected devices, has given Chris an opportunity to work closely with the largest brands in the sports and entertainment industry; the NFL, NHL, UFC, NBA, Rainbow Media and many others.
He has also worked with several private equity and venture capital firms as their Chief Executive Officer, which includes Metiom, MetaMatrix, Exchange Applications and Digital Harbor. Chris has been on the Board of Directors of all of these companies.
[ 00:00:19 ] Tata Communications is one of the world’s largest companies it’s a $140 billion dollar operation roughly they own about 100 different companies in their in their group. They own a Range Rover and Tetley tea steel companies. And one of the largest companies is that communications. I’m part of the media and entertainment services group which focuses on media and entertainment applications such as Formula 1 motor GP cloud services for major broadcasters. So tatic communications owns either directly or through a consortium about 40 percent of the world’s fiber optic networks undersea cables and on top of that we’ve built in about 25 percent of the global Internet runs on top of that infrastructure. We have about 60 data centers around the world which gives us a global presence on top of that the media and entertainment services group has built services cloud services and connectivity specifically for broadcasters and media and entertainment applications. So for example we have 150 hotspots around the world where we can ingest live broadcast video such as Formula One and we can come out of any one of the other 149 locations and we’re located with major broadcasters along with the major tipping points like BT tower like having Americas like one Wilcher. So we have this connectivity global connectivity. Once we get that content congested then we can do a number of things with it. Ill just deliver it or we can start offering a number of cloud based services that are helping our clients reduce their operating costs move from the capital equipment to cap ex cash intensive model to an on off premises operating expense model. They can also adjust to paper view type of models where they have on demand and flexibility instead of taking a whole one year contract something like Formula 1 is a one week. Something like FIFA World Cup and be a two month activity so its occasional use as well as full time. Why did you get all this credit for this. Amazon and Microsoft Netflix were all customers of ours. They write on our data centers. We are a tier 1 ISP. We are in about 400 different companies countries and we have all made espies.
[ 00:02:45 ] Talk to us are connected all of them as file based.
[ 00:02:58 ] And what if youve got a file and you can inject it into the cloud and then you can pull it out when you want where you want and we interface with the sparen segment and other Those are called File accelerations. So you’ve got a taping or recording of an event. We’ve got his live event as it’s happening we’re bringing back the alternative in the past with satellite satellite has limited bandwidth in our case for bringing back my fiber optics and delivering it over a global network. That’s a game changer.
[ 00:03:31 ] Well like Vice Media as one of our clients you know Vice Media there right here in Brooklyn. So they’re an example where they were gathering so much content they’re absolutely incredible guys go all over the world they bring back their content they shot everything the editors are trying to pull all together. And you saw that in the cloud and it becomes very fair a fair amount of data but bringing it out is also expensive so it’s a game changer. We have something called media centric storage where you do pay for the story but you don’t pay for the ins and outs. That’s a game changer. So in their case they have operations in London and here in Brooklyn and they haven’t spread out through North America. We’ve spread that content around we start like that. We give them access one groups working on the other can pick it up the next time zone. That’s a game changer as an example. Once you have that content there not for them but for others you can all you can do a full broadcast play out in the cloud today. And when you have that kind of global connectivity you can guarantee performance you get diverse fiber networks if one cable gets cut in the odd million likely event in the Atlantic we’ve got a second one running there and in fact got both of those we go all way around the Pacific and come back. So it’s that’s the kind of network applications that we’re able to analyze now. Amazon gets all the kudos they created that market you know in 2008 when everything went to hell in a handbasket. People didn’t have cash so they use Amazon with all this capacity.
[ 00:05:02 ] Right. Christmas everybody is ordering in January and February their servers are laying idle So somebody thought up smart let’s offer this cloud services. They’re the leader in what they’ve done and they’ve got a good public public cloud service that they are offering with a lot of flexibility. We went the other way. We in our case we know that broadcasters and media companies are very risk averse. They want guaranteed performance. They want to be able to call somebody on the other end of the phone all of a sudden I’ve got a problem on the video channel what’s going on. Pick up the phone and you’re talking to somebody who’s been monitoring it or has a reroute or has the ability to answer the question. That’s a differentiator. Now the differentiator is when you start building these and Tier 3 data centers we do three data center means you meet a certain cybersecurity criteria and not only the ISO twenty seven years or one which is a auditable standard that has certain standards around physical security access network and all the rest of it but also things like the Motion Picture Association of America has a set of cyber security requirements now as well. So there’s an upscale Shrem zone you build your own infrastructure you build what you want to do and you build up your support team or you take a private cloud solution which is very specific to media with backup 24/7 monitoring and control. Now you have something as focused and more dependable more reliable. So in addition to storage we also have completely how. We can ingest content in files like a sparrow in addition to the live in storage kind of solution. We also have complete play out service in the cloud so we can ingest content and file based content that’s pretty prerecorded with somebody like aspera we use file Catulus as well in Sydney and others in jest. So that goes into the play of automation system. We also because we have this high quality network you can ingest linear live content. Mix the two through an automation come back out in whatever format you want including old T.T. for a SDI directly into somebody like sling for example that over their network they’re on that with us. So that kind of automation has a service play out as a service. You can build up channels and eat them and tear them down. So that’s a differentiator. You know Kieta this is going with standards of basic file standards and basic broadcast quality and that’s sort of fundamental to the operation. You’ve got to do that all right but if you go to open standards in general for example in the storage arena you have a choice. If you go to cloud storage in general Amazon has three sets a standard and that’s about 50 percent of the market. The other one is called open stacks swift. That’s the model we use which is scalable and is open and allows you to do all kinds of other things around security and the rest of it. But with this approach here for example we do automatic replication. You don’t see it in store with us and it’s either stored in a complete secure area and the same data center or in a different region. When you do that you can offer 11 nines. That’s ninety nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nines after that to 90 percent of your ability. That means one chance and whatever billions that is that we will lose your content if you’re on a network you’ve got ninety nine point nine five bêl ability which means it’s there immediately when you want it. So we don’t lose it etc.. When you write that into a service level agreement which broadcasters are used you now you have a contract and that’s backed up with with back up diversity systems and redundancy and all the rest of it. So that’s how you deal with those kinds of things.
[ 00:08:52 ] One of the joys of my job is you know I bet and ex-CEO I’ve run for companies but I found I was half CTO half C out and about 10 years ago I said I want to be an engineer again this is the dream job. I mean I’ve got customers are leading edge digital cinema broadcasters you name it special events type stuff. And basically it’s helping them understand that there’s a solution for them how to build a risk averse approach to that risk mitigation system to give them a path from where they are today to what they want eventually and to think outside the box sometimes. So we’ve got the tool box and one of the reasons I joined the group at that time was because they have the tool box and now I can work with end users and help them with with solutions. When we first when I first started out in broadcast was in satellite and I remember in the early days one of my first bosses saying hey never forget content is king. The guy owns the content and owns rights. That’s the King. Nobody cares about your distribution platform until it doesn’t work. OK and so that’s a critical value when you’re thinking about what we do. We don’t own content rights mantras have content. Formula One may own the rights we provide the distribution system and we have to have extremely high reliability. We can’t lose a minute of that kind of rebroadcast So it’s we’ve got teams on the ground we offer that web services and we have to provide redundant paths to make sure there’s absolutely nothing is going to go wrong over that one week of set up and and distribution. So that’s that’s the joy of what we’re doing. Well that’s Netflix right. They went a different route. They were distribution CD’s then put it on down. Now they’re making their own content. And so that’s good. Is it sustainable without an advertising model in the long run. Nobody knows their margins are low. Is that sustainable in the long run. We’ll see. I mean they’re making up on volume. But on the other hand it’s a fight they’re looking for market share. So by making their own content very appealing content they’re drawing maybe from their competitors and in the long run of the market you know this number one and number two a Coca-Cola and a Pepsi and what’s the third one Dr. Pepper. Anybody remember the third one is whatever. So that’s going to happen in this industry and we’re still in the early days I mean Netflix is what five 10 years old and you’ll see this all evolve. We’re not we’re infrastructure. We provide the network to deliver the content. We’ve been building value added services on top of that as a differentiator so that you don’t have to if you’re if you’re a Netflix or in their customers of ours by the way. But if you’re somebody like that and you have content you’re trying to get the ear to hear customers. You need infrastructure or you’re going in vesting on premises equipment or you’re going to invest in cloud services so you can change them later adapt as you need to go. And when I first started this there was a mix of satellite and terrestrial. Now it’s more terrestrial satellite as a backup. And then people were wild for going to the cloud let’s keep our primary broadcast on premises and we’ll keep cloud as a backup. Now people are saying wait a minute why don’t I just that in there why do I even bring it back and forth. I’ll leave some in on premises stuff as a backup or have two diverse systems. And as long as I got the right kind of high speed latency type networks low latency networks and I can guarantee performance within That’s how a service level agreement then you’ve got a solution that people can live with and it’s it’s adjustable It varies with time can be changed.
[ 00:12:41 ] I don’t know just from the run right after making the call.
[ 00:12:44 ] Sounds like you guys are doing real well just look at the tagline on my web site.
[ 00:12:54 ] You know it’s you know vision without execution is a dream and execution without vision is a nightmare and you really have to carefully plan these networks out and think them through and make sure that you follow up with with a solution that works. And to me that’s critical when you are leading edge like we are you know pushing new technologies into older applications taking legacy broadcasters and media companies into a new realm. You really got to hold your hand a little bit make sure it works on and off carefully.
[ 00:00:19 ] Well normally the benefit to me is I run events with other people coming and I get to ask the money people their opinions so. And then in turn they bring me in to ask my opinion of people we listen to you know I have some real rough times right now believing everything we’re doing in this world. Right. We have. If you go on the Wall Street Journal you have the billions dollar startup section of the place and I kind of sit there I scratch my head and say you know all that money for just these few companies doesn’t strike me as the wisest move in the world. So but on the other hand momentum wins in these in this world we were discussing earlier about the fact that Netflix and Hulu weren’t won Emmys right. And you look at the fact that they spent all that money on content. And you go OK this works for the time being. But at some point somebody is going to say you know the subscription pays doesn’t pay for this kind of content we’re producing. So you either have to join up with another company that’s got money like YouTube did with Google or you’re going to end up in you know some sort of relationship with cable operators or some other licensees. Right. So you know we’ll see what happens with the future. You know it’s a very amazing world right now. I’m a big believer that silicon is going to have a huge impact on how we deal with. Forte and the video there because of the fact that you know there are just too much bandwidth requirements for too few spots in this world. Right. My daughter and my wife and I hate each other’s choice in TV right. No one watches the same thing. So the result is that we would need something in the neighborhood of 45 K worth of bandwidth coming at us. And I did my test that I’m 25 k now I saw that that severe is offering a hundred K which you know I don’t live in their territory but I’m somewhat suspicious of hundred K opportunities that requires a lot more throughput than I think they have at the present time. So we’ll see what happens going forward.
[ 00:02:21 ] So all of us are old. OK. And in the old days the way that you serve it’s residential communities you had this one aggregation spot in the neighborhood that you then distributed that the network through that 5G a lot of people are talking about 28 gigahertz. Twenty eight hours is a wonderful is a wonderful place for a lot of bandwidth but it doesn’t bend. And if you ever did network planning with Platt’s and actually having to look at where customers are. Neighbors band great There’s always that one house that’s got kind of a you know three corner experience and then there’s all this other curves that happen and you sit there and look at it and say well we’re going to have to put some sort of device there that then redistribute from the 28 gigahertz and see that device out in the marketplace yet. I think it’s going to come but I don’t see it at the moment. If you really want to get down in technology we can talk about some small cell phones and and dies. I like Dye’s more than small cells because small cells are normally particular carrier solutions well as can support all sorts of carriers. And that’s my belief as to how it’s going to work in the future. You know most of the towers are a shared space. I don’t expect that we’re going to end up in a situation where the winner takes all. So that’s my expectations for the future. We’ll see if it’s true or not.
[ 00:03:44 ] I think the advertising advertising space is where things have got to change the most dramatically. And I don’t know quite how to make it so that broadcast television has the equivalent of impressions versus collectors which is you know how Google and all the other places online work and you know Google’s made this wonderful protocol called open to our TV where we all can basically throw our commercials in and have our ads distributed. I would think that that’s going to come into this space at some point. When and how. I’m not quite sure yet but that would be my expectation. Traditionally things stall right. And one of the things that is frustrating to me as a Netflix subscriber is they’ve put all their eggs in the content basket that they created. You know I’m old I’m sorry I apologize for that but you know I want to see things like the mouse that roared. You know I’ve got Trump talking about North Korea and I want to get some perspective. So I want to go back to a Peter Sellers movie from the 60s right. And the only way you can get that is for them to send it to me. And candidly I can get that at my local library. So I’m kind of sitting there going you know there’s this model seems to me like it plateaus at some point. So that’s my own guess on it. You know what are we at 300 million people in the US right now. And what do they got in subscriptions. I forget it’s in it’s in the. Yeah I think the the they’re already at the point where they tell me they’re saturated so I don’t see how they progress much further. Well here’s the weird thing. I mentioned this earlier that I’ve been talking to a lot of local broadcasters and they’re all desperate to get onto a Roku or an Apple TV or any of those boxes and get their advertising models into that space. I think there’s opportunity to kind of re monetize the whole thing going forward. But I fully expect that at some point Netflix is going to offer some sort of tier where they’re going to have advertising solutions going forward. Well I’m trying to create a very interactive advertising platform that takes advantage of advertising space and communications bottles on an old bell head. I know how to make it so that I know exactly what the end user is doing. No offense to my Google Analytics when I look at my quick throws but I get a lot of aggregation without giving me the real discernment that I want going forward. And if I dig deep enough I can get there but there are simpler ways for me to have that information. I expect that that’s going to be the value that I bring to the marketplace at some point.
[ 00:06:43 ] The issue is you know most local advertising says it’s silly things like call now operators are standing by. Right. And there’s no way to call now from the TV. And yet as we move to IP television it’s interactive and there’s ways to make that happen. And the question is who’s going to do that how is it going to happen and how is it going to work. I like web RTC as a model to make that happen. I’m not sure that’s the model that’s going to last. You know it’s very browser based. And the problem is that you know as usual with the browser industry everybody is HTL five with their own version of H.A. five. So you’ve got you know Microsoft being an RTC company. You’ve got Apple saying yes they’re going to support web R-S.C. like Google made it. But if you look at chromium chromium deviates from what Google does and what Firefox does so you end up in the situation where it’s not quite there yet you know but eventually something interactive it could be web sockets that can be one of those.
[ 00:07:49 ] You know my brother works for a large company that’s going container crazy. So there are different ways to make all this interaction or current system matter of having the drivers to get there and I think advertising is going to be the driver.
[ 00:08:10 ] I think most people hate ads because of the fact that ads interfere with their experience right. No one fights over the fact that people magazine has you know 80 million ads in it and as you’re walking through it because you have an expectation that it’s just there passively and if it catches your eye then you pay attention to it. Right. I think that advertising model is going to prevail on the web eventually right now. You know most of us are scared to death to click on the ad because the next thing you know it takes you off the page you want to be it expands it does all this stuff you know captures you and keeps you as a slave right. That’s not the model that’s going to sustain. So you know that’s that’s my expectation. People want to come come look at Gemstar. I’ll warn you that that we’re a vision not a product yet but you know vision is good you know so you know we do have a patent that’s pending so hopefully we’ll get the patent through. And those people who like us will license it from us but we’ll see what happens. Google’s got Web RTC and they’ve got open our TV. It’s how do you take an advertising model and make it a communications paradigm that’s basically what our patents about. Very simple stuff. If you lived in the phone company as long as I did and did all the stupid things I did you’d understand it perfectly you know that my patent lawyer sitting there saying to me I want you to give me methods and I sit there I go. I do call control for a living. Everything’s a part of the method to me. You’re not going to get what you want because it’s all general public stuff you know. Let me give you the methods as it applies but don’t make me deviate from you know telling you about how it’s different from what we already have.
[ 00:00:19 ] Get some that rich group. And I found it does valuation work throughout the communications sector. So that means the evaluations before companies do deals to help them determine what a fair price would be. Oftentimes the deal goes bad and there’s litigation. We do litigation support and when things go very bad we do get restructuring work. In between all that we also advise investors on investments in the sector. Exactly DCF comparables may parts of the communications sector are fairly unique in the comparables are not exactly comparable to a lot of work needs to be done to adjust them. For example a wireless spectrum is a perfect example and different countries are different rules about how it can be used how long the licenses are for what the build requirements are and so forth. And so those are the kind of things we take into consideration in developing valuations of different assets in the sector. The media industry is going through so much change right now. And the broadcasters are looking 8 USC 3.0. There’s new entrants over the top. The cable industry is finding competition from wireless companies some traditional over the top companies and they will be more competition coming in.
[ 00:01:41 ] So the one hand you have competition from other distributors and which is causing pressure on content pricing going up at the same time. Most of these companies have additional spectrum. So cable companies get more channels through broadcasters to get more channels through also have more data things that they can additional things they can sell. And one of the things you have going on in the media sector I think one of the biggest challenges is that on one hand you have more competition. They also have more opportunities to sell more content get more channels. But sometimes there’s a mismatch in timing. The competition is driving up content price and today and many times their plans for how they’re going to monetize additional spectrum additional ability to send more contact customers is a couple of years behind him to bridging that gap I think is the biggest challenge facing most media companies today. In that capacity that they can actually monetize and that’s I think where the big gap is really from everybody in the media sector whether it’s the satellite company or a cable company it’s one thing to have more capacity. It’s also important to have some way to actually be able to monetize it. It height and metrics in terms of valuation is really a tangible plan that a company might have to monetize additional spectrum additional bandwidth additional ways to serve customers. Some broadcasters for example have detailed plans of how they’re going to sell ads with NTSC 3.0 based on zip code so they can clearly target different zip codes and sell ads. It’s one ad to one zip code a different add another zip code at the same time within the same general coverage footprint. You know that gets credit. So one has to figure that out. And they’re just looking at their content pricing going out and they haven’t figured out a way to increase their advertising revenue. That’s that’s a problem. They actually have a plan. If a company has a plan actually to use the new technology you know that’s worth something. The new technology is just creating additional capacity for everybody including their competitors. You know that say it’s a challenge. That’s that’s only going to hurt them.
[ 00:04:14 ] It’s hard to know that which technology is going to work and which ones are going to be accepted in the market. That’s always a risk. It’s important to go to conferences like this one try to learn as much as possible. There’s always going to be variety of opinions. Oftentimes the winners are really chosen by consensus as opposed to say what the best technology is. So if a large number of companies in certain sector go down one development path. That’s most likely to be the winner of course you can always always be wrong. But you know we’ve got to conferences like this one to try to be a little bit smarter and try to understand what the risks are. You know in this industry oftentimes contrarians are the winners the ones who buy things that everyone else is running away from. To be a good contrary no you really have to be smarter than everybody else. Some people are. I try to be smart but I don’t think I’m smarter than everybody else. That’s a little that’s asking too much of myself. So I generally I go with more of a consensus and where it’s pretty clear or most likely that guy is going to end up you know management is very important in this industry. Very important for evaluation and it’s significant and important part of valuation to interview management to talk to them to understand their plans and really the easiest way to include management is to essentially consider what their business plan is for leveraging new technology. They don’t have one. You can create a discount for that. And that reflects management’s inability to create a business plan to leverage new technology in the face of increasing increasing costs. Let’s why the best way to do that. Another important area in these companies is regulation. And I did go to law school and spent a lot of time in D.C. talking to regulators and other attorneys who are close to the regulatory process. So for TSC 3.0 for example. We don’t really know what limits might be put on the broadcasters in terms of what they can do with that technology. We don’t know to what extent some of the wireless companies are going to lobby against them being able to search handsets in certain ways. And you will see you’re right this is a very creative industry and sometimes creativity and business go at opposite ends. Generally speaking the larger the business the more important business is the smaller the business the more important. Creativity is usually opportunities to insert yourself as a small company are possible.
[ 00:07:06 ] Through creativity. If you don’t have capital you don’t have economies of scale and have a small company can be more creative. A big company be more creative a little more dangerous. You have a model that’s working efficiently. It’s hard to simply be creative and turn on a dime. It’s also hard to get an entire organization to be creative. It’s easy to have a couple of entrepreneurs who are creative to come up with a new idea a new strategy.
[ 00:07:31 ] It’s very hard to get 10000 people on the same page with something that the rest of the world is not thinking that you go companies all along different stages of development from early stage companies to late stage development companies and companies do move very rapidly from one stage to the next. And part of the challenge when valuing a small company is understanding their plan for managing the growth. And suddenly they have to grow very rapidly How are they going to handle that. What kind of plans they have to achieve economies of scale to get the right people and to grow without blowing up. It’s very.
[ 00:08:12 ] Easy for a small company to be effective and then suddenly they are ten times the size and they don’t have the capacity to handle that.
[ 00:08:26 ] This is a fast growing industry media sector broadly communications sector and broader is very fast moving and that means it’s a dangerous place to to play the same time because it’s moving fast it also creates enormous opportunities. It’s. A. Area that if someone wants to invest they really have to know it well it’s not like investing in say an auto company or an oil company that’s going to do the same thing five years from now. As it’s doing today do make a smart investment in the sector. You really have to get deep into it and understand it well. I think the biggest challenge in this industry is that there are a lot of companies that have been around for 20 30 years.
[ 00:09:15 ] But on the distribution side whether it’s a satellite operator whether it’s a cable operator or a television broadcaster and they many of them haven’t really woken up to the rate of change. And if they don’t do that they don’t get a business plan in place get ready for a TSC 3.0 watch the new compression technologies and pay for it and so forth. They’re going to really be in trouble. And there just seems to be companies at least on the surface that haven’t yet put plans in place for an industry that’s changing far more rapidly over the next five years than it probably has in the last 15. NTSC 3.0. I mean represents a significant opportunity for the broadcast industry be able to get perhaps you know 90 percent more capacity out of their current spectrum but not only that it will allow broadcasters to target by zip code or different different geographical areas within their one footprint allow them to broadcast to handsets and different types of mobile devices offer data services in parallel with the existing video channels that they’re offering. And so it allows them to really expand the scope of what they’re doing the same time every broadcast will have this enormous expansion of capacity. And as a result you’ll may see ads for traditional television slots going down. Obviously there’s there’s more channels to fill so to speak. So content pricing is likely to go up and they’re going to have to have a plan to monetize this additional capacity or they’re going to start to see their earnings go down very quickly and very significantly.
[ 00:10:59 ] It seems that the competition for content is likely to go up. Ultimately it’s going be bounded by how much people will pay for it for content. I think there is an argument that top content premium content pricing will go up. That there’s enough new distribution channels that need it badly that will go up. You’re also seeing pressure on the cable companies to offer smaller channel packages which means that people will probably spend more for the top content and second tier content pricing is likely to go down. It’s interesting that Netflix has kind of a distribution company and one hand is also moving into content. Those are two very hard animals to manage. At the same time being a distributor as well as being a content producer I hope that Netflix can do it. That’s a real challenge doing both of those at the same time.
Andrew Shulkind is an award-winning cinematographer known as much for his seamless integration of visual effects and innovative technologies as for his refined and painterly use of lighting. Until 2014, Andrew worked solely in feature film and broadcast advertising for studios and clients such as Paramount, DreamWorks, Sony Pictures, Apple, Adidas, AT&T, Budweiser, Google, Old Spice and Samsung.
Known for finding new ways of bringing stories to life, Andrew is on the leading edge of virtual reality content creation and cinematic, virtual reality capture technology. He was hired to shoot one of the earliest commercial VR projects and tapped his experience photographing 3D, miniatures and visual effects-heavy content to build a 32K RAW, 360˚ VR camera rig for the project. The rig remains the highest resolution, professional grade VR acquisition devise on the market.
Andrew continues to design VR camera arrays and consults with advertisers, brands, studios and the US military to strategize execution and implementation of both VR and mixed reality content and to explore new forms of acquisition such as volumetric capture and light field photography. He is often called upon to beta test new products, but still relishes shooting traditional projects where he can refine his use of classic filmmaking tools.
Andrew began his formal career as a Kodak/Panavision PreView System technician liaising between top cinematographers and film laboratories. He moved up quickly to camera assistant and then camera operator for such masters as Darius Khondji, Janusz Kaminski, Don Burgess, and Emmanuel Lubeszki.
Andrew received the International Cinematographer’s Guild Emerging Cinematographer Award in 2013, Studio Daily Prime Award in 2014, and the Studio Daily Top 50 Award for Creativity and Innovation in 2016. He has been profiled in American Cinematographer, British Cinematographer, TechCrunch, Shoot Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Studio/Daily and ICG Magazine. His work has screened at the Cannes Lions, Camerimage, AFI Fest and Cannes, Toronto and Los Angeles Film Festivals.
[ 00:00:19 ] I’ve been in a legacy broadcast guy in the broadcast business forever and two and a half years ago I put down the flag in the podcasting space so I’m at the corner of radio and podcasting with the notion that on demand audio had to be something that was going to be on the increase right. We’re doing it on the TV side who’s sitting there watching Grey’s Anatomy on Thursday at 8:00 o’clock. Nobody watching it whenever they want to watch it. That wasn’t happening as rapidly.
[ 00:00:50 ] In the audio spectrum but that’s gotten a lot easier since Apple put a podcast app right natively into the phone.
[ 00:00:59 ] And when that happened people started picking up and listening to much Taddeo much more often not only people who are producers are getting more control there’s a democratization of the content itself. So. So when you think about TV think about multimillion dollar extravaganzas and big cruise and lighting of some of that going on here but in audio you can create just about anything you want and you can do it just about anywhere you are. And so that’s very empowering especially for a lot of stars who are looking for a conduit they are looking for a way to make. Pardon the pun eye contact with the audience and they’re able to do it through podcasting. It needs to be compelling to be durable I mean there’s a lot of podcasts that come out there are things that get started and they don’t end up doing well over the long haul which just means they weren’t particularly interesting. But the notion that you can create a podcast on any subject if you’re interested in comedy skydiving I mean there’s 27 podcasts on crocheting. Gonna be fun to listen to those right. But but the notion of being able to create that content on any particular subject is so different than what we’re used to certainly in commercial radio where every format is very tight and specific. In the end you have to aggregate a large audience in order to make money in podcasting. You don’t have to be great if you did aggregate a large audience but you can live comfortably off of a smaller niche audience in a particular subject. So it sort of doesn’t matter what we’re talking about if you’re talking about music I think about music 30 40 years ago everybody had a common listening DNA. We listened to the Beatles then we moved into multiple formats. Now we have so much fragmentation I mean go through Sirius XM and there’s 150 channels of music and that probably doesn’t adequately cover everything. Now in podcasting you know the same sort of thing where you can create audio in any particular area that’s of interest and you can’t do that in commercial broadcasting as easily because they need to aggregate an audience. They need to deliver a large audience to an advertiser here or you can be much more like magazines or you know blogs where it can be much more niche based. And so that is kind of the long tail. However you can also be down at the end of the long tail. There are a lot of podcasts that are designed to attract a big audience. I know somebody who is in the real estate business and they use the podcast to speak to their small community of real estate people in Indianapolis. That’s all they need to do. They don’t need to reach thousands they need to reach a couple hundred to be expert in that category. And so you’ve got the small niche guy was perfectly happy doing that. And then you go all the way up to the big podcast so podcasts like pod save America is doing a million and a half downloads per episode daily from the New York Times. Big surprise hit. Just reach 100 million downloads. So there’s there’s this stratosphere and there’s the smaller guys and they all have the reason to be there. Podcasts can be divided into a number of different areas. There is original content storytelling content which is complex and expensive. You need writers and producers and editors and so it’s almost like a mini television production and then you have conversation podcasts and they can both co-exist. So Alec Baldwin does a podcast called Here’s the thing he interviews famous people that he has access to. They’re great interviews. And then there’s other shows from companies like gimlet with media which are much more intense produced podcasts and so they run the gamut as well so I don’t think there’s one model there are many different ways that so I don’t think that there is one specific time goal in podcasting that’s a good thing.
[ 00:05:31 ] It has a negative component to it as well. I’m from radio broadcasting and the scary secret about radio broadcasting is it’s built in 10 minute listening increments. So I come to it with a bias that shorter is better. And I like to say you know D-W don’t waste my time DWM. And so the podcast should be as long as it needs to be. My daughter has a 25 minute walk to work. And that’s how long she wants her podcast to be. She doesn’t want to listen to it later. And then I know other people who do the commute to work and listen to the balance on the way back. So there’s no right or wrong. But I think the default is in to thinking about lifestyle. People have a lot of time pressure and I go back to the New York Times when it’s a 20 minute podcast. It’s not you know I mean the newspaper takes forever to read. But they decided to make a very adjustable short daily piece and that’s their way out. So there is no right or wrong. My bias is too short. So I think engagement is largely based on the notion that people are doing something else while they’re listening they’re cooking dinner they’re cleaning the house they’re driving to work they’re taking the subway. We share their attention. And so lifestyle is going to dictate how long they listen. Very few people are going to get to the mall get to the malls anymore. They get to their destination and they’re going to sit in the car and listen. That would be the great hope of any kind of audio producer. Probably not realistic. So the content needs to be built into today’s lifestyle. I think this is where the promise of targeting actually pays off. So if I’m if I’m producing a podcast about health and wellness in Tampa a logical sponsor might be a large hospital or a medical center in Tampa. They don’t need anything else. They want people who are interested in health and wellness. So that’s a real good targeting opportunity for them. They can run ads for awareness on radio stations that can put ads in newspapers and any other media on television. But if they’re looking to reach people who are interested in health and wellness this would be a good environment so that would be a local example.
[ 00:08:11 ] And then you can scale that up national support have a discoverability problem. I mean they exist in the phone and yes you can do a search in there but most people find podcasts through word of mouth or social media.
[ 00:08:34 ] To discover that specific piece of content that they might be interested in on whatever the topic could be skydiving. They’re going to have to experiment. They’d be much better off getting a recommendation from somebody who is already aware of it. So the discoverability is one of the biggest issues in the success of podcasting. Then the other is metrics and so we’re sort of in the Fred Flintstone era of metrics here we know how many people downloaded a podcast today we don’t know how many people listen to the podcast. That changes pretty soon because Apple is going to change the way they report and Apple is so dominant and podcast and they control over 66 percent of all of the listening in podcasting. So their lack of sharing of data has impeded the growth of the business. Now they will start sharing data on when people listened and how much they listened. And that’s going to be quite valuable to brand advertisers as they try and jump into the category. The other thing that hasn’t happened that probably will happen is that Google jumps in with a mate about to date they have not. So it’s an Apple universe and it’s not a Google universe. You know there are more people on Android than there are in Apple. So when that happens this whole thing grows exponentially. This the search discovery thing is complicated by a couple of things. One apple. Has expressed no interest in the monetization of podcasting. They use it as a feature to keep people engaged with iPhones and most audio is consumed on iPhones. Most podcast audio is consumed on iPhones. And in fact one out of five minutes of all audio is now consumed on mobile devices. So you can see that trend line there. So the search and discovery part. Is still. That much more complicated. But there’s other things that are occurring. So there’s a lot of audio tagging going on there’s a lot of audio identification. So I could.
[ 00:10:50 ] Not today but very soon in the future Google something on a particular subject and it will not only give me web sites and tag other things that but again the audio segments and that’s happened on the video side that’s likely to happen on the audio side. But today as we’re speaking hasn’t occurred yet that there are people working on that. And there are certainly people working on organizing podcasting making to make it more discoverable. Kind of a giant.
[ 00:11:20 ] Endless project podcasting is not an issue anymore there are 67 million people listening to podcasts on a monthly basis and about 45 million on a weekly basis so it’s pretty big. And that number is growing. It’s primarily growing in 1834. That’s driving it. So just to compare media if TV’s average age median age is 54 which is cable news is in its 60s. Podcasting is 29. So it’s a youth media it’s really desirable to a lot of advertisers who have found millennials especially difficult to reach. This is where they are in a rapidly growing environment. Average radio listening is a little bit over four hours a day which is pretty remarkable. It’s excellent podcasters over six hours a day. So they’re all in on it again. Here we are in this TV centric environment and they’re all in a.
Barry Tishgart is Vice President for Comcast Technology Solutions, a division of Comcast Cable. In this role, Tishgart oversees sales, service and product management for IP solutions at Comcast Technology Solutions, delivering solutions to hundreds of Media and Technology companies worldwide.
Barry has over 22 years of experience in the wireless, cable, Internet, and telecommunications sectors in technical, sales, and marketing roles. Prior to Comcast Technology Solutions, Barry was Vice President of Internet Product Management for Comcast. Before joining Comcast in 2007, Tishgart was Vice President of Managed Services at Sprint and led enterprise sales and service functions. While at Sprint, he also led product and marketing for global data services and wireless data, and served as Director of Network Engineering.
Tishgart holds a B.B.A. in Information Systems and a Master’s in Business degrees from the University of Texas at Austin.
[ 00:00:20 ] I think the idea of the D.I.T. being underappreciated were under noticed that there are a few different things that feed into this part of what you’ve got to take a look at is the evolution of the position. Where did it begin.
[ 00:00:35 ] It began clear back in right after that like 2002 and F 900 cameras and bringing these cameras onto the set and sets didn’t know what to do with them. And there was the whole idea of being able to paint inside the camera which was a brand new thing and that skill set did not exist. And that’s where the eyeteeth started. That’s where people started to think of oh this is what it does. But what it actually does is that the IP they know the technology they know the nature of the lenses they know the nature of the cameras.
[ 00:01:19 ] They are shepherding the electronic image all the way from the time that the electronic image is conceived. Talking about it in prep with with the DP all the way into post and they are the conduit for the deeper vision. And helping the DP catch their vision. Helping capture it.
[ 00:01:42 ] Helping make sure that the meditator exists to forward that vision on into post-production. So that so a RAW file isn’t going into post and people are just starting from scratch because there was all this creative talent there was all this time spent on the set. So to go back to the question why is that the unappreciated the deity’s strength is that the position has.
[ 00:02:09 ] Continually evolved. You know it started off being able to tweak inside a camera. Well we don’t like cameras anymore. You know we we work with lots. We work with really sophisticated software at this point to be able to deal with these things we’re painting from outside the camera where they’re calibrating monitors. They are masters of what are we seeing in high dynamic range. And what is it going to look like. They are the people who are going to make sure that the images are are good and clean the onset. They’re going to be active in prep testing lenses and understanding what the lenses are going to do and what are the flare characteristics of the lenses going to be they’re working with post-production on the workflow so that the things that are created onset when they get into post-production. Everybody knows how to utilize those assets you know in other words the image has become data. And the the the chief asset of the production is this data. Without this data what did you do you know. And so so it is being able to shepherd that from from the inception of the data through the creation of the data to handing that data off to post-production is the data realm. And it’s changed significantly across the last. You know for the 15 years that the position has existed mittened data is like the DDT in extremely under appreciated asset. There’s there’s part of that is because. Meditate is a new element and it takes production a while to start to appreciate how to use a new tool. It’s just like on the camera side lens the data. Well we’re still working out what are the standard formats going to be for ones meta data. How do we handle this meditated gets tossed out. And it gets tossed out too often because when you toss it out you tossed out the work that happened during the set. The idea of the metadata is never right. Image are-I image can be an incredible scope of things. Now the director director of photography they had something in mind when they were shooting that footage the meditator captures what it is that they had in mind. To take data. To expand it even to a further and it’s almost easier to understand the value of money data when you understand to take a look at even some older stuff formatted. And it’s I was talking to a guy who does a lot of restoration. And he was talking about. Showing an image of a print. It was black and white film and it was a nitrate print. And they he showed it to the studio who was having this film remastered in the studio was like. Well what happened. Where’s the contrast Where’s that this.
[ 00:05:41 ] And his point was that when this film was created the director and director of photography were shooting for the nitrate print. They had looked at that print. That is how they had conceived of the image. That’s how they were telling the story. That’s how they approved the story. And and we owe it to them. To continue to appreciate the story in the way that they had told it. You know and you almost get into the question of philosophically what right you have to change the creative work. It was sculpted this way. Now to take it from that big level on down to a much more smaller practical level. The skills of the director and the DP go into crafting the image those skills should be carried forward into post-production. They shouldn’t be wiped out. They shouldn’t be tossed aside. There was this this metadata can give you an immense amount of information see in going into post. It can compress your time frames because you’re not. Having to go back and start everything all over again. You’ve got a starting point. A lot of times if we look at the data is carefully done on set onset all of a sudden you get into your timing you can go straight to power windows you know your base grade already exists. All of those things are there all of those conversations that don’t have to happen anymore and you can start to say OK this is where we’re starting. Let’s finish it out. Let me bring down that window.
[ 00:07:21 ] Let’s do this go straight to that step which saves an immense amount of time in post-production. And a lot of money and despite his.
[ 00:07:41 ] In managing the increased complexity of shooting with a B R A R M R of the different formats of cameras Reade’s new way of shooting that is going to create extra dimensionality to the picture. DHT is different the items are specializing in this work. And what we’re starting to see in the guild is these little groups where where this group of people they know V.R. you know this group of people they know 3D and the multi-dimensional capturing and the whole idea that the key is to make the. Technology transparent to the creative experience. Again all of this stuff is in the service of the director. It’s all in the service of the creative image. And so. This technology changes so quickly it’s so new. How many people really have a chance to dig into it. This is what the job is is to understand it. Be able to work with it. I know that our idea is that or they’ll be out of town on a film. And the folks that don’t live in Los Angeles they get off the end of the film they’ll come into L.A. and they’re going to spend a couple weeks with the camera houses and the post houses just learning what has changed in the six months. That they’ve been out. And this is part of what they bring to the set. And if there’s where and when you get into. VR. When you get into you know particularly. Choices in VR rigs etc. This is where the IP is going. They turn into gold. You know you start to look at vr shooters going out and they’re going out with four or five different camera rigs and they’re go out for them for really specific reasons and part of what a deity is going to understand is. Well this rig is going to be good for this but oh hold it you need a wide shot. Well if we’re going to be doing tonight’s Shot this rigs you really want to go over here for that one and and use this one. And IPs are going to understand that and they’re going to bring it in. They save they eliminate the experimentation onset and they help eliminate the surprises and post the panel we did at any yse was really focusing on the idea of what.
[ 00:10:28 ] Does the director of photography in delight delight he team.
[ 00:10:34 ] How did they help shape the creative experience on set. One of the things my background you know I was a camera operator as director of photography. I also was a creative director an agency creative director and I had a production company and one of the things that I was very very sensitive to from both of those is that part of what makes or breaks a production company is the quality of the creative experience that they can provide the agency. And so the idea behind this panel was to start to dig into Instead of thinking about the technology you know because it’s in certain respects.
[ 00:11:17 ] Well there didn’t do this and this and they have this software and these tools and calibrate screens.
[ 00:11:24 ] Let’s get that mind to all of that and let’s get really into the bedrock work here of what was a creative experience. How much happened in prep. What happened during the production. How do you make the production process rewarding and successful for the agency. Because the agency they’re the they are the conduit back to the brand. They know what’s going on. You need them to be involved. You need them to feel secure. One of the things that happens in branded content production is you get focused on my new show. And you can burn a lot of valuable shoot time on my new show. I remember a commercial that I did where we were doing and had to do with a brand of golf balls and there were flame effects and all of these things going on. Everybody agreed on set. It ended up going back to the agency in a couple of the senior creatives. They weren’t on the show shot didn’t like a couple of the highlights and the golf ball dimples. And so we came back. We did an entire reshoot. You know the idea of all of these tools on set is to avoid stuff like that so that they are seeing exactly what it’s going to be on the screen and if they need to take a shot at that and shoot it to somebody in some distant city to check off on it that they can come back that they can do it. You know. There are brands have colors. And the idea of this was back in the days when commercials were shown on films. But know I was doing Mizuno tennis shoe shop. And the color of the there are particular color on the sole of their shoe was so important that the president of Mizuno flew to the United States from Japan to be able to be the color transfer session. Now we can do things much more efficiently than that. And part of the idea of having the DP the IP team is to be able to give those efficiencies so that the production and via other production the agency can give their clients that level of service.
