This is according to a 2014 study of the UK market, published by the website Thinkbox.TV. Yes, they’re in business to promote TV advertising but the assertion stands up to some common sense analysis. At the time of writing we’re well into the season of peak consumer spending – the three months leading to Christmas – and in the UK at least, the season where major retailers compete for ‘the’ commercial of the season. It says a lot for TV advertising when the commercials themselves can spin off merchandising of their own. Not just the music track, but toys, T-shirts and other products which remind us of the commercial but only indirectly of the retailers themselves. I wonder whether this was factored into that ROI?

It’s a great comfort for the broadcasters, long-since worried about the flight of advertising revenue from TV to web. A quick look at YouTube shows the number of hits for one of these blockbusters, more than a week after posting on the site, has barely recorded the number of eyeballs in front of a single top-rated TV show. We go voluntarily to social media sites, but we’re enticed to watch TV commercials by the programmes they interrupt – so, to be successful, they have to be really good.

This is where we move closer to the need for video servers and the point of this story. Content creators want to play in all distribution markets – to capture the single hit in the evening schedule as well as the steady flow of mobile, VOD and the rest. They need to make the best shows and have the content delivered to every platform at the same time. Many of the most popular TV shows around the world are made live or close to live, with sport as the obvious example.

Video servers bring the most benefit to shows which are made close to the time of distribution. This is because they enable people to work together and they manage automatically the important technical tasks which would otherwise interfere with the creative process. So the three essential features of a video server are:

• Sharing – content and workflows
• Automation – buries the technical stuff
• Reliability - we’re live, so it has to work

Sharing a task makes it quicker to complete. Live TV was hard when the only outlet was video. Now we need to work for three audiences or more. The perfect video server allows the production process to broken down into simple steps, with a tool to complete each one. I should not be bound to my desk either. We have smartphones and tablets to stay in touch; we should be able to work where we want to be, not stuck in the studio. Live production is frequently spread between locations, studios and even countries; the server needs to link them all.

Automation is there to help people and to save them from making mistakes. It is the path taken from acquisition to distribution and it should be clear and fast. Many systems require the users to understand the underlying technology and work with them according to rules. The perfect video server will be programmed to manage itself and lead the users from step to step. That automation should itself be flexible; open and ready to be modified and expanded as needs arise.

Reliability is arguably the most important of all. The video server should be almost invisible; supporting, assisting and managing while making no demands on the creative users. Video servers are built into large, complex, multi-vendor systems. Each component must be dependable and the networks and protocols which join them must be robust and fault-tolerant.

A video server is the magic ingredient which can forge individuals into a team and create a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. For the business of TV to succeed, the commercials have to be good, but the shows must be even better.

Trevor Francis is director of broadcast at Quantel.