The media industry is undergoing a significant transformation as broadcasters increasingly adopt hybrid infrastructures. This shift is blurring the lines between orchestration, playout, and delivery, prompting technology providers to reassess their strategies.
As audience habits change, platforms fragment, and operational complexity rises, the media chain is being reshaped. In a recent roundtable, industry experts discussed the growing pressure to efficiently produce channel variants and the challenge of synchronizing linear, OTT, and FAST outputs.
Peter Blatchford, CMO, Starfish Technologies, noted: "The real pressure now comes from audience fragmentation. You’ve got linear, OTT and FAST platforms — and each one may need its own variation of the same channel. Workflows that were built for a single output are suddenly being asked to do much more. The challenge is producing all those variants efficiently without letting operational complexity spiral out of control."
The need for unified control layers that span on-premises, cloud, and edge environments is also becoming critical. Modern orchestration platforms are evolving with API-driven interoperability and topology-aware automation. Broadcasters must carefully consider how they integrate previously siloed systems.
Jan Weigner, CTO, Cinegy, emphasized the need for a change in mindset: "What doesn’t work is clinging to workflows and assumptions that only made sense when broadcast meant hardware boxes bolted in racks. We’ve proven you can run 64 channels of HD playout from a single physical server, but you can’t do that if you’re still thinking in terms of one box per channel. The challenge isn’t the technology; it’s letting go of outdated mental models."
The convergence of playout and delivery models requires operational, cultural, and architectural changes.
Stephane Cloirec, VP, video appliances and software product management, Harmonic, highlighted the importance of efficiency: "Today’s broadcasters and content providers are seeking greater operational efficiency, agility and cost control across increasingly complex hybrid workflows. Operating playout and delivery as separate silos results in duplicated infrastructure, fragmented workflows and higher operational costs. By leveraging advanced playout-to-delivery solutions within a cloud-centric architecture, media companies can streamline operations, reduce total cost of ownership and accelerate the rollout of new video channels and services."
Matt Lukens, director, global business development, NDI, pointed out the challenges of hybrid environments: "One thing I notice is that most broadcasters are running a hybrid mix of legacy SDI, IP, and cloud workflows, which can get messy quickly. Delivery adds another layer because keeping linear, OTT, and FAST streams perfectly synchronized isn’t as simple as it sounds. Teams are trying to find a balance between keeping things organized while not increasing overhead costs."
John Mailhot, SVP, product management, Imagine Communications, discussed the complexity of resource management: "As broadcasters adopt a mix of on-prem and cloud-based ingest and playout, they gain flexibility, but also inherit new layers of complexity across routing, resource allocation, and redundancy management. Orchestration must deploy and manage these dynamic services, as well as link automation and traffic systems to enable the flexible stacking. Dynamic media motion systems ensure content and ads reach the right playout engines on time."
Paul Calleja, CEO, GlobalM, noted the evolving demands of delivery: "Delivery has become a moving target because contribution, distribution and OTT all demand different transport guarantees and different scaling behaviors. Broadcasters now need to deliver the same event simultaneously across linear, digital, FAST and social channels, each with unique latency and synchronization expectations. Add geo-compliance and rights restrictions on top, and the delivery layer becomes the most legally sensitive part of the chain."