All It Was Meant to Be, And More... #NewsTECHForum - Top Takeaways

TVNewsCheck's #NewsTECHForum was fantastic - HT to Kathy Haley & Michael Depp and most of all to the panelists. Insights below.

Also - many thanks to @AmagiCorp for sending me to New York.

Here below, just some notes from the show. Enjoy!

Sharri Berg, President, Fox Weather

Michael Depp set it up with his observation about how confusing the nomenclature is getting these days. “So, is it a cable channel? Or an App? A website? What exactly is FOX Weather?” Sharri’s response: “It’s ubiquitous. It’s going to be everywhere.” And she goes on to paint the picture. Today it’s inside the very well-built App. Next will be distribution via diginets. It’s being weaved into other FOX properties - a “cross-strap” that will work with other divisions. Soon on Connected TVs. The FOX Weather team is impressive.

Amy Freeze, Meteorologist, FOX Weather (@TheAmyFreeze)

Super star! Michael Depp points out that Meteorologists are in-demand talent these days, and asks Amy about that. She concurs, talks about the importance of the intersection of science, communications and reporting.

Michael Depp asks about whether coverage of climate change will be impacted by the parent company. I’m not going to paraphrase the answer but I’ll say this:?

It was convincing to me personally that they take their jobs as scientists seriously and that they’re smart enough to know the differences between topics like how it is caused and what can be done about it. Beyond that, only time will tell.

Paraphrasing: 'Earlier in my career I asked to be moved to Chicago so I could work with a special dual pol radar, not many stations have one of those. It measures both vertically, and horizontally. (Uses hands.) And weather happens in both directions. Now we can take that additional accuracy and put that into our FOX Weather model, which we’ll be rolling out soon.

Joanie Vasiliadis, VP of Digital Content, TEGNA

Insightful zingers left and right from Joanie. She wasn't in-person, actually but I've got it on my list to watch out for future panels with her name. "Streaming gives us the opportunity to do news 24x7 without upsetting the Wheel-of-Fortune audience.” And, "Even if we have extra time in these streaming environments -- you can still go long. Going long - it still applies. Editing still matters."

(And to which I say, Here here! ? And thank you to Descript for making it easier for me to edit webinars.)

Mike Palmer, Senior Director, Media Management, Sinclair Broadcast Group

Covid, ransomware attack, lost files, massive AWS outage — is there something Mike Palmer hasn’t been through this year? He had a LOT of wisdom to share. One key insight? Not enough vendors are multi-cloud. Another? “Infrastructure as code” is real - and then he explained it exceptionally well.

Stephen Bach, Dir Sales, Head of News, Amagi Corp (my new colleague!)

Shared key insights about the need for channels to go-live quickly and the importance of mixing up live and recorded video. 'The platforms don't want to see a bunch of clip-reels, 2, or 3 or 5 minute clips strung together."

Kurt Rao, SVP Technology & CTO, TEGNA

Kurt offered several technical insights but one of the most fascinating things I heard from him was about the programming itself. “Weather brings audiences in like nothing else. And our meteorologists can fill time and engage consumers better than anyone.”

If you enjoyed this, please feel free to see more of my hobby at #FutureOfTV.Live

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