Steve Nylund, Chief Executive Officer, Red Bee Media

The media industry has its foot on the pedal and shows no signs of slowing down. In just 18 months, Disney+ gained 100 million subscribers, and TikTok went from zero to a billion users in just three years. Market opportunity demands that TV channels launch in weeks, not years. Meanwhile, all your content must be accessible instantly on hundreds of different devices, platforms, and channels across every continent.

Market acceleration goes hand-in-hand with complexity and risk as companies strive to maintain pace. Leaders across both established companies and start-ups demand outcomes from their technologies and services. They need to get their media products to market, grow audiences – and ultimately drive profitability.
When you add in an increasing desire to reduce Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) and move to an Operational Expenditure (OPEX) model for technology investments, the ability to deliver outcomes is one of the key factors driving the growth of media service partnerships.

 

Outcome-orientated

In the broadest sense, a media service partnership means a subject matter expert – such as Red Bee Media – handles all the commodity activities you need to acquire, transform, and deliver content from A to B – on any device, anywhere. You may also need support to handle compliance, accessibility, localisation, and many other factors. Bringing in a partner frees customers up to focus on driving their business towards profitability and growth. The staffing, technical delivery, support, security – and a whole host of non-core activities are delivered to you as a service – and crucially – with a defined outcome.

This approach reserves in-house capabilities for the most value-adding activities instead of wasting resources on expensively servicing what are complex, technology-enabled yet essentially commodity tasks. M&E businesses are then empowered to buy outcomes, not continually building technical debt.

Risky business

Media service partnerships also adhere to the first principles of risk management, where you place risk with whoever can manage it most effectively. And, therefore, most efficiently and economically. This approach helps content owners and video service providers overcome the inherent risk of placing ‘big bets’ on the future of the M&E industry. Instead, media pioneers gain access to mature infrastructure, highly skilled operational expertise and deep technical capabilities that reduce risk and allow customers to focus on innovation that will deliver the next generation of breakout services.

This is the fundamental ethos that underpins Red Bee Media and an approach that has helped our customers deliver unique media experiences to their audiences for over 20 years.

Accompanying this blog is our latest paper: “Why gamble on an uncertain media future? – Reducing risk and creating the cost certainty needed to fuel innovation and growth”. It is a ten-minute read and aimed squarely at business leaders. You will notice that it’s not an advert for Red Bee Media, but instead, we aim to outline why we are so passionately committed to the broader media partnership model. And the reasons why hundreds of organisations – from national broadcasters like the BBC and TV5MONDE, sports broadcasters like BT Sport and Extreme E and innovative start-ups including Together TV and Utopia Music, and others – rely on us to deliver content to billions of viewers every year.

We are at a pivotal period within the media and entertainment industry. Pioneers are experimenting with new technology, content and business models while driving international expansion at breakneck speed. For us, the mission has always been the same. For two decades, we have helped drive innovation forward and deliver great media experiences in new ways to new audiences, providing a bridge from now to the future. The next 20 years look just as exciting as the last!

The Red Bee Media team will be on the ground in Amsterdam for IBC 2022 (9-12 September 2022) on stand 5.H48 to discuss the paper – and more.