LAS VEGAS — EIDR members could be found all over the show floors of the 2023 NAB Show. Here’s what a few of them had to share:
Luminate
Entertainment data and insights firm Luminate made waves at NAB with the release of its flagship “Entertainment Diversity Progress” report, which was last released in December 2021, showing minimal growth in representation both on and behind the screen across multiple underrepresented groups between 2021 and 2022.
“One of our primary goals in creating the Entertainment Diversity Progress Report is to provide respectful, objective, and accurate information to help drive the much-needed change around diversity and inclusion in Hollywood,” said Mark Hoebich, EVP and head of Luminate Film & TV. “Our partners depend on our broader DEI dataset to measure internal progress, benchmark, and identify talent that can ensure authentic and respectful storytelling. When looking at the data in this most recent report, we encourage all our partners in Hollywood to celebrate the gains that have been made, like growth in female director roles and female series creators, while also urging them to look at places where growth was not seen, like films and series with Black and Latin/Hispanic stories at the forefront.”
The release of the report follows the launch of the Luminate Film & TV brand, announced in October. In addition to providing Hollywood with DEI and sustainability data, Luminate Film & TV maintains a dataset of more than 1.5 million creative personnel, including actors, influencers, producers, executives, directors, and below-the-line talent, along with production status updates throughout the industry.
The latest data shows that one of the biggest trends pertaining to diversity and representation on screen is the creation of stories that reflect intersectionality.
The idea that everyone is defined by multiple identities across race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, etc., is a reality that seems to be increasingly taken into consideration by Hollywood’s content creators, allowing films and series to better explore and reflect the nuances of the human experience.
The other clear trend that has emerged is the proliferation of non-English language content availability in the United States. The growth of available “primetime” content in languages like Spanish, Korean, Arabic, and Japanese has meant a marked increase in the representation of talent from those backgrounds and has provided multilingual audiences with relevant content.
Read the full story in MESA’s M+E Daily.
Xperi
For Xperi and its subsidiary DTS, the focus of NAB was in-vehicle content, according to Jeff Jury, GM of connected cars for the company.
“What we’re doing is developing content in a way that’s integrated for the consumer that’s pure, immersive entertainment, taking advantage of the latest technology available,” he said, pointing to AutoStage, the global automotive independent media delivery platform that offers next-gen AI-powered connected radio, audio and video content.
And it’s working: in less than a year AutoStage has been included in more than 50 car models, with another 100 on the way. The technology seamlessly combines linear broadcast with IP-delivered content, offering a deeply personalised, in-vehicle infotainment solution. DTS AutoStage was designed to be both visually rich, safe, and immersive for connected cars, and allows radio broadcasters to retain editorial control of content while offering a new, consistent user experience.
Where the money lies is with the valuable listener insights and analytics the system relays, with Xperi launching a DTS AutoStage Broadcaster Portal just before NAB, offering radio broadcasters access to data on user engagement. Now, every broadcaster can gain insights into how their in-car listeners are engaging with content from the car.
“What sets us apart is personalisation, and this is key to allowing [broadcasters] to help offer that,” Jury said. With the algorithms DTS has that learn with more consumers usage, DTS is poised to make the in-car entertainment experience truly revolutionary. And content owners are responding.
“Through smart TVs and set-top boxes, TV broadcasters have enjoyed the ability to measure audience engagement,” said Pierre Bouvard, chief insights officer for Cumulus Media Westwood One. “The connected car and DTS AutoStage have revolutionised the data possibilities for radio broadcasters, giving them access to in-car data for millions of vehicles to inform programming content and ad strategies.”
Fabric
A recent acquisition. A major partnership. Another IBC Accelerator project. Oh, and an NAB Streaming Product of the Year 2023 award. Fabric came out of NAB with plenty to celebrate.
“As anything, this industry has continued to evolve,” said Fabric CEO Rob Delf. “We’re here to show how Fabric has evolved.”
Start with Fabric’s January acquisition of the industry’s king of entertainment trailers, Internet Video Archive (IVA), a company which also boasts a huge baseline catalog of film and television metadata, a perfect fit for Fabric, whose clients (Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, HBO, MGM, FOX, etc.) now can instantly match titles to the IVA library and enrich what they own. Combined with Fabric, the acquisition helps clients gain more insights into their marketing, and verification of their licensing across streaming platforms.
Then there’s the recently announced strategic partnership between IMDb and Fabric, resulting in Fabric customers being able to procure licensed data from IMDb directly via their existing relationship with Fabric.
That’s just one agreement and one fee directly with Fabric vs. maintaining multiple agreements and payments, resulting in cost and resource efficiencies. Fabric’s licensing of IMDb data and information is fulfilled through AWS Data Exchange.
And, following its crucial work with the Cloud Localisation Blueprint, Fabric is now helping spearhead another IBC Accelerator-based project, the Authenticated Data Standard, which would allow content owners to verify and authenticate their content data and imagery, and then publish it to third-party sources. “There’s no standard for sharing data and marketing data shouldn’t come from a third-party source,” Delf said. “This would be the source of truth of data.”
Whip Media
For Michael Sid, co-founder and chief strategy officer of enterprise software platform and data provider Whip Media, NAB 2023 was all about enabling free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) to easily solve reporting problems.
“It’s a whole set of software products geared toward FAST channels and distributors, and for AVOD (ad-supported video on demand) as well,” Sid said. “We’re able help them streamline this process that’s been cobbled together in the past. There are so many direct deals now, proper, quick reporting has become a must-have.”
Whip Media FASTrack is designed to solve reporting problems associated for mid and smaller tier clients operating AVOD and FAST channels, bringing together disparate data in various formats to make visible the entirety of distribution revenue in one, easy-to-navigate place.
FASTrack includes automated ingestion of performance data, revenue and viewership allocation down to the title level, automated generation of partner payments, and access to real-time actionable data via a customizable report builder and analytics dashboard. The new platform debuted as a beta service will launch partner Motorvision.TV, a lifestyle and entertainment channel, with two more partners already in the pipeline.
“Companies are getting this mish-mash of reporting, and they need an accurate count on viewership and revenue,” Sid said. “It’s been a huge problem. This is the solution.”
Prior to NAB, Whip Media also announced that smart TV player Vizio looked to Whip to manage automatic payments to content owners and ad revenue reporting for the FAST channel WatchFree+.
Gracenote
For Trent Wheeler, chief product officer for Gracenote, the decision for the content solutions business unit of Nielsen to join the board of the Entertainment ID Registry (EIDR) was an easy one.
“It made sense since so many of our clients are part of EIDR,” Wheeler said. “EIDR has a strong presence in the studio space, and we have a great global footprint. We’re all trying to solve the same problems in distribution, and we can work with EIDR to solve some of these problems.”
Namely, the two are partnering on new ways to help the industry improve workflow efficiencies via automation, make for better program discoverability, and optimize owners’ return on content investment.
“I am thrilled to extend a very warm welcome to Gracenote as they join the EIDR Board,” said Hollie Choi, managing director of EIDR, when the announcement was made. “Gracenote and EIDR share in the mission to improve the accuracy and efficiency of content management and distribution for the media and entertainment industry. I’m looking forward to finding ways for our two organizations to work together on our common goals.”
Outside of the EIDR announcement, Wheeler said Gracenote was at NAB promoting its addition of rich data sets for millions of pieces of available content, and the quick success of its Inclusion Analytics solution, which recently added new disability representation data to the gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation information of talent that’s already being tracked.