Industry News

Two new members of the Ads and Partnership Communication team are being welcomed at NBCUniversal. One of the new hires is the former Head of Corporate Communications at Comscore, where he guided the company’s external and internal brand communications with a primary focus on its media measurement narrative.

The other new hire is an ex-Senior Associate for Corporate Communications at Univision.

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His career in media measurement began in 1978, and he ascended to the Chief Executive Officer role at Comscore during a highly turbulent period at the media measurement and analytics company.

Now, Bill Livek is ready to conclude a four-decade career, as he has announced his intention to retire as Comscore CEO.

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“If you are in broadcast, streaming, or media today, you are a storyteller, and you know how quickly the industry is changing,” says Steve Petilli, CEO of Southern California-based media technology company Bitcentral.

That’s why a virtual conference the company is staging Tuesday (3/1) through March 2 is designed to provide a strong opportunity for attendees to learn, interact and meet as together with one unified mission — to define “the future of storytelling.”

Known for its media workflows for broadcast and digital video, Bitcentral is hosting DRIVE 2022.

It’s a free affair, and will include several client spotlights, “sharing stories from the heart of operations across the broadcast spectrum.” Specifically, DRIVE 2022 will explore the future of broadcasting and media, from syndication, FAST channels, monetization, and new OTT experiences, to cloud playout and master control.

Who’s on the bill? Sonny Cavazos, EVP/Director of Technology of Los Angeles-headquartered Entravision Communications will discuss the challenges, and advantages, in centralizing a master control operation.

Then there is Bonneville International Corporation’s Ryan Wood. he’s the Director of Television Engineering at its KSL-5 in Salt Lake City, and Wood will discuss how KSL-TV packages and monetizes its local sports/games and what it takes to achieve scale.

Lastly, Restflix founder and CEO Kevin Hillman will share more about his OTT experiences.

Other confirmed sessions include:

• The Value of Syndicating Your Local News to News Aggregators
  Featuring Sinclair Broadcast Group SVP of Growth Networks & Content Scott Ehrlich
• How to Distribute and Monetize Your Video in Today’s Connected World
  Featuring Evan Krauss, Global SVP of the Buyer Development Index Exchange
• The Migration of Linear Playout to The Cloud
  Featuring Veset Chief Product Officer David Thompson

Attendees will also have the opportunity to interact with Bitcentral thought leaders by breaking off into different virtual rooms, each with their own product category, or attendees can connect and share stories with like-minded individuals in the Storyteller’s Lounge.

Add the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to the growing list of organizations that have voiced their opposition to President Biden’s choice of Gigi B. Sohn to serve as the fifth and vote-deciding Commissioner on the FCC.

While calling out the White House for a lack of Latino representation across D.C., the USHCC takes particular aim at Sohn — largely for her support by the news organization led by Christopher Ruddy.

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Xperi Corporation SVP of Digital Platforms Ashruf El-Dinary and Capitol Broadcasting Company’s Peter Sockett are the recipients of the 2022 NAB Engineering Achievement Awards.

They will be recognized at the 2022 NAB Show, held April 23–27 in Las Vegas.

El-Dinary oversees the HD Radio systems engineering teams, manages the certification and quality control processes, and represents HD Radio technology standards in International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and international regulatory discussions. He currently leads the efforts for new broadcast applications, upgrades to emergency alerting, and deployment of digital radio solutions internationally.

Sockett is responsible for leading and steering the technology needs of CBC and preparing for the coming trends affecting broadcasting. He sits on the board of directors for the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) and is the chair of the ATSC 3.0 Advanced Emergency Alerting Implementation Team. He is a co-inventor of a patent for geolocation.

Established in 1959, the Radio and Television Engineering Achievement Awards are given to individuals who are nominated by their peers for significant contributions to advancing broadcast engineering.

NAB President and CEO Curtis LeGeyt will present the Radio and Television Engineering Achievement Awards during a session titled “Hollywood’s ‘Binge Times’ OTT Battle and NAB Engineering Awards” on Sunday, April 24 at 3 p.m.

Workflow automation specialist Telestream, which also offers media processing, quality monitoring and test and measurement products designed to enable the production and distribution of video, has unveiled the latest version of its remote media player.

Built for broadcast engineering, operations and post production personnel who need to visually QC files when they are remote from the media, GLIM plays master video files of any size and format directly to a browser without the need to generate a proxy.

The new release of GLIM features a new UI that places the video front and center to the user experience while surrounding the content with audio VU meters and a new “zoomable” mini timeline with selectable overlays for GOP, SCTE 35 and 104 markers, and Nielsen watermarking.

The latest version of GLIM also introduces a technology preview of a new luma waveform display with more scope tools to follow in subsequent releases.

When running GLIM on a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) server, it supports up to five simultaneous playback sessions. A new, turn-key GLIM hardware appliance is now available which runs up to 15 concurrent sessions thanks to powerful GPU acceleration. GLIM can also run five sessions in an AWS EC2 environment or up to 15 simultaneous sessions when using GPU-accelerated instances of EC2.

GLIM is built upon the Telestream Media Framework, also used by the Vantage Media Processing platform.

Electronics Research, Inc. is welcoming to the company a new Western Region Account Manager for Television. He will be responsible for managing ERI’s broadcast television equipment sales in the western U.S.

Jeff Heldman brings over 30 years of experience in the broadcast and telecommunications industry to ERI, and he has 15 years of experience as a broadcast engineer in radio and television. At Indiana State University in Terre Haute, he was responsible for maintaining the radio station, several radio and television production studios, and training communications students to operate radio and television equipment. He then joined Harris Corporation’s Broadcast Communications Division (now GatesAir) after completing his degree as a radio and television proposal engineer and later as the quality control engineer in the television remote truck and studio construction division.

Following his time at Harris, he worked at Axcera LLC as a Television Sales Applications Engineer, rising to Sales Manager. Heldman joins ERI after working several years for Mitsubishi Electric in their Diamond Vision Division, where he supplied sales support and system design for the division’s large-format LED video display systems.

Dave Benco, ERI’s Vice President of U.S. Sales, commented, “ERI is delighted to add someone with Jeff’s experience to our U.S. Sales team. He brings significant engineering and applications knowledge to our Sales Team. He will be a valuable contributor to the company and the customers he is charged to serve and support.”

MwareTV, a cloud-based multi-tenant TV platform provider, has formed a partnership with Irdeto, known for digital platform cybersecurity.

The agreement allows Irdeto Control, a DRM platform, to be fully integrated into MwareTV’s IPTV/OTT distribution platform.

The first implementation of Irdeto with MwareTV will be rolled out at shared services provider MultTV in Brazil.

MultTV will offer MwareTV’s IPTV/OTT platform to its Brazilian ISPs as well as other service providers. MwareTV’s new platform will enable ISPs to launch their own TV service with a fully customized interface on Samsung Tizen and LG WebOS SmartTVs, Android and Android TV devices, iOS, AppleTV, FireTV and Roku. ISPs will have the option to use their own content or MultTV’s extensive library of content and channels or a mix of both.

The issues of content security, revenue protection and cyber threats are uppermost in the minds of all content companies. Irdeto Control, the company’s multi-DRM offering servicing some of the world’s largest OTT platforms, issues some 3.7 billion licenses a month.

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Data and technology company Spherex has introduced what it calls “the first-ever global newsfeed that aggregates stories from around the world related to the globalization of TV and film content.”

Called World M&E News, the weekly newsletter is being offered free of charge as a service to the entertainment industry.

“As content goes global and culture becomes more critical to content success, World M&E News offers a snapshot of the issues and challenges of global content distribution,” Spherex says. “Media and entertainment companies need to pay attention to the cultural mores in the countries in which they are distributing content in order to avoid censure, loss of revenue and limited audience. Understanding the importance of culture as it relates to content globalization, World M&E News serves as a free, real-time resource for studios, streamers and networks looking to understand the global landscape as they ramp up international distribution efforts.”

To learn more about World M&E News, please visit the Spherex website.