Lessons Learned From The Pandemic

Not all industries had the luxury of closing up shop for a few weeks to figure out their remote working policies and technology. Broadcasters, especially live broadcasting, were not afforded that luxury. Thankfully, many were already working on what remote working would look like, so the transition was much faster than in other industries.

Many broadcasters were working over a KVM (Keyboard-Video-Mouse) infrastructure to access their digital work resources, but that infrastructure was not designed to work over a wide area network (WAN). It was not scalable to support high volumes of remote workers, like was the case in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic. Many had to switch their infrastructure over to PCoIP® technology during the pandemic to handle remote workflows better. 

For the creative team members in broadcasting and production, moving to a remote work situation during the pandemic was scary. Many had old-school views of what “remoting” into their work desktop looked like, and they feared that would significantly hinder latency and graphics quality. However, once they saw how far PCoIP technology had come, the transition period was quick. 

User Experience Requirements And Struggles

Attention to detail and graphics quality are essential in broadcasting. Creatives are very discerning, and they often work best when they can focus on their creativity and not on technical hiccups or latency slowing down their creative process.

The future of broadcasting may see some hesitancy from creative personnel in the transition to remote working. But, the transition period will be relatively short with the right technology solutions supporting them. As they see their colleagues around the world adopting successful, easy-to-use remote workflows, the hesitancy will dwindle.

The Future Of Employee Workflows

Teradici did a remote work survey of nearly 700 IT decision makers about the future of remote working in their industries. The survey found that 67% of respondents would change the way they shift employees if another event similar to COVID-19 were to happen again. Also, 56% of IT and technology workers will continue to work from home once the pandemic is over.

This tells us that the future of nearly every industry, including broadcasting, will take a more hybrid approach, with employees splitting their time between on-premises and remote working for a variety of reasons (including necessity and preference). This also means we’re going to see a continued evolution of the traditional workplace cubical environment.

The Future Of The Workplace Cubical

In broadcasting, there will always be roles that are better suited to be on-premises, like television anchors, for example. However, most post-production and creative teams can work from anywhere, given the right access to digital resources and real-time collaboration tools.

We anticipate a future where post-production and creative teams can work from the office or home seamlessly because they won’t be tied to a physical desktop computer machine under their office desk.

These individual computer towers will become centralized in an on-premises location. This will allow any team member with a company-issued end client to access these resources via PCoIP whether they’re on-premises, working from home, or travelling. As long as they have an internet connection, they can do their work from anywhere, just as if their computer tower was sitting under their desk.

Since working from an on-premises cubical will no longer be required, HR teams are no longer restricted to hiring locally. They can find the right team members to join from anywhere in the world.

“With our technology, there’s an initial expectation, and then there’s a value increase,” says Ian Main, Distinguished Technologist, HP. “From the decision makers’ point of view, I think now it’s about refining their architectures to meet that hybrid work model that everybody agrees is the future forever, really. And I think we know that employees are going to be more picky about working for broadcasters that can offer that flexibility.”

Technology Trends In Remote Working For Broadcasting

As technology advances and merges, we see several technologies and feature trends emerging as it relates to remote working in this industry:

• Collaboration: teams need technology that facilitates ease of collaboration.
• PCoIP Ultra AV lock: to get audio and video seamlessly synchronized.
• Sustained high frame rates at 4K/UHD resolutions and beyond: this needs to be sustained in a high-performance client windowed mode.
• Multi-channel audio: critical for creating broadcast-quality content, especially immersive content intended for cable or OTT distribution.
• HDR color: for high dynamic range content.
• Peripheral integrations: so creatives can seamlessly use Wacom tablets and other tools with their computing systems.

We also expect to see more centralization of digital assets and computing across many industries, especially broadcasting. This will help streamline workflows and IT Team management and support of computing systems and devices. 

Requirements For The Future Of Broadcasting And Post-production

Forward-thinking broadcasters will also be looking for a solution that meets three essential requirements:

1. Remote worker ease and satisfaction: All contract and employee team members need to be comfortable using the remote working technology so that their creative processes are not hindered.
2. Security protocols: With the recent increase in corporate and media company data breaches, broadcasters need to ensure that their intellectual property is protected when team members access digital content and apps over the cloud.
3. Ease for IT Team: Centrally based IT teams need the ability to onboard new users quickly without needing to visit everyone’s remote workplace (their home or remote site) and manage access and security from a centralized location.
4. Technology and processes that meet these critical needs are going to be more common within the industry.

What Teradici Is Excited About For The Future Of Broadcasting

“Many broadcasters have only just dipped their toe in the water [when it comes to using PCoIP technology for remote working],” says Rodney Tafuro, Teradici Account Executive, HP. Rodney and his colleagues at Teradici are excited to be working with prominent public broadcasters to help create this future.

The team is excited to discover how technology companies and broadcasters can innovate and find new ways to merge existing technologies to meet the needs of broadcasters better. Building on the strengths of each technology and platform, this will support broadcasters to work more efficiently than before, on more secure systems that are easy to use and manage.