When OTT video streaming emerged as a business model in the late 2000s, many content sellers chose to keep their linear media operations teams while establishing new internal teams across multiple functions (e.g. sales, data & analytics, legal/compliance, and finance/accounting teams) focused exclusively on managing OTT distribution.
But fast forward to today and many of these same content sellers are moving to combine their once-separated linear and digital teams and create unified media operations teams that can efficiently manage and maximize both traditional linear and digital revenue streams. For example, we know that the merger between Showtime and Paramount+ involved combining linear and digital operations teams. AMC Networks also announced recently that it would merge its linear and digital sales teams.
Why Content Sellers are Unifying Linear and Digital Operations
First, content sellers have realized that while OTT and linear distribution deals and data can look quite different, the underlying processes used to manage them are often quite similar. While OTT distribution does present several unique challenges to traditional linear teams, content sellers are now seeing that similar license management, compliance, and financial workflows can be used to manage both revenue streams.
Second, when linear and digital media teams are siloed, each group has a vested interest in maximizing its own revenue streams. This invariably leads to conflict between linear and digital media teams over how and where media assets should be distributed.
A third reason for unifying linear and digital media operations has to do with the financial pressures content sellers are feeling. Profit margins are being compressed across the media industry, so even enterprise-level media companies can no longer afford to have entirely separate teams for linear and digital media operations.
Benefits of Unifying Linear and Digital Media Operations
1) Streamlined media operations workflows
Hybrid distribution is not going away. Unifying linear and digital media teams empowers content sellers to streamline licensing negotiation, agreement management, data analytics, financial management, and other media operations workflows. Combining digital and linear media operations into a single department helps reduce duplicate efforts while eliminating data silos and driving operational efficiency.
2) In-sync goals and priorities
It’s easy to see how linear and digital media teams can come into conflict. Both teams may want to control distribution for as many assets as possible so they can earn more revenue and demonstrate their value within the organization. This can lead to zero-sum thinking where distribution successes on one side are seen as a loss for the other.
But, by unifying linear and digital media operations, companies can eliminate conflicting goals and priorities by creating a single team that’s aligned with the seller’s core objective: maximizing long-term overall revenue across all distribution channels.
3) Diverse media expertise
Another benefit of unifying linear and digital media operations for content sellers is the opportunity to leverage diverse media expertise across all content distribution operations.
Integrating teams gives the most skilled data analysts, compliance experts and media finance professionals from both linear and digital teams the opportunity to multiply their impact on the business by touching all media distribution channels – not just linear or digital. Team members who previously worked in separate teams will have the opportunity to collaborate, exchange expertise, and innovate new ways to maximize distribution revenue.
4) Reduced operational costs
Unifying linear and digital media teams is proving to help content sellers reduce costs in response to tightening profit margins across the industry. Combining linear and digital teams can help drive down staffing costs, management costs and office overhead while allowing for resource consolidation or economies of scale on things like software technology and data storage.
The Road Ahead: Challenges and Opportunities
Aligning long-term media distribution strategies
Unifying media operations gives content sellers the opportunity to better align long-term media distribution strategies, but there’s still plenty of room for debate around how those strategies could look in practice.
Advocates for OTT will want to focus on digital distribution and leverage the rise of FAST platforms to access bigger audiences for valued content assets. On the other hand, advocates for linear may be searching for ways to preserve MVPD relationships and revenue with exclusive distribution agreements for those same assets. As the industry continues to evolve, content sellers will need to think carefully about which channels can help maximize both short-term and long-term revenue.
Consolidating linear and digital media technologies
As linear and digital operations teams join forces, they will need to streamline operations by consolidating the technologies used to manage license agreements, store and analyze data, and maintain financial records.
Previously siloed data from linear and OTT distribution partners should be integrated into a single data store where it can be analyzed together. Licensing management tools and financial systems of record for linear and digital distribution should also be combined to streamline workflows and reduce costs. To achieve these goals, organizations will need to overcome the lack of common metrics across distribution channels and implement a holistic analytics strategy to transform linear and digital data into actionable insights.
It may take a concerted effort to unify linear and digital operations teams, but it’s a trend that is likely to increase as content sellers understand the increasing benefits of this evolution.
This article was written by Karen Bleiler, EVP & GM of Revenue Solutions at SymphonyAI Media. Bleiler oversees the company’s Onboarding, Customer Success and Managed Services divisions, bringing over 15 years of experience in finance, accounting and licensing operations from numerous roles including her tenure at MPEG LA, LLC.
Posted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership self-publishing platform.
Click the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friends.
The opinions expressed here are the author's views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.org/MyersBizNet.