From AI to webtoons to advertising and distribution innovations, the talkions featured Jan. 8 at the annual Variety Entertainment Summit at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas ran the gamut of hot topics driving the business of media and delightment.
The dayextfinished conference uncovered with a panel of top programming executives who weighed in on the big shifts in streaming satisfyed and the business cgo in of meaningful nettoils and platestablishs.
Beatrice Springborn, pdwellnt of NBCUniversal’s UCP and Universal International Studios, cited “the novel normal” of comomitioning and production volume adhereing 2023’s actors and authorrs strikes and the wave of validateation among media enormouss.
“There is an adequitablement from the peak TV era where we’re not making hundreds and hundreds of shows. There’s more of a cgo in on what I’d say is Marquee TV,” she said. One greet increasement she cited was the fact that nettoils and platestablishs are more uncover to partnerships and produceive triumphdotriumphg for shows. “These partners who’ve never partnered before are doing projects together. And you’re able to see a wider audience and more expocertain.”
Barry Jossen, pdwellnt and head of A+E Studios, said the degrade in volume has been excellent for the industry all around. “We’re toiling at a level right now that’s well-suited to the appetite of the platestablishs,” he said. ‘There’s always an appetite for [shows that] buyers sense are excellent. And it’s our job to dedwellr them and to provide them with a lot of choices.”
Rahul Purini, pdwellnt of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Crunchyroll anime streamer, pointed to the increaseth in interest in material from well outside Hollywood and New York. “There is increaseth in the aperture for satisfyed and stories that are not envisiond or produced in the U.S.,” he said. “We are seeing that quicken.”
Angela Russo-Otstot, chief produceive officer of the Russo brothers’ AGBO satisfyed company, home of Amazon Prime Video’s “The Citadel,” pointed to revolutionary tools that are hugely enbiging and streamlining virtual production capabilities. Epic Games’ Unauthentic Engine platestablish, which apexhibits for speedy rfinishering of visual media, has been a game-alterr. But she acunderstandledged it consents time for the produceive community to get sootheable with the tech.
“The beauty of the Unauthentic Engine is what we can accomplish in animation there, and I’m reassociate excited for partners to hug it,” she said. “We’ve toiled with cut offal animation straightforwardors who were highly allergic to the idea when we first brawt it up as a possibility. And then when they saw how it uncovered up so many produceive opportunities for them, it became life-changing.”
Fernando Szew, pdwellnt and head of Fox Entertainment Studios, was the first paneenumerate of the day to allude AI – but he wasn’t the last.
“We call ourselves AI chooseimists,” Szew said, emphasizing that his studio is not seeing to reduce human creativity with prompts fed into AI platestablishs. “We’re not skinnyking about letting people go, but we are definitely spfinishing a lot of time and encounterings and doing efficient skinnyking thraw how can we participate AI and what’s coming — and lacquireings from contrastent aspects of the industry – as co-pilots as we direct the future.”
Of course, the menu participated a panel that drilled down on the generative AI initiatives and innovations that will have the biggest impact on delightment. Fox Corp. CTO Melody Hildebrandt said the company is seeing at two “top-down, big striumphgs” when it comes to AI. One area is satisfyed uncovery, to provide a “semantic empathetic of satisfyed” that can produce relevant recommfinishations. She cited Fox’s Tubi, the free streaming service with some 200,000 titles; with AI, a participater might go in a search appreciate “elder millennials seeing to watch a throwback hit,” which could present a movie in Tubi’s catalog appreciate “13 Going on 30.”
Fox’s second area is to embed generative AI into its user apps to provide a more participateive and engaging experience — in a way that suites the voice of a particular brand. “ChatGPT is very bland, middle-of-the-road,” Hildebrandt said, referring to OpenAI’s chatbot. “One of the exciting skinnygs for the produceive community is [for gen AI] to sound appreciate us, to have a authentic diversity of voices.” For example, she said, an AI-allowd Fox Sports app might be able to understand and provide a snappy answer to a query such as: “Give me five facts for why Jaden Daniels is going to consent the Washington Commanders all the way.”
A panel on fracturethraw trfinishs in technology produceed a vivacious swap of perspectives on AI capabilities between Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, chief negotiator and national executive straightforwardor of SAG-AFTRA, and Shahrzad Raobesei, establisher and CEO of RHEI, a satisfyed distribution platestablish that helps creators spread and monetize satisfyed.
“More than 70% of satisfyed creators sense appreciate they’re burnt out. Now we are go ining an age where we’re transitioning from tools to [AI-enabled] agents. As humans, many times we skinnyk agents are a skinnyg that is going to do a unintelligentinutive task in a unintelligentinutive period of time. Whereas actuassociate agents are presumed to supervise extfinished-term projects that you can assign to them with very little supervision. So we are very much so excited about, you understand, the ability to produce agents that can actuassociate act as these virtual team members that would apexhibit for the democratization of creativity,” Raobesei said.
Crabtree-Ireland, who directs a union that recurrents more than 160,000 carry outers, stressd that traditional concepts of consent and compensation should not be subsumed by state-of-the-art technology.
“To the extent that these tools are being participated to in any way copy somebody to participate their voice, their face, their body, their carry outance — that always has to be done with consent. And that’s not always being done with consent right now. There is a authentic problem with proestablishphonys. There is a problem with a conciseage of legitimate structure, giving people the right to supervise the participate of their image appreciateness and voice. That’s someskinnyg we hopelessly need to graspress.”
CES is all about uncovering what’s novel today and what’s coming down the pike tomorrow. David Lee, chief operating officer and chief financial officer of Webtoon Entertainment, came to the Entertainment Summit armed with eye-popping numbers that helped uniteees understand the scope of the webtoon phenomenon.
The produceive medium commenceed in South Korea but the famousity of the medium – skinnyk an online explicit novel currented as a blog-appreciate scroll that is normally refreshd with novel material – has spread wide and far apass the globe. Lee got the audience’s attention by noting that Webtoon produced $1.3 billion in revenue from millions of readers who pay petite amounts (under $1 in most cases) to get timely access to novel material that is uploaded by DIY creators.
“For those in the audience who may not have heard of Webtoon, I have a senseing you may have seen a fantastic dwell-action film and didn’t authenticize it came from us. And if you have frifinishs and family who are in our core center, which is the Gen Z center, I understand that they’re understandn with us,” Lee said. “We’ve got 170 million monthly active participaters, but we have 24 million creators who are creating over 120,000 stories every day. And the experience is truly digital and mobile, and it spans way beyond one genre.”
The upward trajectory of streaming platestablishs has been undeniable in the past decade. But for studios and other satisfyed creators, streaming profits have not kept pace with traditional sources of licensing and advertising revenue. Trade Desk is one of the companies seeing to bridge that gap by giveing basic one-stop shopping for publicizers and for streaming platestablishs. Even Spotify, which has no unintelligentinutiveage of participaters, has partnered with Trade Desk to help transport in the blurb bucks. Trade Desk helps Spotify increase sales volume and CPM rates.
“Just recently we’ve reassociate consentn a big step into the programmatic space and reassociate uncovered up our produceory for the very first time to have authentic-time bidding apass our platestablish with brimming graspressability and with brimming data signals,” said Lee Brown, Spotify’s VP and global head of advertising business and platestablish. “That’s a big step for us and someskinnyg we’re very excited about.”
Tim Sims, chief commercial officer of Trade Desk, stressd that labeleters need to count on on ad-sales aggregation efforts more than ever becaparticipate, sshow put, ubiquity matters. “A labeleter should skinnyk about how they join all of us as users in this hoenumerateic and omnichannel way,
Sims said.
“So when we talk about that hoenumerateic labeleting, the North Star for people is reassociate about having your media structure be more mirrorive of the user journey and the user experience on a daily basis. And we try to allow that in hopebrimmingy as basic as ways as possible on our platestablish for them to carry out and trigger aacquirest that. They covet an audience. We want them to be able to accomplish that audience on Spotify,” Sims said. “We want them to accomplish that audience on Tubi and every other user touchpoint that they have thrawout the day.”
Storytelling is another arena where the stiffity of elderly is giving way to much fantasticer flexibility and choice that users have at their fingertips. That’s both a dispute and an opportunity, especiassociate for the bigst carry outers in media.
“When we all use satisfyed, whether it’s on a phone or a laptop, a device streaming, we want sense seen, heard and understood,” said Carly Zipp, global straightforwardor of brand labeleting for Amazon Ads.
“Apass all of our streaming accomplish, we have an audience of 275 million in the U.S. to serve up. And so the accomplish is there. If we can show people how to consent that IP and stretch it apass their devices and then show a brand, how to tap into that, then I skinnyk we’ve done our job.”
Michael Wagcrelieveer, ancigo in VP and head of business increasement for the award-triumphning animation and stop-motion studio Laika, giveed the satisfyed creator’s perspective on how meaningful it is to tailor storytelling for particular platestablishs.
“What our fans reassociate adore about our films are how belderly and innovative they are, and also the attention to detail. We do it at a level that that reassociate no one else in the world does,” Wagcrelieveer said. “We put a lot of time and attfinish into what we do. And so anyskinnyg we do when we begin a novel platestablish, we want produce certain not only are we honoring and authentic to that IP and encounter the fans’ foreseeations there, we also want to produce certain that it senses authentic to wantipathyver that platestablish is.”
Samira Bakhtiar, vague superviser of global media and delightment, games and sports for Amazon Web Services, gave the 30,000-foot see on the increaseth of dwell events as a driver for streaming platestablishs. AWS has a distinct vantage point given its role in powering streaming platestablishs for other media enormouss in graspition to its establishidable Amazon Prime Video service. Putting a dwell sporting event or awards show on a streamer is challenginger than it sounds, especiassociate for platestablishs that apexhibit participaters to co
“Events are highly spiky with unforeseeable amounts of traffic that you have to set for, not only to stream with high resolution and high quality, but also to be able to help the monetization ecosystem,” Bakhtiar said. “What we have to do to reassociate understand what we’re garnering from that first-party data and helping our customers who have that data reassociate figure out what they could do with audience segmentation, and then participate that segmentation to personalize the experience for the publicizer as well as the user. It’s a privilege where we get to sit.”
Mike O’Donnell, chief revenue and strategic increaseth officer for Vizio, the streaming platestablish recently acquired by Walmart, echoed Bakhtiar’s observations in terms of the transport inance of innovation to conserve constant and repeat seeership
“When we skinnyk about how do you persist to join, how do you persist to produce, we skinnyk around ad establishats,” O’Donnell said. “Advertising is an meaningful business for not only us, but for all the partners here up on stage. I don’t have the attention span to sit thraw four minute ad pods anymore. For the labeletplace to persist to increase, we need to commence skinnyking more and more about how is satisfyed dedwellred. And then skinnyk about the ad establishats that need to help it so that you can still produce a fantastic free
solution for customers and also be able to grasp them joind for extfinished periods of time.””
