NAB Show Preview: From handoffs to continuous flow in the modern media supply chain

For years, the central challenge in media supply chain operations was connectivity, getting disparate systems to share data and pass content between them without manual intervention. That work is largely done. The problem that has replaced it is harder to solve and less visible from the outside.

“The integration challenge is largely behind us – most media organizations can get their systems to talk to each other – but the orchestration challenge is the next hurdle, as the complexity of managing more content variants, more delivery destinations, and more frequent business disruptions like mergers and restructuring continues to compound,” said Geoff Stedman, chief marketing officer at SDVI. “What matters now is whether your supply chain can make intelligent decisions in real time: routing work based on content value, adapting to shifting deadlines, and giving operations teams the visibility they need to continuously optimize rather than simply react.”

At the 2026 NAB Show, the supply chain conversation is expected to reflect that shift – from whether systems are connected to whether those connections are actually working to reduce friction and generate value.

“As media organizations connect workflows that were once siloed across ingest, QC, processing, packaging, compliance, and distribution, the ability to reduce manual intervention and surface issues becomes much more important,” said Anupama Anantharaman, vice president of product management, Interra Systems. “The industry is moving toward a more orchestrated and efficient operating model, and quality assurance has to evolve alongside it.”

From handoffs to continuous flow

The operational model that defined media supply chains for decades — content moving through a series of discrete handoffs between systems and teams — is being replaced by a more fluid one.

Orchestration is the layer that makes that possible, sitting above individual systems and coordinating how work moves between them.

“As media workflows move from fixed air chains to IP-connected software-based services, orchestration is becoming the control layer over ingest and playout services, aligning them with automation and traffic systems, and managing routing and redundancy in real time. By linking previously siloed systems across the media supply chain, orchestration streamlines operations and enables broadcasters to launch channels, regional variants, and pop-up services far more quickly,” said Steve Reynolds, chief executive officer of Imagine Communications.

The value of that coordination becomes clearest when content volumes are high and distribution endpoints are multiplying.

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“The media supply chain is becoming less about individual systems and more about how those systems connect. As content volumes and distribution endpoints multiply, orchestration and workflow automation are becoming essential to keeping operations manageable. The industry is realizing that reducing friction between ingest, processing, and delivery often creates more value than adding new standalone tools,” said Jean-Christophe Perier, chief marketing officer at Globecast.

That reframing, friction reduction as a value driver, represents a meaningful shift in how supply chain investment is being justified internally.

“A clear shift is underway from disconnected workflows toward something far more coordinated. At NAB Show, expect to see greater emphasis on how content moves through an organization as a continuous flow, rather than as a series of handoffs between systems. Treating content as connected data is making it easier to reuse material, keep teams aligned across platforms, and reduce the operational friction that slows story delivery,” said Craig Wilson, principal enterprise specialist for broadcast at Avid.

Visibility across the chain

Orchestration depends on knowing what is happening across the supply chain at any given moment. As production and delivery environments have become more distributed, that visibility has become harder to maintain — and more consequential when it is absent.

“The media supply chain conversation has matured from connectivity to intelligence: organizations have the transport infrastructure, but they’re struggling with real-time visibility across all of it simultaneously. In ST 2110 environments especially, the biggest operational gaps aren’t in the transport layer — they’re in knowing what’s actually flowing through each node of the chain as conditions change. The shift we’re seeing is toward unified observability tools that surface signal-level data across the full production and delivery path, not just at the transmission endpoint,” said Michael Demb, vice president of product strategy at TAG Video Systems.

Content is increasingly distributed across separate storage environments, compounding the visibility problem for operations teams managing work across locations and platforms.

“Content creation, storage, processing systems, distribution platforms, teams, and governance are more distributed than ever — fragmentation that will only grow. Organizations need ways to connect these separate content pools, so teams and systems can interact with content in one unified view and access governance. This gives teams visibility into where content exists, enables secure access for the right stakeholders, and allows workflows and automation to be triggered directly where content resides, keeping work moving without unnecessary transfers or operational friction,” said Chris Fournelle, director of content and marketing production at Signiant.

Metadata as operational infrastructure

“At every step along the content chain you need the ability to interpret incoming formats and resolutions, manage in-house standards and storage, and prepare multiple versions for on-going delivery of essence and metadata, which demands powerful, agile processing,” said Jan Weigner, CTO, Cinegy.

Underlying effective orchestration is metadata — the structured information that tells automated systems what content is, where it should go and what should happen to it. For organizations with large archives, the state of that metadata often determines how much value those assets can actually generate.

Metadata is crucial to broadcast workflows, enabling a world of automation

“The biggest challenge in the media supply chain is no longer file movement alone. It is connecting the decisions, metadata, and workflows that determine how content moves from ingest through production, post, and distribution. In 2025, Iconik customers processed more than 500 million jobs, with millions triggered automatically, reflecting a broader shift toward connected, event-driven operations,” said Kathleen Barrett, chief executive officer of Backlight. “But automation only works when the underlying structure is reliable.”

AI-based tools for metadata generation have become one of the more practical applications of artificial intelligence in media operations, addressing a problem that has historically required significant manual labor.

“By applying AI to automate the creation of metadata, organizations can now instantly catalog and connect disparate content sources, making vast archives fully searchable and usable. Broadcasters can license this rich metadata to third parties or use it internally to make their historical archives instantly searchable, creating entirely new revenue streams and production efficiencies,” said Sean King, chief revenue officer at Veritone.

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“At NAB, we expect more companies explore how they can leverage agentic AI to deliver content faster, more efficiently, and at a higher quality,” said Steph Lone, global leader, solutions architecture, media and entertainment, games and sports, Amazon Web Services. “Agentic AI is fundamentally changing the way content moves through the media supply chain, from creation to audience delivery, automating well-defined processes like encoding, packaging, and compliance monitoring. Since specialized agents work together through natural language requests, these systems eliminate the need to navigate multiple interfaces and manually coordinate between systems.”

The supply chain as a value engine

The longer-term argument being made by several vendors is that supply chain investment should be evaluated not just on operational efficiency but on revenue potential. Content libraries that are well-organized, well-described and connected to distribution infrastructure can generate returns that poorly managed archives cannot.

“The transition from a legacy supply chain to a content-to-value operating system is essential for turning vast content libraries into active revenue engines. By connecting AI to every stage of the lifecycle — from ingest to yield — media companies can finally break down the silos between streaming and broadcast operations. The supply chain is no longer a cost center, but a proactive tool for value creation,” said Goutham Vinjamuri, chief operating officer at Quickplay.

That argument requires a different kind of infrastructure than most supply chains were designed around — one that connects rights, scheduling, personalization and distribution into a single operational layer rather than managing them separately.

“To establish a frictionless connection between audience and content, the media industry needs an audience-centric supply chain. This cannot be achieved through mere gut feeling but calls for a real-time enterprise with a continuous decision layer that connects creative development, rights, scheduling, curation, personalization, and forecasting into a single adaptive system across the entire content lifecycle,” said Ivan Verbesselt, chief strategy and marketing officer at Mediagenix.

Whether the infrastructure on the NAB Show floor can deliver on that vision in practice — at scale, across the varied operational realities of different media organizations — is the question buyers will be pressing vendors to answer.

NAB Show 2026 opens April 18, with exhibits running April 19-22 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Make sure to check out the latest NAB Show News in our dedicated section or visit the NAB Show website to register for the show.