Media Democracy through truly immersive live viewing experiences

NX12’s Managing Director, Amy Selwyn, sat down for a chat with two former colleagues to gain some insight into new developments in live video news streaming. The following is her interview with Streamworks International’s Markus Ickstadt, Director of News, and Tim Santhouse, Director of Operations.

AS: Guys, streaming video on various platforms is obviously not a new phenomenon. What is new is the concept of creating immersive experiences for the viewer – in other words, getting away from the linear video “packages” and moving into a genuine online experience. Can you tell us more about that?

MI: We believe that viewers should be able to have similarly high, if not higher, expectations of video news coverage online as they would of tv – so when news breaks, news sites should be able to match tv with live coverage of breaking news, and then be  able to go one better by leveraging all the other functionality and features that this non-linear medium offers: text tends to be quicker than cut packages and complements raw live video well, as does the audio analysis that for example radio news brands produce routinely. Streamworks delivers live video seamlessly to all devices, with the bandwidth reductions of up to 70% that our technology offers ensuring minimal buffering and high picture and audio quality for a great user experience. Our player allows for the integration of text, photos and audio, if desired, so that we are able to offer end-consumers a truly satisfying and immersive user-experience on second screens, in social networks or in any other environment.

AS: Are there different skills required by news organizations in order to embrace these opportunities? What changes at the creation end?

MI: Some news organisations such as The Associated Press have been focusing on live-video news coverage for almost a decade now, others have not and despite the razing of technological barriers to live video production and transmission, still rely mostly on cut packages. It’s important for the creators of news content to understand that - just as on tv - what online or mobile viewers seek is a balance between the editorial analysis, filtering and selection that occurs with cut video packages, and live rolling coverage of breaking news.

Offering more real-time video involves relinquishing some control to gain immediacy in news coverage. Once news has broken, a recorded live feed can be used as a video content “quarry” to clip and produce the journalistic analysis and insight that any organisation rightly takes pride in. Working with and from live video feeds in this way also allows a much greater level of customisation and regionalisation of news coverage. Large western news organisations and the leading agencies tend only to clip and package sound-bites from, let’s say a UN event, that are of interest in the main media markets - so making events available live and in-full allows users outside that footprint to get their angle, too.  

AS: What are the technological hurdles that organisations need to overcome as they move into the digital world that is currently taking shape? In a world of shifting landscapes, multiple vendors, and Wild- West-style snake oil merchants, what is the test of technology that can provide credibility and  a New World Order?

TS: Organisations need to move away from the traditional production deadlines set by linear tv scheduling, and toward a continuous production cycle to provide consistently updated content to non-linear platforms. This is a process that must comprise all the elements of the editorial and production workflow – from field correspondent through bureau to newsroom production and publishing system. This involves changing a lot of mind sets, and is harder to achieve comprehensively than it sounds. The true test of any technology is: does it work? And: does it work at least as well as the legacy technology it is replacing? In live-streaming of video, this means that Click must in every instance mean Play, just like pressing the On-button on the tv remote means the tv starts -  immediately, not after 15, 30 or 45 seconds, and with no interruptions. Further tests include looking at the efficiencies a new technology creates, and how the technology allows the organisation to enhance and expand its core skills and –expertise.  

AS: The average cable viewer is 60 years old. That suggests that live streaming of really compelling content is a huge opportunity to engage younger viewers on a scale that we might rightly call a game changer. Is that true?

TS: Absolutely, and the issue here is one of engagement, which is achieved through choice, empowerment, or  - to use a term that is challenging to traditional top-down news organisations –  media democracy. Young consumers are used to choosing what they want when they want it on a non-linear basis. If it’s available fast, they want it fast, and nothing is faster than live, or real-time. As mentioned earlier, they also don’t always want editors who may be 20 or 30 years their senior  deciding for them what they can and can’t watch. Your readers will be aware of CNN’s recent offer to its viewers for the presidential debates in the US, where viewers were allowed to record the real-time stream of the debates and then clip the parts they found most relevant. That’s an excellent example of second-screen viewer interaction and  engagement, and it’s anathema to the traditional, top-down tv consumer experience.   

AS: Is there a danger of commoditization? Is a live stream a live stream is a live stream? What are smart organizations doing to get beyond commoditization?

MI: We don’t see that as an immediate danger – on the contrary, live-streaming, real-time news is a good way to avoid the creeping commoditisation that’s been affecting packaged news for some time now. Live streaming offers an immediacy of experience that is the apex of news-reporting: you are there as it happens. There is of course the potential for sameness some way down the line, as and when live-streaming becomes ubiquitous and the quality is uniformly excellent. Remember though where the industry currently is in real-time news streaming: too often, Click does not mean Play because of latency and stability issues, video quality tends to be significantly lower than what viewers are used to from tv, and there is no easy availability across all of the screens that consumers like to use. These are the issues that Streamworks has addressed and resolved to create a vastly improved user-experience that drives content impact, viewer traffic and content monetisation.

AS: In an interview with your company’s CEO, one of the things I found most fascinating was this idea of needing a better marriage between video and text-based media. Can you tell us more about that? What are the specific skills that text-based media, like The New York Times, for example, brings to the table? What can we learn?

MI: If we were to imagine a news-story time-line, most news stories are traditionally broken in text, then followed up with video packages accompanied by written script-information that is also based on text journalism, and are then finally, often retrospectively, analysed and commentated in text format. So text journalism has it all: it is immediate, it supports imagery, and it offers the space and breadth to analyse events and make sense of them. Video news coverage has over the decades evolved into increasingly shorter packages – in the last 10-15 years alone, news clips have gone from between 3 and a half and 5 minutes to just 90 seconds or less. And in the non-linear age we live in that constricts the power of journalism and of the medium video unnecessarily. One way to address that issue and to broaden out capabilities again is to offer real-time news, and to combine that with text and photo or even audio content in a way that makes the entire experience richer for the consumer. It’s worth remembering that such accompanying text and photo coverage need not be of the day – it could also offer historical background in an archival sense, or context by placing the real-time event in relation to similar and relevant other event coverage. Streamworks has begun exploring such possibilities at the moment with text-based news brands and public radio broadcasters in the United States.  

AS: Streamworks is working with organizations ranging from the United Nations and The Associated Press to the Daily Mail and YouTube. For our NX Community members out there, what would you say is the first thing they need to think about before giving you a call? What’s the strategic question they should be looking to answer?

TS: The set of questions they should be asking themselves is simple and basic, really: Does my video offering achieve the kind of stable, fast and high-quality user experience and resulting engagement that I want, across all the devices I want to reach? Does it draw in new viewers and make the best use of the full capabilities afforded to moving images in a non-linear environment? Am I getting live coverage of the events that matter to me, am I getting more than the scraps that fall from the table of the major global news creators and distributors? Is my video unique in my market and truly meaningful to my audience in terms of immediacy and regional relevance?   If the answer to any of those questions is No, please talk to us - Streamworks technology and content is ready to help address and remove the current obstacles to monetisation and distribution.