2026 Outlook: Imagine’s Steve Reynolds on unified operations and cross-platform advertising

Vendor consolidation is reshaping the broadcast technology landscape as customers grow larger through mergers and acquisitions.

Steve Reynolds, CEO of Imagine Communications, said the trend is inevitable and will accelerate in 2026 in an interview with NCS. 

“As the customers get bigger, the vendors have to get bigger,” Reynolds said.

Imagine completed its acquisition of select Pixel Power products on Oct. 31, adding playout, automation and multiviewer capabilities to its portfolio. The deal brought Gallium and StreamMaster, which serve European public broadcasters including TV2 in Norway, TV5 in France and SVT in Sweden, along with Prismon, a software-based multiviewer designed for facility-scale deployments.

The acquisition originated from Rohde & Schwarz’s decision to divest its broadcast products. Reynolds said the transaction reflects a broader pattern of industry consolidation driven by the economics of scale.

The economic reset facing broadcast and media tech spending in 2026

Consolidation reshapes the vendor landscape

Reynolds identified two consolidation drivers. Large broadcast groups prefer working with fewer suppliers who can provide comprehensive solutions rather than managing integration across dozens of vendors. Vendors, meanwhile, need scale to achieve operational efficiency.

“You can’t have 10 small marketing teams. You can’t have 10 small R&D teams. You can’t have 10 small sales teams,” Reynolds said.

“You need one sales team, one marketing team, one product development team, one support team. That’s how we can scale up to be able to meet the economics of these situations.”

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He predicted both acquisition types will continue in 2026: large companies buying smaller companies and large companies spinning off non-core assets. Imagine’s previous acquisition of a business unit from Marketron followed the latter pattern.

“They had made some investment in it. They weren’t seeing the returns that they wanted on that investment, and so they divested the unit to us,” he said.

The consolidation trend coincides with a shift away from do-it-yourself development. Reynolds said companies have realized that building in-house systems costs as much or more than purchasing commercial products while creating ongoing maintenance obligations.

“That build cost is a year after year after year cost because once you’ve built something internally, it means you’re maintaining it internally,” Reynolds said. “And to your point, you’ve got to keep that guy. And often that guy is a very expensive guy, and now he’s a permanent part of your staff.”

Imagine is focused on software acquisitions, particularly virtualized software that can run in customer data centers, private clouds or public clouds. Reynolds noted the company maintains a strong hardware business, including its SNT product line of SMPTE ST 2110 gateways and network processors.

NextGen TV and competitive advertising

Reynolds has supported ATSC 3.0 since its early development, participating in discussions when the standard was first announced approximately 10 years ago. He said NextGen TV capabilities are necessary for broadcast television to compete with digital platforms on advertising.

“Broadcast television cannot do targeted advertising,” Reynolds said.

“If you’re an ad buyer and you’re gone after a specific demographic or a specific buyer list, you know, you got a first-party list you want to go after, you can’t do it on broadcast. The broadcast guys need those capabilities to be on a level playing field.”

Imagine provides advertising technology to major broadcast groups, including Sinclair Broadcasting, which recently consolidated its ad operations on Imagine’s platform. Reynolds said delivering advanced ad decisioning capabilities and proof of performance requires NextGen TV’s technical foundation.

“You’ve got to have some of the capabilities that 3.0 brings or next-gen brings in order to really leverage the more modern buying models, the more modern ad decisioning models and certainly to be able to provide the kind of proof of performance that ad buyers are looking for today,” he said.

Reynolds noted that ATSC 1.0 does not support hyperlocal advertising, which cable operators have successfully deployed for decades. Imagine operates systems serving approximately 6,500 hyperlocal zones in the U.S. for cable operators.

“The business model around hyperlocal advertising has already been proven,” he said. “You can’t go hyperlocal with 1.0. It doesn’t work. You’ve got to make the move to the next-gen technology in order to do that kind of hyperlocal advertising.”

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NextGen TV also enables cross-platform advertising that combines broadcast’s mass simultaneous reach with targeted delivery and on-demand viewing.

“Once NextGen is fully rolled out, you get those three things. You get broadcast plus unicast plus time-shifting for on-demand,” he said.

Reynolds cited models already operating in markets including the U.K., where companies like Sky and ITV sell what they call “total TV” campaigns that tap into different audience segments. Similar models have been adopted in Nordic countries and Australia.

“We just have to find ways to bring that to the U.S. market,” Reynolds said. “Because to me, ultimately, that’s what ensures the survival of the broadcasters.”

However, consumer adoption remains a significant obstacle.

“Advertisers want to buy big audiences, so if there’s not big audiences, you don’t see the dollars flowing in that direction,” Reynolds said.

He said broadcasters are conducting fundamental work on transmitters and backend systems but face challenges in building audience scale.

“I just wish it was happening faster,” he said.

The trends shaping broadcast and media production in 2026

Unified operations and audience as inventory

Reynolds said Imagine’s focus centers on two areas: playout systems for content origination and advertising technology for monetization. The company works with streaming platforms including Netflix, Amazon and Apple, as well as traditional broadcasters, to enable unified origination across multiple distribution platforms.

“What doesn’t make any sense, and again, this goes back to the cost and scale thing, is to operate silos within your business,” Reynolds said. “People tried that and it didn’t work. And the reason it doesn’t work is because the costs go up linearly.”

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He said Imagine is working with customers to move toward single video operations that handle origination across broadcast, streaming and on-demand platforms. This approach connects to what Imagine calls “Total TV,” a concept focused on treating all viewing as a single audience pool.

“If you’re not treating your audience as being a single pool of inventory, you get back into that siloed mentality,” Reynolds said.

“What we’ve encouraged our customers to do is to look at the total audience as being the inventory. The inventory is not the spots. The inventory is the audience, and you’ve got to find ways to optimally monetize that.”

Reynolds said broadcast executives at major groups including Sinclair, Nexstar and Gray have stated their commitment to remaining in the television and local media business.

“I got to take it at face value that this is the business they want to be in, and everything that we’re doing is trying to help,” he said.

He acknowledged that audience fragmentation through digital devices, time-shifted viewing and on-demand consumption is occurring regardless of industry preferences.

“It’s real and it’s happening, and what are you going to do about it?” he said.

Reynolds said different types of organizations face different risks from underestimating change. Media companies moving to cloud may not be adopting ST 2110 quickly enough. Ad-driven operators should already be treating audience as inventory rather than spots. National and public broadcasters may not be planning unified origination strategies for linear, streaming and on-demand delivery.

“In all of these cases, the interesting aspect is that there is likely a similar business somewhere in the world that is already solving the problem,” Reynolds said.

He described Imagine’s role as connecting peers across the industry to share ideas and practices.