“Covid-19
is affecting media companies in different ways, the damage to each media company
is more granular and specific,” mused Fintan McKiernan, CEO, Ideal Systems SEA,
when asked how the coronavirus is impacting the media & entertainment
industry.
He
said: “Take for instance, Disney which launched its new Disney+ OTT service on
November 11th 2019 — just in time for the US Christmas market …
and also happened to be a couple of weeks before the great Covid-19 lockdowns,
which on the face of it would seem like good timing in terms of having a
captive market of viewers stuck at home.
“However,
Disney also took a heavy hit as it lost some of its major revenue streams from
the closure of its theme parks and hotels in California, Florida, Paris,
Shanghai and Tokyo, and further revenue hit from its sports subsidiary ESPN,
due to the global shutdown in live sports events.”
Thus,
the surprising situation is that towards end-April, Netflix market capitalization
was at US$186 billion, actually exceeding that of Disney’s US$182 billion. Netflix
is bigger than Disney … but for how long?
“This
is in part due to Netflix not suffering from the negative effects from any
sports, hotel or theme park divisions,” explained straight-talker McKiernan,
noting that the company is currently taking some Covid-19 hits too. “While it
has built up a huge library of original content, its current productions have
ground to a halt under the same lockdown that is aiding its market increase!”
So
what can or should broadcasters and media companies do to survive and thrive
during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic?
“Well,
this is a global billion-dollar question,” said McKiernan, pointing out that each
broadcaster and media company can be very different when you look under the
cover, and in the same way as Covid-19 affects different people differently, it
will effect different broadcasters and media companies differently too.
“But
from a technology standpoint at least, it seems that Covid-19 is certainly a
catalyst for the adoption of cloud-based technology – and specifically cloud-based
broadcast technology,” he winked.
Really?
Will
Covid-19 push the industry to leapfrog over IP infrastructure straight to Cloud-based
infrastructure in 2020?
To
have a broader view of what broadcasters and media owners ought to do to
survive the COVID-19 crisis, Team APB will continue the conversation with Ideal
Systems’ CEO while seeking the views of other systems integrators in a special
SI Report in the May/June print edition of APB+.