Unfortunately for media companies in 2024, the list can get quite long. And it’s weighing you down like the world weighs down Atlas. Now, let me count the ways. (That’s two shameless Classics appropriations in as many sentences. Who says tech blogs are uncultured?)
And don‘t worry. There are some things at the end that I absolutely think you can afford.
You Can’t Afford Time
Let me tell you a story: in a brief stint as a lowly promo editor years ago, it was my job to put together short teasers for the evening’s programming. As editing training, it was brilliant, as it taught brevity, timing, rhythm, and, not least, finding the right material. HOWever. In order to create a package I needed access to that material. I would regularly walk upstairs to visit the news desk. There, I would log in to one system to find recent stories and export them. Then, if I needed other material, I would go to a manned news archive desk and ask for the right tapes. Then, I would visit the program archive to get the material for older entertainment programs and sometimes visit QA to get the live on-tape entertainment stuff that just came in for the same day. And then, because my Final Cut Station was not on the network, I had to ingest it all before editing. And here is the kicker: This is still happening in a lot of places today! You are paying skilled editors to walk, to wait, to search, to export, to import, in short, to spend a lot of time before they can do their actual job. Why?
How I recall working as an editor.
You Can‘t Afford Manual
I won’t tell the story again. But Jesus wept there are too many tape robots still around clogging up people’s lives. And it goes beyond the hoofing around to get material - there are still places that, for reasons unknown, still have not taken at least the obvious shortcut of automating even low-hanging fruit. Logging is the most glaring example of all. You are paying skilled journalists to manually log and tag material in order to have any chance whatsoever of finding it again when this could easily be automated. Why?
Manual logging. The pain is real.
You Can’t Afford CAPEX Gambling
For an industry that collectively goes to Las Vegas once a year and witnesses the inevitability of the house taking everything, broadcasters sure do like to plonk down a huge amount of cash way in advance for technology we cannot possibly know will be useful for the next 7 years. I mean, I get it. Buying a big box that does what you want it to do day in and day out feels safe and secure. But that does not make it smart. It is like buying a container-sized freezer full of TV dinners, safe in the knowledge that you will only eat what you know for the next decade. But here’s the thing: tastes evolve, and so does technology. And you are tying yourself hand, foot, and budgetary process to something you have no guarantee will keep up with the changes when you could be dining out on Opex offerings that are forced to keep you happy all the time. Why?
A meal plan is one thing - a locked-in legacy diet is something else entirely.
You Can’t Afford to Waste Content
This is a big one. You spend tens of millions of dollars or euros or whatever developing an amazing concept, producing it, creating it, editing it, delivering it. You spend hundreds of man hours a week or even a day creating top-level, top-notch news broadcasts. Then, you store this in two, three, or five different locations: in archive, deep archive, or near archive. And you under-tag it so it is almost impossible to find unless you know the guy who did that story about the woman on the bridge last year, and I hope he’s at work so I can ask him what it was called. This is the most criminal waste of resources in our industry today. Creating brilliant content and then not being able to re-use it, re-publish it, re-monetize it. Why?
I know it’s here somewhere.
But there are three things you absolutely CAN afford - if you stop wasting money.
You Can Afford Great Technology
Of course, I would say this, but great technology allows you to be more efficient. It allows you to produce more in less time. It removes black holes of time like manual processes, tagging, and poor searching. It removes bottlenecks and dead-end workflows. It creates access and helps you find what you need and use it efficiently without actually needing to pay attention to the tech itself. And truly great technology saves money in the long run so you can spend more on talent and on content.
You Can Afford Great People
Efficiency does not mean losing talent, it means protecting talent. Let your editors and journalists be editors and journalists instead of stair masters, wait-masters, or manual labor masters. Empower them and train them to use the latest technology, stay ahead of their game, and stay better and more brilliant than the competition. Because, despite literally hundreds of Gen AI video tools flooding our feeds with weird gymnastics videos and photoreal jungle scenes, the most impressive, talented creatives still make the most touching, most epic, and most memorable content.
You Can Afford Great Content
Get the best tools. Get the best people. Give them the best source material. Give them access to all of your existing content, no matter where it is or when it is from. Buy rights, and deploy efficient remote teams. If broadcasters and media houses stop creating content beyond everyone else's reach, then the creator economy and the sheer volume of content being created will drown what they do create.
Efficiency in production is a conversation we have to have. But at least let’s agree that there are some things worth spending money on - and some definitely not.
