We launched a special show podcast to capture the insights and perspectives from several media industry leaders at IBC 2023.
In this episode, our Senior Marketing Manager, Leanne Tomlin, is joined by Carlie Bonavia, Content & Communications Manager at Newsbridge.
Leanne began by asking Carlie to share some insight to what Newsbridge does. She replied “We're an AI company solving the video searchability problem, in a nutshell. We help organizations find their content through our multimodal and generative AI indexing technology called MXT-1.”
Trained on hundreds of thousands of hours of news, sports, and entertainment audiovisual content, MXT-1 can scan all media files and generate descriptions. Outlining the benefits, Carlie said “you can find and repurpose, reuse, and resell your content more efficiently.”
Moving the topic on to IBC, Leanne asked how Carlie is finding the show this year. Carlie remarked how great it had been for the Newsbridge team, “We've had a lot of visitors to our booth, talking to a lot of people about their challenges and how we can help solve them.”
She continued to highlight some of the common industry concerns, “people have hundreds of thousands of hours of unindexed media that they need to deal with. Sometimes they don't even know the media they have, so the first step is to make it searchable, findable, understand if you have those diamonds in the gold mine, those needles in the haystack, that you could be capitalizing on in your media collections.”
Comparing the event to last year, Carlie commented that numbers on the show floor appeared to be much higher, “It has been extremely busy. Even this final day, which is traditionally pretty quiet, has been busy.”
Discussing this year’s key trends, Carlie highlighted the extensive presence of AI, “every second stand that you walk past in the halls is talking about AI and revolutionizing your workflows, your media, your indexing, the way you are doing things.” She remarked that the boom was reflective of the advancements in technology over the last 6-12 months.
Agreeing with Carlie’s statement, Leanne asked how traditional M&E companies can best adapt to the inevitable changes around the corner. Carlie explained that the industry is currently at a crossroads, with some organizations beginning to embrace the capabilities of AI, while others have yet to explore its potential. She commented that people need to move past the fear of AI; they need to learn to understand it, harnessing the technology to gain more value.
Other key topics at IBC 2023 centered around diversity and equity. Leanne asked how M&E companies can promote inclusivity in their content and workforce. Carlie responded by sharing Newsbridge’s empowering initiatives:
“They’ve implemented annual pay reviews to ensure that they close any pay gaps that might be within the team. They're really focusing on what parents need to feel supported in the workplace. We've recently signed the parental charter which commits to things like important meetings at family friendly times when colleagues who are parents can attend and make sure that they have a say in important company decisions. We now have paid leave if your child is ill. We have paid leave for miscarriage, for abortion, and that's for both parents.” She continued, “We also have paid menstrual leave, which I think is quite ground-breaking and not something that a lot of companies are doing yet. And these might seem like small things to some people, but for women in the workplace, for parents in the workplace that haven't had these types of policies before, it's really life changing.”
Leanne reacted by saying, “I don’t know how many other organizations are doing that, but I think it’s a really great move.” (And I couldn’t agree more!)
Newsbridge have been shortlisted for a Rise business award for their investment in women. With policies in place like the ones above, the company is certainly leading the way in setting a powerful example of inclusivity and equality in the workplace. And their AI technology isn’t half-bad either.
