As the first Covid vaccinations start to roll out in the UK and with Christmas around the corner, glimmers of hope begin to emerge from the overriding gloom of 2020 that our recovery from this traumatic period is starting to begin in earnest.
For the component parts of the media technology industry, this has been a year like few others before it with productions across the world shuddering to a halt as societies locked down to slow the spread of the pandemic. What we’ve seen during that time is an amazing amount of ingenuity and innovation throughout the community with news and sports coverage deploying fully remote IP productions away from the studios, and general programming (including lots of archive footage) being maintained through hybrid studio, field and home-based workforces.
One of the overarching themes of this period is accelerated change, and how businesses throughout the broadcast supply chain are having to fast-track technology adoption and deployment to meet the demands of a changed landscape. Indeed, an executive from a very large tech organisation gave a recent keynote address that suggested that we had jumped ahead three to five years in terms of digital video adoption. In effect, 2020 has been a leap year for broadcasting.
With this ongoing backdrop which will extend into 2021 and possibly further still, Future’s media and entertainment editors have each compiled a Watch List of key individuals who we believe will be instrumental in how the industry pivots into its new reality over the next 12-18 months. At TVBEurope, and in league with members of a special advisory panel, we have assembled our list of 25 ‘movers and shakers’ for 2021 and beyond. These are our ‘ones to watch’, and we will be running a dedicated feature on the Watch List in the next issue of TVBEurope.
In no particular order:
Tim Davie, director general, BBC
Alex Green, MD, Prime Video Sport Europe
Delphine Ernotte Cunci, CEO France Televisions & new EBU President (from 2021)
Simon Farnsworth, global head of Broadcast Technology, Discovery
Barbara Lange, executive director, SMPTE and the HPA
Thierry Fautier, president-chair, Ultra HD Forum; VP Video Strategy, Harmonic
Andy Beale/Jamie Hindhaugh, chief engineer, and COO, BT Sport
Antonio Arcidiacono, director of Tech and Innovation, EBU
Guido Meardi, CEO, V-Nova
Reemah Sakaan, group director SVOD – ITV and chief creative officer- BritBox Global
Simon Gauntlett, director of Imaging Standards and Technology, Dolby; SMPTE UK chair
Carrie Wootten, co-founder, Rise
Andy Rayner, chief technologist, Nevion
Mike Cronk, chairman, AIMS; VP Advanced Technology, Grass Valley
Mark Harrison, CEO, DPP
Alex Mahon, CEO, Channel 4
Mark Schneider/Andrew Cole, co-founders, GB News
Cristina Gomilla Torres, MD of Content and Technology, Sky
Anna Mallett, CEO, ITN; in-coming VP of Physical Production, Netflix
Peter Bruggink, CTO, NEP Netherlands and co-chair, Office of the CTO, NEP Global
Neil Maycock, SVP, Strategic Marketing and Playout, Grass Valley
Axel Blackaert, CTO, EVS
Matt McConnell, CEO, MediaKind
Sinead Greenaway, director of Operations and Technology, UKTV
Michael Geissler, founder and owner, Mo-Sys
