Every year for the last 10 years or so, September begins with what I call my “European Tour”. Basically, it begins in Amsterdam for IBC and then go on at the SMPTE fall quarterly engineering committee meeting cycle (where TV and Cinema standards are discussed) which as been held in Europe since 1999 (with the exception of 2001 when it was cancelled). The EBU has been our host every other year in Geneva while other organizations have taken tours across Europe for the alternate years.

This year was the Amsterdam/Geneva regular pattern. As I am now on the plane on my way back from this intensive dose of Professional TV, I was trying to think about what was the main takeaways of all this and there is one word that summarize it best: Live.

I did touch on the subject of live a few times in this blog suggesting three years ago that it was the way for linear channels to keep an edge (and command premium fees) over on-demand content and Internet distribution.

Well, all the signs are there that the industry is doing just that. Manufacturers that are focusing on live or “live to disk” production workflow seems to do remarkably well in that area. Further, this seems to true for more traditional players (Ross, Miranda) as well as those who caters to smaller operators.

Does that fit with your experience?