NAB Show Preview: How software is redefining the broadcast control room

More platforms, more simultaneous productions and leaner crews have put new demands on broadcast control room infrastructure. How facilities are responding and what a control room even means in a distributed production environment are expected to be key themes at the 2026 NAB Show.

“Live production control rooms have evolved into split-second decision-making centers as audience expectations for quality have only continued to rise. Production control rooms that have prioritized accuracy, consistency, and polish have yielded the most success. Heading into NAB Show, the designers and decision-makers behind these spaces will be focused on these core essentials and how they move toward the future with more IP-based, distributed architectures that support remote production, higher dynamic range, and tighter data integration,” said Abe Abt, senior product consultant at AJA Video Systems.

That transition is moving quickly.

“The shift from SDI to IP media infrastructures for live broadcast facilities seems to be happening faster than the speed of the technology itself,” said Eric Gsell, vice president of SMPTE. “The NAB Show will feature numerous programs and sessions on how these technologies work, how they can be designed for efficiency, and how they can be kept secure.”

The pressure driving that shift is real: more platforms to feed, more simultaneous productions to manage and in many cases fewer people to run them. The conversations at NAB Show 2026 are expected to reflect an industry working through what control room infrastructure looks like when the constraints of physical location and dedicated hardware are no longer assumed.

Software as the new facility

The shift toward software-defined production has changed what a control room fundamentally is. Rather than a room defined by what is bolted to a rack, the operational center of gravity has moved to the software layer connecting distributed assets.

“Today’s control rooms have to do more than switch between cameras — they’re where broadcast, streaming, and live events all come together. Building systems that are flexible and networked lets teams handle multiple workflows without slowing down,” said Roberto Musso, technical director of NDI.

“Control rooms are no longer defined by a single physical location. Rather, they are increasingly becoming distributed operational systems in which production tools and infrastructure run as software services rather than dedicated equipment in a fixed location. Today, the most successful control room implementations for live sports and events preserve familiar broadcast workflows and operational visibility while decoupling them from dedicated hardware and physical facilities,” said Colin Bonzey, director of tech ops at BitFire.

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“The control room used to be defined by what was bolted to the rack — today it’s the software layer that ties distributed production assets together across on-prem, cloud, and remote operators,” said Michael Demb, vice president of product strategy at TAG Video Systems.

Control rooms are becoming more adaptive as a result.

“By combining video wall processing, AV-over-IP, and IP KVM, organizations can deliver high-performance visualization and real-time interaction while maintaining the flexibility to expand and evolve their operations. Built on open standards and hybrid designs, these systems support interoperability, higher resolutions, and resilient workflows across a wide range of mission-critical environments,” said Daniel Maloney, manager of platforms and ecosystems at Matrox Video.

Hybrid as the working reality

For most broadcasters, the path to software-defined production is not a wholesale replacement of existing infrastructure. It is a gradual layering of new capabilities on top of what is already in place — a hybrid model that keeps legacy systems running while extending what operators can do.

“The move toward IP and software-defined production doesn’t have to mean rebuilding an entire facility overnight. At NAB Show this year we will see how broadcasters are increasingly adopting hybrid environments where modern orchestration and control layers allow new distributed workflows to coexist with existing infrastructure. The real value comes when operators can manage increasingly complex production environments through unified control systems, regardless of whether the underlying technology is baseband, IP, or cloud based,” said Joyce Bente, president and chief executive officer of the Americas at Riedel Communications.

Visibility across a distributed signal chain

As control room environments spread across on-premises, cloud and remote infrastructure, maintaining a clear picture of what every signal is doing across every path becomes a central operational challenge.

“When your environment is that spread out, maintaining consistent signal oversight across every path becomes the central operational challenge. The trend we’re seeing is engineering-grade analysis moving out of standalone hardware and directly into the monitoring environments operators already live in,” said Demb.

Multiviewers — systems that display multiple video sources simultaneously on a single screen or display wall — have historically been hardware-based tools. Their role is expanding as control rooms distribute.

“Modern software-defined multiviewers running on COTS hardware are evolving beyond simple display walls, integrating with monitoring platforms to provide real-time insights into signal health, metadata, and system performance. This visibility helps teams detect issues earlier, reconfigure control room workflows more quickly, and maintain reliable operations across increasingly complex broadcast, streaming, and live event productions,” said Steve Reynolds, chief executive officer of Imagine Communications.

COTS, or commercial off-the-shelf hardware, refers to standard computing equipment rather than purpose-built broadcast hardware — a distinction that matters for cost and flexibility as facilities modernize.

Automation and the production workload

Alongside infrastructure changes, automation is becoming a more significant part of how control rooms manage the volume of content modern broadcast operations require. Newsrooms and live production teams are being asked to produce more output across more platforms without a proportional increase in staffing.

“Newsrooms are being asked to deliver more content across more platforms with leaner teams, so automated workflows remove repetitive tasks and ensure systems run reliably behind the scenes. When integrated well, teams can focus on producing compelling stories, efficiently scale output, and maintain consistent quality across every platform, without adding headcount,” said Sam Peterson, chief operating officer at Bitcentral.

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That pressure — more content, more platforms, the same number of hours in a day — is the common thread running through most of the infrastructure conversations expected at the show.

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.