relies on accumulated wealth to protect itself from evolutionary pressures will only be delaying the inevitable, because the conditions of the market will have changed and the ability to adapt quickly will be at a premium. The old paradigm of rigid equivalence between a particular task and a particular piece of equipment for it will be impossible to sustain. Manufacturers and broadcasters alike will need to do things differently. To take a specific scenario, it will no longer be appropriate for the chief engineer of a smaller broadcaster to buy a vision mixer because he likes that product or the company that supplies it, then choose a video server and the other components to go with it, ending by asking an automation company to come and make it all work as a system six months later. That model is no longer viable because the broadcaster’s commercial arm will increasingly be faced with changing market situations that they need to respond to rapidly; it could be the need to meet sudden demand for HD channels, or to fill a hole in the market with a new kind of cookery channel. They are going to want to respond within weeks, not months, and keep responding as opportunities and pressures continue to change. If the engineering department and its infrastructure is unable to meet this challenge, the broadcaster will miss those commercial opportunities — ultimately with predictable results.

Mammals were able to evolve through the environmental crisis that made dinosaurs and other highly specialized life forms extinct because they were small, agile and could adapt to changing temperatures. What we are now entering is an evolutionary bottleneck in our industry that is squeezing down the wide variety of specialized systems and working methods that have arisen in times of plenty. Out of it will grow a new breed of systems with a more survivable technology base for the industry and new, adaptable working methods based on them.

The general move in the industry towards software-based systems is part of this process and even some of the most established names in broadcast hardware are now moving away from hardware-specific products to reinvent themselves as software vendors. We’ve seen other industries such as print and publishing go through this cycle and it takes the application of serious external pressure for it to happen. In the case of the broadcast industry, the pressure is financial; many broadcasters are already feeling the pinch and cutting budgets. But they still have to launch channels and get new services on air — and under the widespread commercial pressures the world now faces, it becomes even more important for them to innovate for survival in a difficult market. Broadcasters have to save money and do more with less, and that's exactly what the most adaptable manufacturers are giving them the tools to do.

Ian Fletcher, CTO