Without AI, You’re ‘Behind the Competition,’ Startup Exec Says

Entrepreneur Adam Spector issues a stark warning to media and digital companies that are lagging behind in adoption of artificial intelligence.

“If a company today has not already implemented AI in some part of their business, then they are behind the competition,” says Spector, co-founder and head of business at San Francisco-based AI startup LiftIgniter. “The challenge with AI is that the value you receive from it increases exponentially, so your competitors who are using it are not just a little ahead of you, they are likely light-years ahead.”

To offer an idea of how much impact AI is having and will have on the media and digital sectors, Spector says you should consider the effect that mobile has had. Then, he says, multiply that effect by 1,000, and you’ll have a sense of the sweeping changes that AI is ushering in. Except, Spector adds, the impact of AI is quicker and more profound.

Spector’s company is among four AI startups that’ll be exhibiting at NAB Show Las Vegas, April 7 to 12, 2018. The others are Graphika, ICX Media and Valossa.

“Stop redesigning your site. Stop putting more money into marketing,” Spector says. “Create the best user experience—which has to be personalized via AI—and all other metrics will improve. Everything else you could do for your site, for your revenue, for your users is secondary to applying intelligent, automated AI.”

Without built-in AI, a media or digital property “will cease to exist,” Spector says.

“Users have come to expect personalization everywhere. Users are also lazy: They don’t want to spend time trying to discover something,” Spector adds. “YouTube, Facebook and Netflix have trained them to expect the perfect piece of entertainment with near-zero effort.”

“Without personalization, they will not stick around, they won’t share your content and they won’t care about your site.”

With its technology, LiftIgniter enables content creators to place the best content in front of an online visitor.

“Digital properties spend huge amounts of time and money to get visitors to their site or app but then fail to personalize, which reduces your return on investment,” says Indraneel Mukherjee, co-founder and CEO of LiftIgniter. “At our core, LiftIgniter is a machine-learning and math company built to provide a true personalization layer to the internet that enhances the end-user experience and increases positive outcomes for our customers’ business goals.”

LiftIgniter says its AI-powered technology allows clients to push beyond our current perceptions of personalization.

“While AI does make basic personalization features … possible, the future is all about individualization,” LiftIgniter says on its blog. “We’re talking about tailoring the experience to each and every user. Intelligently adapting content, tone and even design to make each user feel like they’re receiving personal attention every time they use our website or app.”

Here’s a brief look at the three other AI startups exhibiting at NAB Show Las Vegas 2018.

Graphika

New York City-based Graphika’s AI-fueled technology helps customers understand the context of social conversations via articles, media, websites and hashtags that are spurring online conversations. Graphika’s technology helps clients in media, health care, news, politics and other industries make “strategic business decisions.”

ICX Media

Through “data-inspired storytelling,” Washington, D.C.-based ICX Media says it’s transforming the way video is created, distributed and monetized. Its customers include marketers, media companies and video creators.

ICX Media says its real-time insights pave the way for businesses and organizations to quickly generate high-quality, cost-efficient branded video content in a scalable fashion.

Valossa

Finland-based Valossa’s AI-based video-identification technology allows, in real time, the identification of more than 10,000 concepts—people, places, objects, themes and so forth—from any video stream. This helps companies deliver personalized video content, Valossa says. Put another way, Valossa’s AI software understands video like a person does, according to founder and CEO Mika Rautiainen.

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Entertainment Takes a Deeper Dive into Podcasting

Seeking to capture the success of viral hits like Serial and S-Town, the relationship between entertainment and podcasting has continued to expand in intriguing and often surprising ways.

For instance, music-streaming service Spotify recently rolled out a multimedia format called Spotlight, which adds visual elements to the listening experience for podcasts, audiobooks and other audio content. “Spotlight gives fans a deeper insight to their favorite artists, playlists, books, publishers and more by offering contextual visual elements, such as photos, video and text, that appear as users move through each episode,” Spotify says in a blog post.

Meanwhile, superhero storyteller Marvel New Media recently teamed up with podcasting service Stitcher for Marvel’s first-ever scripted podcast, Wolverine: The Long Night, a 10-episode series that will debut in spring 2018.

“Wolverine: The Long Night brings our fans a whole new way to experience our iconic characters and the Marvel universe…. We’re excited to continue to explore the dynamic possibilities of the podcast medium,” Dan Silver, vice president and head of platforms and content at Marvel New Media, says in a news release.

A host of activities at NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 7 to 12, 2018, will dive into the state of podcasting in entertainment and other industry segments, and a number of well-known podcasters will offer their insights. Highlights include the Podcasting Studio (Grand Lobby, Las Vegas Convention Center) and the Podcasting Pavilion (South Hall Upper), designed to help both established and beginning podcasters improve their craft.

Also, on April 11, four sessions on podcasting will generate buzz at NAB Show:

  • “Ahead in 2018: This Year in Podcasting,” featuring Steven Goldstein, CEO of Amplifi Media; Brendan Monaghan, CEO of Panoply; and Rob Walch, vice president of podcaster relations at Libysn
  • “The Mechanics of a Quality Podcast,” featuring Jared Easley and Dan Franks, co-founders of Podcast Movement; and Erica Mandy, host of theNewsWorthy
  • “The Podcast Aircheck,” featuring Seth Resler, digital dot connector at Jacobs Media Strategies
  • “The Anatomy of a Podcast Hit,” featuring Rob Greenlee, head of content at Spreaker; Donald Albright, co-founder of Tenderfoot TV; Payne Lindsey, co-creator and host of Up and Vanished; and Meredith Stedman, a creative producer and podcast co-host of Tenderfoot TV

Entering the American Media Landscape

Companies like Marvel and Stitcher are striving for podcast hits as the entertainment business steps up its commitment to podcasting.

“Podcasting is an incredible, intimate medium that’s perfect for telling stories…. The arrival of Wolverine and his many fans to podcasts and Stitcher is truly a signal that this medium is a major part of the American media landscape,” says Erik Diehn, CEO of Midroll Media, the parent company of Stitcher.

Over at Spotify, the content partners for Spotlight include BuzzFeed News, Cheddar, Crooked Media, Lenny Letter, Genius, The Minefield Girl, Refinery29, Uninterrupted and Gimlet Media.

Gimlet Media is the company behind Crimetown, a podcast series from the creators of HBO’s miniseries The Jinx. Each season examines the culture of crime in a different city. And in a testament to the crossover appeal of podcasting in entertainment, the FX cable TV network is developing a series based on Crimetown, according to Variety.

While Hollywood certainly is elbowing its way into podcasting, the country’s other entertainment capital—New York City—is staking its claim in the podcasting biz.

Big Apple vs. L.A.

A report released in August 2017 by the New York Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment proclaimed the Big Apple’s status as the “epicenter” of podcasting. The report says the number of podcasts made by New York-based networks was up nearly 75 percent in two years, representing 1.3 billion downloads in 2016.

“New York City is at the forefront of the dynamic and rapidly expanding podcasting industry,” says Julie Menin, the city’s media and entertainment commissioner.

Not to be outdone, Los Angeles is making its case for prominence as a top-tier podcasting player.

According to Built in Los Angeles, L.A. is home to a number of startups that are helping shape the future of podcasting. They include Midroll Media, Stitcher’s parent; Crooked Media, co-founded by Jon Favreau, former speechwriter for President Barack Obama; and Parcast, creator of true crime podcasts like Serial Killers and Unsolved Murders.

While New York and L.A. may be duking it out over the “podcasting capital” title, Nieman Lab notes that other podcasting nodes in the U.S. include Boston, Chicago, Atlanta and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Casting a Wider Net

No matter where podcasters are plying their craft, it’s hard to ignore the rise of podcasting in entertainment and other genres. A 2017 survey by Edison Research and Triton Digital found that podcasting is booming, with 40 percent of Americans age 12 and over saying they’d ever listened to a podcast and 24 percent saying they’d listened to one in the past month.

With the growth in podcasting comes growth in advertising revenue for entertainment and other platforms.

U.S. podcast advertising revenue was projected to exceed $220 million in 2017, up 85 percent over the $119 million recorded in 2016, according to a first-of-its-kind study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of IAB, says the study “proves two things—the whole world is listening, and brands are taking notice. From the remarkable growth of podcast ad revenue, we’re seeing an ancient axiom being proved yet again: Great rewards go to those who surprise and delight their fellow humans.”

And if industry forecasters are a good barometer, many of those podcasting rewards and surprises will be coming from the entertainment end of the business. In 2018 podcasting predictions laid out by Pacific Content, industry insiders expect:

  • More podcasts will garner TV and movie deals
  • More podcasts will benefit from exchanges of intellectual property
  • More blockbuster scripted podcasts will be on the way
  • More limited-run podcast series will pop up

“Podcasting is still in its infancy,” Pacific Content says, “and 2018 will see a great deal of experimentation with different formats, different genres and shows designed for nontraditional podcast audiences.”  

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Where the Battle Against Fake News is Headed in 2018

While 2016 may be remembered as a year the American public was under siege by “fake news,” 2018 may go down in history as the year the vast social media networks that connect billions around the world did something about it.  

Although the problem of misinformation remains stubborn, Facebook, Google and Twitter have identified solutions and are renewing their continued commitment to do something about fake news. This year’s NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 7 to 12, covers broadcast across all platforms, including some of the most critical topics related to news production.

Fake News About ‘Fake News’

Even the definition of fake news can be controversial—some public officials use the term to blast news stories they take umbrage with. In general, though, most agree that the concept of fake news is defined by purposeful misinformation that is either fully fabricated or sourced from unsubstantiated rumors.

The Pizzagate controversy a year ago is a troubling example of how online fake news can have real-world impacts. A rumor based on an invented pizza-themed cipher claimed leaked emails from Democratic officials revealed that a pedophile ring was being run out of a Washington, D.C., restaurant. The fake news was potent enough to convince one man to shoot off a gun inside the pizzeria to find out the supposed truth revealed by the code. No one was hurt, fortunately, but it showed how fake news can sometimes be really dangerous.  

Misinformation has always been around, whether it takes the form of made-up news stories or urban legends or gossip scrawled on walls. It will never be fully stamped out, but the recent problem of hoaxes spreading like epidemics and impacting democracy in nations across the globe is something the big tech companies believe they can halt.

The Growing Trustworthiness of AI

Now that fake news online has finally been identified as a major cultural and political problem, developers are racing to create artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions.

One product, AdVerif.ai, partners with advertisers to help them avoid placing ads alongside fake news and other problematic content, like nudity or malware. The creators of AdVerif.ai have put the programming through a battlefield of tests and it showcases the sophistication of the next generation of AI.

Not only can AI identify misinformation, it can recognize satire like The Onion and understand the political biases of news outlets like Breitbart.

However, considering the vast amount of knowledge about the world needed to determine the truth, researchers say AI works best in conjunction with human fact-checkers.

“I think there’s a chance to algorithmically identify things that are more likely than not to be ‘fake news,’ but they will always work best in combination with a person with a sharp eye,” New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen told Wired.

Machine learning is being implemented as a weapon against misinformation by Google, Twitter and Facebook, although the rollout has not been without its growing pains.

Facebook’s Fake News Epiphany

In January 2018, Facebook, with its user base of 2 billion, published a series of articles authored by executives and scholars that determined the company was not doing enough to prevent fake news from spreading throughout its platform.

Blog posts, admitted Facebook, and other forms of social media, can be problematic for democracy.

“With each passing year, this challenge becomes more urgent,” product manager for civic engagement Samidh Chakrabarti wrote in a post. “Facebook was originally designed to connect friends and family—and it has excelled at that. But as unprecedented numbers of people channel their political energy through this medium, it’s being used in unforeseen ways with societal repercussions that were never anticipated. In 2016, we at Facebook were far too slow to recognize how bad actors were abusing our platform. We’re working diligently to neutralize these risks now.”

The company has implemented a number of experiments meant to curb fake news, including posting publisher information alongside news articles and adding features that focus on hyper-local news.

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The Changing Face of TV Across the Globe

The cord-cutting trend that has been watched for years in the United States is quickly going international, with the global over-the-top (OTT) media services market rapidly heating up. OTT is video content streamed over the internet, with services like Netflix or Hulu, through computers, mobile devices and digital media players like Apple TV.

It has only been a few years since Netflix introduced the idea of original content for big streaming companies with House of Cards, but the streaming industry is now shifting again as social media behemoths like Facebook introduce content and more traditional media corporations like ESPN and Disney are poised to introduce their own standalone streaming platforms.

Global Streaming Revenues Expected to Double

Perhaps even more exciting, this revolution is happening on a worldwide scale, with international players and local favorites competing to reach streamers everywhere from Hong Kong to Havana. A report released late last year by analyst firm Research and Markets found that revenues from streaming online television episodes and movies across 138 countries will hit $83 billion in 2022. This figure is more than double the $37 billion in international revenues in 2016; the analysts predicted $9 billion more will have been made in 2017 than in the previous year.

Americans will remain the largest consumers of streaming, but that is also shifting. “The U.S. will remain the dominant territory for online TV and video revenues by some distance,” the report said. “However, the U.S. share of the global market will fall from 51 percent in 2016 to 40 percent in 2022. Contributing half the Asia Pacific total, China will add a further $7.6 billion, with its total revenues reaching $12 billion in 2022.”

U.S. companies Netflix, Amazon and Disney, alongside Chinese giant Alibaba, are expected to continue their domination over OTT, but the global market has openings for other outfits, too.

Social Media Goes to Hollywood

Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, which will be mostly owned by Disney after its acquisition of Fox in December 2017, now represent the old guard of streaming original content. Social media services like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat are beginning to move from hosting user-generated video content to partnering with studios and broadcasters to bring exclusive content to their combined billions of users.

Even Apple has promised to invest $1 billion in creating original streaming content in 2018, including a new Reese Witherspoon-produced Kristen Wiig half-hour comedy.

Of course, social media’s collision with streaming content is set to change the experience of watching television itself – Facebook has plans to produce shows that incorporate a virtual reality element. Google’s YouTube Red is already producing episodes that defy formats like the half-hour comedy and the one-hour drama that have long defined television.

“Facebook’s strategy involves producing two categories of shows, which include long-form traditional programs such as Netflix’s flagship program House of Cards, and shorter, less expensive shows that go for about five to 10 minutes, and refresh every 24 hours,” analyst Steve Tulman wrote about Facebook’s announcement. “It is uncertain how Facebook intends to monetize through this platform, but I suspect that they will rely on advertising revenue from in-show ads, rather than follow Netflix’s paid subscription model.”

Not Just Netflix

Although U.S. companies will likely dominate the international streaming market for at least the next few years, broadcasters from across the globe are exploring how to engage local audiences through OTT.

Television Broadcasts (TVB), the largest broadcaster in Hong Kong, launched an OTT platform last year and inked deals with Chinese companies like Tencent and iQiyi to produce original content including a new drama series.

HBO is also seeing its international portfolio of channels explode in activity across Latin America and Asia. The company produces original content for specific audiences in nations spanning from Mexico to Hungary and Myanmar. Much of the growth is with OTT, particularly for millennials.

“The growth in OTT is really fueling the growth of HBO Europe,” HBO Europe CEO Herve Payan told Variety. “The traditional [linear] business is also growing, but OTT is booming.”

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An Exciting New Reality: Location-Based VR

Location-based virtual reality, which enables immersive VR experiences at brick-and-mortar spots like shopping malls and movie theaters, has become the place to be in VR these days. In fact, China already has more than 3,000 VR arcades, which often have “fully loaded setups—with ‘stunning booths that stand out by an extensive use of hardware like special seats and reproductions of vehicles,’” according to Forbes.

Even in the United States, location-based VR continues to show promise as a way to monetize VR and boost adoption. Greenlight Insights, a market research firm specializing in VR and augmented reality (AR), predicts spending on VR hardware, software, content and services at away-from-home entertainment venues will reach $1.2 billion by 2021.

Location-based VR is likely to be a big part of the buzz at the Immersive Storytelling Pavilion during the upcoming NAB Show, April 7 to 12, in Las Vegas.

Adding to that buzz is the recent rollout of location-based VR experiences, such as Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire. A startup called The Void, in conjunction with Lucasfilm’s ILMxLAB, is setting up VR “experience centers” based on the latest Star Wars installment, according to Variety. Already open or about to open are centers in London; Orlando, Florida; Anaheim, California; Glendale, California; and Las Vegas.

The Glendale and Vegas centers are being established in shopping malls owned by mall giant GGP. Offering participants premium content and a social experience in one, location-based VR can also reinvigorate mall spaces.

This kind of undertaking is part of what VentureBeat calls a “pivot” toward location-based VR.  

Another manifestation of this trend is the VR arcade, or VRcades, which are popping up at shopping malls, like the ones operated by GGP, as well as at movie theaters and casinos and even as standalone VRcades. Already flourishing in Asia, VR arcades allow customers to purchase and try a range of immersive, interactive entertainment experiences within one space.

At a recent panel discussion on VR arcades, Nicholas Cooper, chief creative officer at VR kiosk maker VRX Networks, emphasized that the quality of content is key for VR arcades. “If you have a great social experience or a singular experience where you’ve bonded with the characters or the game, that’s what’s going to keep people coming back,” Cooper said. “You go to old-school arcades, and you crank your dollars through, but it’s about how much fun you have with your son playing Whac-a-Mole or something like that. Emotional connection through customer experience, through the content in the games—all of that.”

Movie theaters are seeking to tap into that emotional connection with location-based VR. AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest chain of movie theaters, teamed up last year with Dreamscape Immersive, a startup specializing in location-based VR, to ramp up this new VR innovation.

As part of their partnership, AMC has invested $10 million in Dreamscape Immersive and is financing as many as six VR centers within AMC theaters or at standalone locations in North America and the United Kingdom over an 18-month period. AMC also is chipping in $10 million for a fund aimed at developing VR content.

Other investors in Dreamscape Immersive include Warner Bros., 21st Century Fox, MGM, IMAX, mall owner Westfield Corp. and Hollywood icon Steven Spielberg.

Dreamscape Immersive’s flagship location at Westfield Century City mall in Los Angeles is opening in the first quarter of 2018. Noting that audiences today can watch movies in three formats—2D, 3D and IMAX—Dreamscape says VR represents the fourth iteration of moviegoing.

Unlike other VR platforms, Dreamscape Immersive says it’ll offer a “social experience” enabling participants to interact with up to six people simultaneously, without being tied to a computer. “Now, audiences will have the ability to purchase a ticket, step inside of the story and experience it personally in a way never before imagined,” says Kevin Wall, co-chairman of Dreamscape.

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Jon Karafin

Jon Karafin has dedicated his career to innovation in live action cinema, visual effects post-production, and light field technology, with a proven track record of transforming bleeding-edge concepts into reality. 

At the 2016 NAB Show, Jon Karafin successfully launched Lytro Cinema, ushering in a new era for cinematic capture and post-production. At the 2017 NAB Show, he’s announcing the formation of Light Field Lab, Inc., a breakthrough technology startup located in Silicon Valley, California. The company founders are comprised of light field technology visionaries, PhD scientists, master engineers, and content creation experts, coming together to perfect the light field entertainment experience and provide content creators with unprecedented capabilities in the years to come. The team is currently developing the next-generation light field display experience and the world’s most innovative holographic ecosystem.

At this year’s NAB Show sessions, Jon will articulate the creative implications of volumetric display through a universal light field construct, empowering content creators to explore and display their own free-viewpoint light field experiences. He will demonstrate simulations from dozens of light field creation methodologies, both for live action and computer-generated content, starting with the highest resolution dense arrays and ending with 2D and 3D-converted materials. These explorations will clearly highlight the respective tradeoffs between complexity, image quality, data storage, processing requirements, and light field display considerations.

Jon is responsible for successfully delivering technology and content for several of the all-time highest grossing feature films, including Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, Michael Bay’s Transformers 3, and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. Prior to founding Light Field Lab, Jon was the Head of Light Field Video at Lytro, Vice President of Production Technology at RealD, and Director of Production, Technology and Operations at Digital Domain.

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Annette Haellmigk

Anette Haellmigk has the eye of a classically trained Director of Photography, but she also has vast experience shooting the most technical, state-of-the-art, visual effects shots imaginable. In 2013, Anette’s dream came true when she was invited to shoot HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and the series has been her crowning artistic achievement, to date. Since then, Anette has served as DP on 10 “Game of Thrones” episodes, and was nominated for two EMMY and three American Society of Cinematographer (ASC) Awards for her work. 

Prior to “Game of Thrones,” Anette assumed the DP mantle on season three of HBO’s “Big Love,” redesigning the series cinema aesthetic. She also shot many TV projects, including special episodes of “The West Wing” and the highly praised pilot and first season of ABC’s “The Nine.” In addition, Anette was the cinematographer on numerous European independent feature films, including “Casualties” and “The Happiest Day of His Life.”

A German native, Anette began her career as a member of the “Das Boot” camera team and in the male-dominated role of focus puller on motion picture productions throughout Europe. She collaborated on five Paul Verhoeven films: “Robocop” (1st AC), “Total Recall” (Camera Operator), “Showgirls” (Camera Operator and Second Unit DP) and “Starship Troopers” and “Hollow Man” (both as Second Unit DP). As an operator, Haellmigk has worked with many first-class cinematographers, including John Bailey, ASC (“Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood”), Alex Nepomniaschy, ASC (“All the Rage”) and Bill Pope, ASC (“Spider-Man 2,” for which she also shot Additional Photography). 

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Amy DeLouise

About the Contributor:

Audiences always remember Amy DeLouise, who brings a dynamic and interactive approach to workshops and speaking engagements across the country in digital content production, brand strategy, cause marketing, and social media channels. An experienced director/producer, Amy has won more than 40 top national awards for creative excellence in video and multimedia production including the CINE Golden Eagle, New York Festivals and Telly Awards. She speaks regularly at major national and international conferences such as the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), the National Association of Independent Schools, Digital Media Expo, DRI (“The Voice of the Defense Bar”), Women in Film International and many more. Her media production and consulting clients include: ChiefExecutive.net, Federal Express, Children’s National Health System, Jewish Federations of North America, USDA, and the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, among others. Known for her leadership in both entrepreneurship and media, Amy received the prized Woman of Vision Leadership award from Women in Film & Video and was named a Washington Area Woman-Owned Small Business Leader by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council. She has served on the Women’s Advisory Board for The Washington Group/Mass Mutual and is a Trustee Emerita of the all-girls Holton-Arms School. An avid musician, Amy performs as the co-principal violinist of the NIH Philharmonia and sings throughout the Washington, DC region with the a cappella octet Venus d Minor. 

Topic:

Closing the Gender Gap in Post Production

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Autumn Eakin

Cinematographer, Founder

Cinematographers XX

Autumn Eakin turned her years of working under Maryse Alberti (The Wrestler, Velvet Goldmine, Creed) and Vanja Cernjul (30 Rock, Orange Is The New Black) into an artful resourcefulness she uses in her narrative and documentary filmmaking, including Mavis!, Hard-Hatted Woman and Peabody Award Winning No Le Digas A Nadie (Don’t Tell Anyone). She has also shot projects for The History Channel, NBC, Hulu, Northface, Ogilvy & Mather, FX and many more over her 10 years as an IATSE Local 600 member. 

She has shot for acclaimed directors Amy Berg, Liz Garbus, Jessica Edwards, Elizabeth Chai, and Alex Gibney. Presently she is in post-production on Tribeca’s Through Her Lens project Wig Shop with Kat Coiro, the controversial hybrid film What’s Revenge and on the narrative feature The Light of the Moon with Jessica Thompson and One Day Home with Drew Denny. She is currently in production on the doc features Untitled Tough Love with Peabody Award winning director Mikaela Shwer, Malheur with Morgan Spurlock, The Actor Known as Burt Young with award winning director Raymond De Felitta and Project XQ with Lee Hirsch. In pre-production for Command & Control a narrative feature with Gregory Collins. 

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Increasing Business Agility with Automated Data Management

Rich analytics are essential to the optimal operation of a media business. With advanced business metrics driving strategic insights, media executives can be more effective in extracting maximum value from their content and from the complex media processes within today’s dynamic media marketplace.

As media enterprises combine information from multiple systems, data inconsistencies between those systems prevent detailed reporting and analysis. Furthermore, normal data entry errors and local operational requirements complicate consistent processing.

Until now, to solve this issue, organizations have focused on enforcing data entry standards across their different transactional systems. However, strict data entry policies slow down business. They delay new data entry. They create operational problems. They delay reconciliation.

Industry experience has shown that the magnitude of effort necessary to achieve standardized data entry is overwhelming and impractical. When standardization fails, the typical solution is to have IT fix data entry shortcomings. This invariably occurs only when inconsistencies are discovered.

The only viable solution is to create a central database that fully addresses the acquisition, creation, and maintenance of corporate records mapped to local values across each of the transactional systems, automatically integrating those transactional systems into the business workflow. Ideally, this should be done with the flexibility to change reporting relationships dynamically without disrupting the entire business. When this is the case, the entire enterprise is empowered to take advantage of accurate, consistent data.

A centralized data management solution can streamline and automate the entire mapping process, thereby eliminating complexity and dramatically reducing the need for manual intervention. It should have tools that continually search for and locate duplicate records, import new entries, identify unmapped values, and map records as needed. As a result, IT staff would be freed from the need to perform urgent, yet mundane, data maintenance tasks.

In short, a comprehensive master data management solution specifically tailored for media can make it easy for enterprises to acquire the sophisticated and accurate insights they need to adapt quickly to the constantly changing requirements of the modern media ecosystem. It gives them the tools to be more agile and more competitive a rapidly evolving marketplace.

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