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The evolution of an industry |
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 Giorgio Ungania of Orbit-Rome looks back at over a decade of work in Arab television and examines some of the talent and technology-based changes that he feels will shape the industry in the years ahead.
I entered the world of broadcasting around thirteen years ago, when I joined the newly-founded Orbit TV network in its Rome office as an assistant, coffee maker, and audio post-production engineer. Admittedly, I did not know much about television at the time. I had spent most of my days recording bands and trying to produce the million-dollar song that would allow me to retire at the age of 25. Unfortunately, this did not happen, but I managed to gain loads of experience with digital audio and hard disk recorders. These assets, combined with the fact that I could speak English, were extremely attractive factors for the first fully-digital multi-channel broadcaster that needed to launch around 20 channels in about six months.
Even though I did not speak or understand one word of Arabic, I found myself recording, editing, and mixing promotions 24/7, even managing to establish my personal record of 38 consecutive hours worked with no sleep. Still, I remember those days with real pleasure. I could sense that we were a part of something special.
The overall experience was tremendously fascinating. On one hand, you felt on top of the world because your product was immediately delivered to a potential audience of millions. On the other, you felt puzzled, because no matter how hard you tried, you would never understand why management would rather waste weeks changing the background color tonality of a bumper instead of using that time to produce two title sequences, a bunch of break-ins and break-outs, and a couple of looping menus.
At the time, the station’s facilities were simply the best that money could buy and the audio post-production suite where I was preparing coffee had technology worth about two or three Ferrari sports cars.
Dividing the work: button pushers and creatives
The investment in human resources was also impressive, and I still remember the amazing roster of highly experienced video editors and graphic designers that could be booked by a producer at any time of the day or night. There were four machine suites (all based on Digibetas) , a bunch of 3 VT edit rooms, and all the Paintboxes, Henrys, Hals, and SGIs that you could dream of. All this technology was pretty complicated and required experienced professionals.
At that time, the TV station was run by two categories of people: technical staff and non-technical staff. Non-technical staff included producers, human resources, and administration, while the technical staff was simply pushing the buttons. If you wanted to enter the world of broadcasting in 1993, you needed to belong to either one of these two generic categories.
Creative staff was divided into production and promotion. Producers were conceiving original programs and, most of the time, directing them in the studios. Other creative minds were trying to find the best and most visually appealing manner in which to promote our content. And it was the technicians who pushed the buttons to make those dreams come true.
This formula has been working, not only for Orbit, but for all the other players in the Arab and international broadcasting scene. It was a perfectly balanced model because each element – the producer, the promotions producer, and the button pushers – were very good in at their jobs and did not dare to cross over into anyone else’s garden.
But technology was going to change the rules of the game.
 The advent of “predators”
With the development of digital technology and tape-less solutions, the broadcasting panorama is a much more affordable business model today. To set up an audio facility with the same horsepower as the one I was working on at Orbit, you need less than one-tenth of that budget. And, as for software training, you may need as little as three months, as opposed to the two full years it took me going through all 4,500 pages of the Solid State Logic Scenario operation manual.
Let’s take a step back and simulate the production process back in the 1990s: the station’s acquisition department buys the rights to a movie, the promotions manager delegates the production of an on-air promo to one of the creatives in the department, and the promo producer logs the tapes, writes the voice-over script, and goes into the edit bay. He tells the button pusher: “Time code in, time code out; cross-fade there; fade to black on that shot; color-correct that scene; varispeed that movement” and even the classic “take one frame out of that shot.”
Today, by contrast, the promotion producer and editor is often the same person. There will still be many cases where an experienced editor/compositor will work in conjunction with a producer, especially on complicated projects. But most of the promotions can now easily be undertaken by producers, or editors, or “predators” as they have increasingly come to be known – a fusion of the words “producer” and “editor.”
The advantage is clear: broadcasters save money on staffing, and staff gets a chance to explore different areas of production. This crossover is happening not only with professions, but also with technology. Media giants such as Adobe and Apple are focusing on delivering software packages that are all-in-one solutions.
The new digital tools
If you buy Creative Suite 3 or Final Cut Studio, you are acquiring an all-in-one package of digital tools which are powerful enough to produce broadcast quality content on a personal computer.
All the applications are perfectly integrated into one another, making the learning curve much faster than before. I can even foresee a time when there will no longer be titles such as “Avid editor,” “Maya animator,” and “Flash designer,” but rather a generic definition such as “TV content producer.”
In a break with the past, a highly specialized staff is not the most sought after resource for a broadcaster today because such individuals will not be able to cover multiple areas in the production chain. Of course, there are still some areas of broadcasting where specialized professionals are necessary, such as 3-D artists, but this is simply because their specialized software applications are still very complex to manage.
Now that I have left the broadcasting business and joined the SAE Institute, an international network of content creation colleges, I often find myself talking with young students who say, “I want to work in TV. What do I need to do?”
My answer is pretty much always the same: “Learn how to write a story, shoot it, edit it, and put it on a DVD – and do all this by yourself.” It’s really all about the ideas and how to translate them into moving pictures.
What’s next?
The TV industry will change a lot over the next five years, and develop an increased reliance on independent producers as a source of content. So far, the biggest cost for independent producers is still the VTR. A Digital Betacam camera and player-recorder are still very expensive compared to the price of related technologies. As the tape era comes to an end, broadcasters will move to hard disk or flash-based memory equipment, cutting down the budget required to independently produce broadcast quality content.
Content distribution will also play a role in the evolution of TV, just as the music business has been revolutionized by peer-to-peer technology and digital distribution, replacing the old “music store” model. The same will happen with Hollywood movies and TV content. As an example, a recent YouTube clip shot by a guy inside Krueger Park in South Africa showed some lions attacking their prey – and collected a whopping 10 million hits. That’s ten million viewers, almost equivalent to an episode of The Sopranos or Desperate Housewives. [Even a tenth of a penny per viewer would pay content producers 10 thousand dollars for such wildly popular clips – Editor]
Individuals willing to be a part of this will need to be economically appealing to future broadcasters and maybe become like investors by sharing revenues or losses. Two things are clear though: they will need to be autonomous and be able to wear as many different hats as they can.
So, if technology can make a product so popular, with such low levels of investment, advertisers will clearly jump on the bandwagon very soon. TV as we know it will not be the same in five years. A complete revolution is just around the corner. |
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