Industry Insights: Regulatory and sustainability concerns grow in 2025

By NewscastStudio January 16, 2025

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Broadcast technology vendors weigh in on the critical challenges and opportunities facing the industry in 2025.

In this Industry Insights roundtable, executives discuss three key areas impacting broadcast operations: the financial pressures of technology adoption, the complexities of integrating new systems with legacy infrastructure and the growing importance of sustainability initiatives.

The discussion reveals how broadcasters are balancing innovation with practical constraints amid economic uncertainty while addressing workforce adaptation and regulatory changes. Industry leaders also examine how environmental considerations are influencing facility operations and technology decisions.


Key takeaways from this Industry Insights roundtable

  • Cost management: Broadcasters face increased pressure to justify technology investments with clear ROI metrics, particularly in determining whether to implement cloud, on-premises, or hybrid solutions.
  • Legacy integration: Organizations struggle to modernize existing infrastructure while maintaining operations, with particular challenges in combining traditional broadcast systems with IP-based workflows.
  • Workforce evolution: Change management and staff training emerge as critical factors in successful technology adoption, often presenting greater challenges than the technical implementation itself.
  • Sustainability impact: Environmental considerations are increasingly influencing facility design and operations, though implementation often depends on alignment with cost-saving initiatives.
  • Regulatory environment: Expected regulatory changes in 2025 could accelerate industry consolidation and require new investments in accessibility technology.

What are the biggest challenges broadcasters face today in adopting new technologies?

Financial & ROI Challenges

Tim Jackson, SVP, sales and marketing, Globecast: Technological advances aside (especially artificial intelligence/machine learning advances that are new to all of us), it’s the same age-old issue: cost vs. ROI. With all new technologies, we’re either dealing with a SAAS model or a very short-term CapEx cycle (the age of holding on to hardware and amortizing it over ten years is over). So making the right decisions and having flexibility are critical, as is understanding how early adoption can be a blessing and a curse.

Steve Reynolds, CEO, Imagine Communications: With no Olympics or elections driving advertising revenue, tight budgets will likely be the biggest challenge to adopting new technologies in 2025, and one of the ways broadcasters will navigate the challenge is to “do the math” to determine whether it’s more cost-effective to run their operations on-prem or in the cloud. If you’re deploying a disaster recovery solution or operating FAST channels that are never going to touch an antenna, it’s probably cheaper to do it in the cloud, but if you’re running 24/7/365 workflows or have significant investments in studios, HVAC systems, and backup generators, on-prem solutions may make better economic sense. A one-and-done calculation won’t cut it in a rapidly changing industry, so broadcasters may need to regularly revisit the TCO math to determine whether on-prem, cloud, or a hybrid of both will best meet their unique needs and budgets.

Anupama Anantharaman, VP, product management, Interra Systems: Cost pressures and uncertainty in the media industry’s evolving monetization models — ranging from subscription-based OTT services to ad-supported platforms — are creating significant challenges. With no clear consensus on the most sustainable path to profitability, broadcasters face difficulties in forecasting ROI for new investments. This uncertainty underscores the need to adopt flexible strategies that balance technological innovation with financial prudence, while maintaining agility to adapt to market shifts.

Peder Boberg, product owner, Intinor: The core challenge is the need to meet the ever-growing expectations of the audience while driving down costs. IP-based workflows deliver against both requirements, but such a complete transformation inevitably involves upfront investment against long-term cost savings. The challenge for broadcasters is to carefully align their investment program with their strategic priorities.

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Vincent Noyer, director of product marketing, Lynx Technik: Cost considerations is a major challenge. Global financial uncertainty at the macro level is making it challenging to plan large CapEx projects. As a result, we may see a rise in hybrid solutions that combine SDI, IP and cloud technologies to provide more cost-effective options.

Kristan Bullett, CEO, Humans Not Robots (HNR): Market consolidation, constrained budgets and resource reduction means that broadcasters are laser-focused on eyeballs, competition and survival. As a result, investing in new technologies is only feasible if the return on investment is both significant and has immediate positive impact. This is why there is so much hype around generative AI.

Sam Peterson, COO, Bitcentral: Amid a tightening economic climate, broadcasters are taking a more strategic approach to technology adoption. The focus for 2025 is expected to shift from pursuing innovation for its own sake to implementing solutions that deliver clear, measurable results. To thrive, broadcasters must achieve high-quality output with a streamlined tech stack, striking a balance between managing operational costs and investing in sustainable, effective solutions.

Legacy Systems & Technical Integration

Jon Wilson, president and COO at Grass Valley: The biggest challenge for broadcasters in adopting new technologies is that the tools required for modern content consumption are in many cases different from those that built the foundations of traditional broadcasting. Broadcasters now need flexible, software-based solutions that integrate seamlessly with their existing infrastructure—a complex and challenging task and yet a tremendous opportunity to simplify technology infrastructure while ultimately delivering material cost savings for broadcasters. 

Thorsten Sauer, CEO, Pixel Power: I think it depends on the broadcaster, their culture, ability to manage change and appetite for risk. Fundamentally, our industry remains very conservative (no matter how obsessed with new tech it seems to be). Legacy workflows and hardware continue to be issues, as broadcasters seek to maximize the value of historical investments. A lack of cybersecurity expertise may hamper the adoption of fully cloud-based workflows, and the high-recurring cost of cloud storage will be an issue for broadcasters looking to shift production into the cloud.

Dan Goman, CEO, Ateliere Creative Technologies: Broadcasters face significant challenges in adopting new technologies due to their reliance on outdated infrastructure and legacy systems, which complicate integration with modern cloud-based workflows and AI-driven tools. The costs associated with technology updates, staff training, and hardware upgrades can be prohibitive, especially for smaller organizations competing against well-funded rivals. Additionally, broadcasters must manage data security risks and compliance with evolving regulations, which requires substantial resources and expertise.

Andy Rayner, CTO, Appear: Broadcasters will face challenges around integrating new technologies with legacy systems, ensuring interoperability, and maintaining robust cybersecurity in increasingly IP-based workflows. The learning curve for staff and cost management during the transition will also be significant as operators deploy solutions designed to address these barriers, offering modular, future-proof systems that adapt to both current and next-generation demands.

Michael Demb, VP, product strategy, TAG Video Systems: Broadcasters face two main challenges: firstly, integrating new technologies with legacy infrastructure and workflows often necessitates costly system upgrades and comprehensive staff retraining. Secondly, the rapid pace of technological advancement — combined with the adoption of new formats and protocols — requires constant education and training of technical staff. Simultaneously, the pressure to reduce costs and minimize the human factor in critical operational aspects drives a growing need for innovation and a new generation of tools.

Mathieu Planche, CEO, Witbe: With more than a dozen different operating systems currently available on the market, one challenge affecting many in the industry is Smart TV OS fragmentation. Even without new operating systems being introduced in the future, which undoubtedly will happen, the install base of currently available diverse platforms requires ongoing support. Broadcasters need to innovate with more efficient technology to develop and deploy their service across platforms, potentially leading to new dev tools and frameworks.

Ciro Noronha, president, The RIST Forum: One challenge that many broadcasters and content providers are facing in 2025 is the lack of trained personnel, particularly for adopting and deploying new technologies. Outside broadcast operators have shied away from deploying technologies such as ST 2110 for this reason. Another difficulty is the lack of interoperability between vendors for the new technologies.

Sanjay Duda, CEO, Planetcast Media Services: Broadcasters, studios and other content owners and rightsholders will need to address fragmented supplier setups that hinder efficiency and innovation. By adopting integrated, cloud-based media services, they can reduce complexity, lower costs, and improve flexibility. This shift also requires internal cultural and operational changes, as moving to cloud and AI-powered workflows demands new ways of working and collaboration​​.

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Suzana Brady, SVP, worldwide sales and marketing, Cobalt Digital: 4K and HDR have now been available for a while in streaming and in virtually all consumer TVs sold in the last several years. Moving forward, the opportunity is in two areas: single-stream production of SDR and HDR (especially for live events) and supporting 4K and HDR in ATSC 3.0 (i.e., bringing these technologies to OTA broadcast). This opportunity is coming to fruition now — general deployment is next.

Workforce & Cultural Adaptation

Bea Alonso, independent media tech consultant and strategic advisor on behalf of Grithaus Agency: Change management remains the biggest challenge when adopting new technology solutions, and this isn’t likely to change. It’s always easier to change technology than it is to change people’s habits. For any media organization planning significant technology upgrades, careful planning will be essential to ensure teams transition smoothly.

Adam Leah, creative director, Nxtedition: Change management. Everyone is too old, the technology is too old, and everything needs a shake-up to a more software-driven, agile and consolidated approach. That requires some big changes which will challenge traditional thinking.

Martin Klampferer, director, R&D, Vizrt: Some of the challenges in adopting new technologies include having staff trained and expertise developed, to maximize the potential of new tech as soon as possible. Challenges may also occur in the complexity of integrating new solutions and modern workflows, depending on the particular set up, as well as ensuring new technologies have protected data privacy and security. The right technology provider understands the importance of supporting the entire process to minimize and overcome these potential challenges.

Narayanan Rajan, CEO, Media Excel: The primary challenge for broadcasters will be one of internal organizational resistance. Cloud and IP shifts have already exposed the lagging appetite for change in the broadcast workforce, and the friction in adopting AI to drive efficiencies will be much higher. Broadcasters will need to balance the pace of potential gains with the human and financial challenges of this transition.

Steven Edwards, VP, broadcast distribution, Rohde & Schwarz: In many ways, the technology is the easy part; the challenge is to have the ecosystem move together. In order to develop new technologies, the business case behind them must be highly convincing, and you can only truly provide a compelling business case when the entire ecosystem — from content providers to broadcasters, and equipment manufacturers — is in lockstep. This is where we are spending a lot of effort at the moment: to bring stakeholders together and to firm up the business case. 

Peter Watling, senior sales director, EMEA, Perifery: Budgets are the obvious challenge, and with this, technology suppliers have adapted their commercial offerings to suit most purchasing demands. Another challenge can be personnel, as change is often met with resistance. It’s a change of mindset to move away from processes and workflows that have been in place forever and a day, but this needs to happen.

Dana Forte, SVP product management and strategic partnerships, Vubiquity: One big challenge is building a strong bridge between established workflows, often powered via legacy platforms, and the north star of empowering citizen developers, closest to the supply chain, to plug in to these new “acceleration adaptors.”

Robin Kirchhoffer, CMO, Dalet: Legacy systems pose a considerable challenge, as outdated infrastructure can be difficult and costly to upgrade or replace. This often leads to inefficiencies and limits the ability to leverage new technologies and exploit emerging opportunities fully. Finally, a shift in mindset from a reactive to a proactive approach is necessary to anticipate future trends and prepare for them.

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What regulatory changes might impact the broadcasting industry in 2025?  

Dan Goman, CEO, Ateliere Creative Technologies: Post-election regulatory changes are expected to pave the way for accelerated M&A activities. The predicted loosening of restrictions could fuel consolidation efforts, allowing broadcasters and streamers to achieve economies of scale and bolster their market positions. However, regulatory shifts could bring their own set of benefits and risks, requiring careful navigation.

Tim Jackson, SVP, sales and marketing, Globecast: The new FCC under Brendan Carr could look very different from what we’ve known in the past. We should expect significant M&A deregulation and potentially some licensing deregulation, but at the same time there are cries to crack down on certain freedoms that broadcasters have enjoyed throughout the history of our industry. This is very much a “let’s see what happens” scenario, but I doubt it’s going to be business as usual at all. 

Vincent Noyer, director, product marketing, Lynx Technik: Tariffs, when applied arbitrarily and broadly, can significantly reshape markets, creating new segments and introducing unexpected supply chain bottlenecks.

Duncan Beattie, market development manager, Tuxera: Many countries are introducing changes to protect younger audiences, whilst others will increase the geographical delivery revenue share payable by OTT providers. GDPR and other personal data restrictions could also make personalization content challenging.

Sergio Brighel, EVP, robotics and prompting technology, Videndum: Broadcasters and content distributors in Europe are likely to feel the impact of the European Accessibility Act 2025, which brings in the need for higher accessibility standards, including subtitles and audio descriptions for both live and on-demand content. This will impact both public and private broadcasters, necessitating investments in new technologies, content modifications, and staff training to ensure compliance. While challenging, these requirements also present opportunities for innovation and expansion in accessible viewing experiences, fostering a more inclusive media landscape.

What role will sustainability play in the future operations of broadcast facilities?  

Business Reality vs. Sustainability Goals

Derek Barrilleaux, CEO, Projective: Unfortunately, sustainability always takes a back seat to core business needs, and with the business pressures traditional broadcasters are facing, sustainability efforts will suffer. Efficiency gains, and elimination of waste will be the most likely way to drive sustainability improvements. 

Jan Weigner, CTO, Cinegy: Seemingly none, thanks to our collective AI gold rush. The biggest concern now isn’t carbon footprints — it’s securing enough raw power to feed the ever-growing ranks of water-cooled Nvidia GPU racks in mega-scale data centers. Corporate sustainability pledges are quietly taking a back seat to market share and AI capabilities. Drill, baby drill? Train, baby, train.

Michael Lantz, CEO, Accedo: Despite some lack of visible progress there does seem to be a lot of movement behind the scenes with many companies setting up the right process, but slower than originally anticipated, and still with unclear results, meaning that external messaging has been toned down. I believe that in 2025, we will see sustainability return as an important theme for media companies, but this time we will begin to see more tangible results that will have a positive impact on making this industry more sustainable. I wish that we will see alignment from all media companies in how they measure success and that they can jointly work with benchmarks so everyone can see the progress that the industry is making.

Simon Hawkings, director of sales and business acceleration, Ross Video: In Europe, public broadcasters will face scrutiny to provide sustainability metrics for how they do things and how their suppliers do things. But sustainability often hits a brick wall with CFOs who aren’t willing to spend more unless it’s mandated by government policy.

Technical & Infrastructure Solutions

Thorsten Sauer, CEO, Pixel Power: Sustainability is an issue that (quite rightly) keeps on growing in importance. In terms of facilities specifically, we’re increasingly going to see sustainability metrics baked into the building of new facilities or the refurbishment of existing sites; everything from energy consumption and the use of solar power to HVAC, rainwater collection and the carbon footprint of building materials used. We’re also going to see much less hardware and rack space in facilities as broadcasters continue to favor software-defined solutions that offer greater flexibility and modularity.

Tim Jackson, SVP, sales and marketing, Globecast: With Globecast’s recent move, we went from 20+ satellite antennas to just two, using other facilities to service our other satellite requirements. Our recent move from a 1985 building to a much newer one with more efficient HVAC systems is also helpful. The key point is that sustainability is a significant economic benefit so it’s not an “either/or” situation.

Steve Reynolds, CEO, Imagine Communications: In 2025, we will continue to see broadcasters embrace energy-efficient practices, including transitioning from analog to digital systems, adopting LED lighting, and implementing advanced cooling technologies for data centers. We will also see an increase in remote production workflows supported by technological advancements like ST 2110 and JPEG XS, which will help reduce travel-related emissions, and an uptick in hybrid systems that combine on-prem infrastructure with cloud resources to further optimize energy use. A focus on environmental sustainability can also positively impact business sustainability, as modern systems enable broadcasters to consolidate and automate media workflows, make the most of existing resources, and achieve sustainable, scalable and profitable growth.

Suzana Brady, SVP, worldwide sales and marketing, Cobalt Digital: Two parts comprise a product’s lifetime: the energy/water/packaging/natural resources used to make the product, and the energy/resources used to operate it. Once products are built, however, they should only have to rely on power (electricity) to run, and cooling. Designing products that use the least amount of power and cooling will pay off over the life of the product and have the most optimal impact on the environment.

Erling Hedkvist, sales and business development, Arkona Technologies and Manifold Technologies: Broadcasters are more aware that less hardware means less energy consumption, less need for cooling, and fewer transport requirements — all crucial for a lower carbon footprint in large-scale event production. Commercially available programmable acceleration cards (PACs) combine the benefits of utilizing a shared resource pool with the low power requirements of FPGA while providing the performance of uncompressed, high quality, low latency video processing for tier-one productions. In addition, the migration from traditional fleets of specialized trucks to the new Virtual OB concept illustrates not only the industry’s capacity for innovation but also the drive toward more scalable, efficient, and environmentally sustainable solutions.

Regulatory & Industry Pressure

James Fraser, VP, U.S Sales, Moments Lab: The digital sector impacts the environment to a surprising degree, even more so now with AI and its growing data center energy consumption. At the same time, as vendors, we see that environmental responsibility and sustainability is increasingly part of regulation and customer requirements. These requirements will steer broadcasters towards suppliers who demonstrate a commitment to sustainability through initiatives such as setting annual carbon reduction targets and developing low-energy consumption AI models.

Kristan Bullett, CEO, Humans Not Robots (HNR): Despite the market’s current mood, sustainability remains a crucial issue for the industry, with incoming legislation now driving the need for action. Leading the charge are trailblazing organizations — particularly telcos, given their ownership of fixed-line networks — who are demonstrating the powerful potential of prioritizing sustainability. Their efforts show how a focus on environmental responsibility can deliver a triple benefit: reducing costs, streamlining architectures, and boosting satisfaction for both consumers and shareholders alike.

Bea Alonso, independent media tech consultant and strategic advisor on behalf of Grithaus Agency: With the current focus on efficiency and cost savings, sustainability initiatives will be most successful if they also deliver cost reductions. In the UK and EU, where governments are imposing new regulations on more environmentally-friendly business practices, sustainability will inevitably need to take a more prominent place in broadcasters’ agendas.

Russell Johnson, director, Hitomi Broadcast: Remote production enabled by IP infrastructure is dramatically reducing the need to transport equipment and personnel around the globe for major sporting events. Broadcasters are moving from shipping multiple aircraft loads of equipment to employing streamlined fly-packs with remote workflows.

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