The Power of TV: We’re Gearing Up for Major IBC Coverage

By Larry Lannon

The IBC Conference and Exposition is one of the annual, seminal events of the technology business year when it comes to content and TV. The great thing about IBC is that it looks across the entire video horizon: from content creation to delivery to management. Which is why we here at V2M are gearing up to devote a large amount of focus to this year’s IBC will be held in Amsterdam, Sept. 8-13.

IBC may be the epitome of an important technology and technology business event, but in my opinion, it has become more than that – because of the importance of video in our everyday lives, I argue that IBC has achieved a social significance few “business" or “technology" events ever achieve. The over-the-top ideas and products the whole world will be talking about in October will be given voice, form and strategic significance in Amsterdam in September. The show pushes video frontiers in all directions. Pay TV, IPTV, tablets and devices, apps: all the latest, best, brightest, the most innovative, the most disruptive people, companies and ideas all coalesce around IBC.

The importance of video has been magnified. Video also has become much more supple as it has grown. The combination of those two factors is what puts the IBC on a new plateau. Let’s consider the two in turn.

Video is magnified because there is much more of it than ever before. Just a few decades ago, video was delivered to an audience tethered to a fixed location, and carried entertainment (like sports, sitcoms, movies) and general information (general news, local and national).

Even within these constraints, video was extraordinarily powerful. I vividly remember watching, with almost all of America and much of the world, the small black-and-white images of President Kennedy’s assassination and funeral that wrenching, wet weekend in the autumn of 1963, an event that spoke to the social and emotional power of TV in its infancy.

Video connected us emotionally with the event in 1963. But for in-depth coverage of the news, print carried the weight for decades to come. Contrast that circumstance with the developments in this fraught summer.

How many of us last month followed the House of Commons’ investigation into the practices of News Corp. or the malign debt ceiling debate in Washington? My bet: all of us. How many of us relied on detailed video reports for all or nearly all our information about those two events? My wager: nearly all of us. How many of us are relying on video reports this month to follow the spiraling global financial crisis? You know my bet.

Video reports provides robust daily coverage of politics, economics and business, fashion, sports, entertainment – anything that is important to us receives detailed video coverage today. Pure video entertainment is also much bigger and richer than previously. Today, your favorite hot “TV series" can be accessed via a network, numerous cable outlets and, more and more, via the Internet.

Which means that not only is video bigger, it is more supple. Rather than being tethered by time, place and device, it now can be delivered to the consumer when, where and over the device the consumer prefers. Increasingly, it can be shared among like minded consumers via social media that simply did not exist even a few years ago.

The IBC has a social significance precisely because video is so deeply entwined in society and in our daily lives – and is becoming more fundamental every day.

As V2M readers, you are probably intensely interested in IBC, and plan to follow it closely. V2M will help you follow IBC more closely, and better comprehend the context and significance of IBC when it happens next month.

Stay tuned for details.

Larry Lannon is group publisher of VIRGO ’s Communications Network, which includes Billing & OSS World , Channel Partners and vision2mobile .