I’ve just interviewed six CTOs leading major Outside Broadcast companies for the publication SVG Europe. They’ve all had to overcome signification challenges to their industry during the Covid lockdowns, and they’ve all come out the other side with strong insights into the present and future of broadcasting. Read them here.
Tag Archives: technology
September
29
Helping Bands Play to the Crowd, Long Before the Show – NYTimes.com
posted by John Maxwell Hobbs
Only 15 shows booked so far, but an interesting idea – sort of the Air BnB of concert booking. If this could be combined with the new trend in concerts in private homes, it could get really interesting. Helping Bands Play to the Crowd, Long Before the Show – NYTimes.com.
August
08
BBC Academy – Technology – Out with the old, in with the new
posted by John Maxwell Hobbs
I’ve written an article for the BBC Academy looking at the dramatic changes we’re experience in broadcast technology. Check it out here: BBC Academy – Technology – Out with the old, in with the new.
July
22
Thom Yorke blasts Spotify on Twitter as he pulls his music | Technology | guardian.co.uk
posted by John Maxwell Hobbs
Tom Yorke is right about the problem of funding new artists, but he’s got the wrong enemy in his sights. Spotify is not a cheapskate record label, it’s a generous radio network. More on this in a bit. Thom Yorke blasts Spotify on Twitter as he pulls his music | Technology | guardian.co.uk.
October
11
To the Spoils Goes the Victor (now, the hard work begins)
posted by John Maxwell Hobbs
In my last post, I only half-jokingly asked, “What do you do when you’ve won the revolution?” The answer to that is, “get working.” A revolution overturns the old order. Most revolutions fail because they’ve only focussed on the negative, with the only goal being the elimination of that negative. Once that’s accomplished, for most […]
posted by John Maxwell Hobbs
This is coming from a scholarly publication perspective, but the problems the author describes are almost identical to what we’re facing in broadcasting. In a nutshell, we are generating data at a rate faster than Moore’s Law can keep up with. Unless that rate changes, it’s just going to keep getting more expensive to store […]
Big data won’t save us
posted by John Maxwell Hobbs
There’s a lot of focus on “big data” these days after the recent Facebook IPO. The term is becoming as ubiquitous at “the cloud.” There’s a great line in Michael Wolff’s article, “The Facebook Fallacy,” at the MIT Technical Review. “The company knows so much about so many people that its executives are sure that […]
June
11
Blurring of Lines
posted by John Maxwell Hobbs
In the 121 years since the invention of the motion picture camera, the worlds of production and post production have operated as two connected, but completely discrete units. The production side, an optical/chemical/mechanical process, essentially unchanged from the Victorian era until the widespread adoption of the portable video camera (until recently, almost all feature films […]
Form and function – leaving the typewriter behind
posted by John Maxwell Hobbs
I gave my wife a portable radio for Christmas. It has FM, DAB, Internet, WiFi, UPnP and network folder sharing. Essentially it does nothing that the computers in the house can’t do, but for some reason it’s opened the world of audio programmes in a way that our computers have not. We spent the holiday […]
John Maxwell Hobbs 