Industry Insights: Cost reduction and operational efficiency drive remote production adoption

In the second part of our Industry Insights roundtable on remote production, broadcast technology leaders dive deeper into the economic and operational advantages driving widespread adoption of distributed workflows.

The discussion delves into how remote production changes team dynamics and democratizes access to high-quality production tools.

This roundtable examines how smaller broadcasters are utilizing cloud-based platforms to compete with major networks, the evolving skill sets needed for modern production crews, and the transformative impact on live event coverage across multiple locations. Industry experts also address critical considerations around network reliability, security protocols, and future-proofing strategies as remote production continues to reshape the broadcast landscape. 

Key takeaways from this Industry Insights roundtable

• Significant cost savings: Remote production can reduce on-site crew requirements and eliminate expensive OB truck deployments, with some broadcasters achieving up to 70% cost savings while enabling multiple event coverage from centralized locations.
• Democratized access opportunities: Cloud-based remote production tools allow smaller broadcasters to access premium production capabilities without major capital investments, enabling them to compete with larger networks using subscription or usage-based models.
• Enhanced operational agility: Software-defined remote infrastructure enables real-time system reconfiguration and rapid scaling of resources, allowing broadcasters to respond instantly to breaking news, viewership spikes, or last-minute production changes.
• Transformed collaboration dynamics: Remote workflows are reshaping team structures by enabling specialized talent sharing across multiple productions while requiring new technical skills in IP networking, cloud platforms, and virtual environments.
• Expanded coverage capabilities: Multi-location broadcasts are becoming more feasible and cost-effective, allowing broadcasters to cover events that were previously logistically or financially prohibitive while providing localized content for global audiences.

How do remote production tools contribute to reducing overall production costs?

Matthew Williams-Neale, VP, marketing, Appear: By reducing the need for large on-site crews, expensive equipment deployments, and extensive travel, remote production significantly cuts costs. Centralized production also allows teams to cover multiple events per day, increasing operational efficiency and maximizing ROI.

Jon Finegold, CMO, Signiant: Remote production tools reduce costs by minimizing travel expenses, lowering on-site infrastructure requirements, and enabling more efficient use of talent and resources. It allows teams to collaborate from anywhere in the world, reducing downtime and streamlining workflows.

Roberto Musso, technical director, NDI: Producing content remotely cuts costs by reducing travel and accommodation expenses. It also eliminates much of the need for on-site infrastructure, such as control rooms, cabling, and dedicated production spaces, which can be expensive to set up and maintain. Using existing tools for video-over-IP helps production teams minimize the need for proprietary hardware.

João Tocha, owner and founder, Digital Azul: Remote production tools have made high-end broadcasting accessible for projects that previously might have been financially or logistically out of reach. By streamlining operations, we can allocate budgets more effectively toward enhancing the creative elements of our broadcasts, ultimately providing greater value to our clients.

Chris Scheck, head of marketing content, Lawo: Remote production workflows allow content producers to send smaller crews on-site, which results in lower travel and accommodation costs, and less hardware needs to be shipped to the venues. Additionally, a spin-off of remote production workflows — called “distributed production” — can be leveraged in situations where certain key crew members cannot make it to the production hub on time. They can work from where they are, which is made even easier by Lawo Workspace HOME Apps that run on any device with an HTML5 browser.

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Colby Winegar, CEO, Storj: Remote production tools have evolved into collaborative storytelling with global contribution. At the heart of production is globally accessible media assets that allow for journalists and news producers to seamlessly collaborate, write scripts, edit, access media, and send content to any platform.

Eric Chang, marketing content architect, Telestream: Production costs are significantly reduced by minimizing on-site personnel and infrastructure. Scalable cloud workflow platforms such as Vantage and robust connectivity let broadcasters access tools and talent remotely, streamlining ingest, production, and distribution. By leveraging remote facility resources, broadcasters can achieve major savings and operational efficiency while maintaining quality.

Simone D’Antone, global strategy leader, broadcast, AWS: It’s easier to match resources to your specific needs, instead of overprovisioning, and staff can work from nearly anywhere. They can operate out of a centralized production control room or from different locations all over the country or even the world. This effectively eliminates physical limitations and reduces overall production costs, both from a talent and hardware perspective.

Dave Van Hoy, president, Advanced Systems Group: If you look at the reasons behind moving from a conventional mobile production model, the primary drivers are speed and cost. Operating a traditional mobile production is not just expensive, it does not serve the speed at which media wants to be consumed today. Between the physical gear and getting it to the site, you’re looking at substantial expenses.

Deon LeCointe, director, networked solutions, Sony Electronics: These technologies centralize production tasks, enabling a small team to manage multiple events from one location and replace traditional OB trucks with lightweight “flypacks” and cloud infrastructure. Broadcasters benefit from faster deployment, increased efficiency, and up to 70% cost savings.

Greg Macchia, product marketing manager, live production, Riedel Communications: Remote production tools reduce production costs in several ways. They cut way down on travel costs—for both the crew and the gear — and you don’t lose as much time getting people and equipment from place to place. Additionally, there is less equipment needed on site, which reduces the footprint of a traditional production truck and associated costs for the equipment, maintenance, transportation, etc.

John Mailhot, SVP, product management at Imagine Communications: Remote production not only cuts travel costs by reducing the size of on-site crews — it also enables more efficient use of production resources. With a centralized infrastructure, media companies can often use the same equipment and even the same creative team to deliver multiple live events in a single day.

Dave Lanton, senior broadcast architect, Vizrt: Moving production to cloud means moving to an OpEx vs CapEx financial model. This is a game changer for any production that is seasonal, such as live sports. Cloud gives you the ability to scale up and down your production resources as needed, and only pay for what you need, when you need it.

Henry Goodman, director of product management, Calrec: Fundamentally, by maximizing utilization of your resources. Each individual production will always have its unique set of production values, priorities and demands whether it is a large-scale big-ticket event or coverage of smaller more niche sports. The advantage remote distributed production tools give is the flexibility to locate both equipment and personnel resources where they can be used most efficiently.

David Edwards, product manager, Net Insight: Operators frequently point to classic on-site production having to carry sunk overheads of equipment lying dormant for much of its operation lifetime. Remote production is less sensitive in this respect. By being a central resource for multiple events, the operationally active time can be much higher. Sometimes, however, the tech-heavy broadcast world can overly concentrate on the technology and reduce focus on the human side. One of the less spoken sides of remote production is the opening in diversity of personnel it can promote.

Ben Hayes, director, client services, BitFire: With remote production tools, it’s possible to minimize the need for on-site personnel — directors, producers, and other expensive operators — and reduce travel and accommodation costs by allowing them to work off-site. Remote switching, graphics, and replay through the cloud not only negates the need for expensive mobile units or on-site control rooms but also supports centralized muti-event production. Because cloud-based production software tools are provisioned only when used, production teams can convert higher fixed capital costs to variable operational costs.

Marcus B. Brodersen, CEO, Pixotope: The economic impact of remote production extends far beyond the obvious savings in travel and logistics. The real savings come from using specialized talent and technical assets across multiple productions in a single day, something that was physically impossible when everyone had to be on location. This means that even mid-sized broadcasters are suddenly able to cover more events with the same resource base.

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How is remote production increasing agility and responsiveness during live broadcasts?

Matthew Williams-Neale, VP, marketing, Appear: Remote production empowers broadcasters to quickly scale resources, adapt to last-minute changes, and switch between cloud and on-premise environments. This flexibility is critical in fast-paced environments like sports, where real-time responsiveness is essential.

João Tocha, owner and founder, Digital Azul: We’ve fully embraced remote production by designing our Lisbon-based MCR to be highly flexible. Having this centralized setup means we can continually evolve our production capabilities rather than repeatedly building and dismantling gear for each event. It allows us to quickly add new features or adjust workflows as needed between productions. Ultimately, it means we can spend less time managing equipment logistics and more time focusing on storytelling and editorial quality.

Chris Scheck, head of marketing content, Lawo: Especially operations that need to switch among several venues during the day benefit from an IP network and a robust broadcast control system that performs thousands of switching and configuration actions when at the press of a single button. True agility can be achieved with processing apps that run on COTS servers and can be started and stopped as necessary, again using a broadcast controller where desired. Stopped apps consume no energy or CPU capacity, allowing other apps to be used in their place.

Simone D’Antone, global strategy leader, broadcast, AWS: Since many components are virtualized in remote production, broadcasters can add extra camera feeds with relative ease. Many cameras now natively connect to the internet through 5G so it’s just a matter of configuring their settings to your remote production control room. There you can create a new input on the vision mixer, implement different kinds of graphics, or new replay channels as well as regionalize content for different markets — all using the same infrastructure.

Gill Payne, marketing manager, Media Links: With remote production the formula is simple: It allows you to handle multiple events at once. As the central production system frees up, it can be re-used almost immediately for the next event. Therefore, production staff can respond to and manage multiple different live productions during a given time frame.

David Isola, global director of product marketing, Black Box: Remote access tools allow operators working anywhere to contribute to live broadcasts in real time, whether making adjustments, rerouting signals, or responding to issues. This model not only improves responsiveness during fast-paced events and breaking news but also enables teams to scale up quickly, bringing on off-site personnel as needed.

Dave Van Hoy, president, Advanced Systems Group: The key to increasing agility and responsiveness during live broadcasts is the software-defined nature of remote infrastructure today. Systems can be reconfigured for the most efficient tools for that particular production in real-time. That is completely impossible in a traditional physical infrastructure.

Marcus B. Brodersen, CEO, Pixotope: The days of being locked into a production plan once trucks arrive on-site are thankfully behind us. Remote production now enables teams to quickly pivot, reconfigure virtual sets, bring in remote experts, and integrate real-time data, keeping the broadcast dynamic. This flexibility allows broadcasters to respond instantly to breaking news or viewership spikes, scaling resources like rendering power and specialists in real-time while maintaining high-quality content.

How is remote collaboration technology reshaping team dynamics in production?

Gordon Kapes, president, Studio Technologies: This question brings up both positive and negative issues. People are social creatures and having a production team that’s physically together can bring some “magic” to events. But that can limit what specific personnel are available. Senior technical people can be “shared” across multiple events and bring a level of expertise that’s normally not available. And on-air personnel who are simply unable or unwilling to travel can be utilized.

Robert Nicholas, CEO, SipRadius: The technology should not be dictating to the people: the creative people making the program should be supported, transparently, by the technology. This means incorporating things like talkback, messaging and document exchange into your data streams. What is really important is to ensure they are wrapped up in the same data security model as the content, to avoid any possibility of critical information leaking.

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Erling Hedkvist, business development manager, Arkona and Manifold: Ever since Covid everyone has gotten used to video conferencing tools such as Zoom, Teams, Google Meet etc. and production environments are no different and are heavy users of these. As an example, we’re adding these tools directly into our products to help facilitate video multiviewers that plug directly into the video conference.

Roberto Musso, technical director, NDI: The rise of remote collaboration has completely reshaped how teams work together. Now, production crews can stay in sync and get things done efficiently no matter where they are. This opens the door to more diverse, flexible hiring and makes it easier to keep content flowing around the clock and across time zones.

João Tocha, owner and founder, Digital Azul: We’ve developed a practical approach to help our teams collaborate effectively in a remote setup. It’s still relatively new ground, so we’ve put clear guidelines in place to support the process. It’s been a collective effort, and over time, we’ve found new ways of working that feel natural and work well for everyone involved.

Colby Winegar, CEO, Storj: With remote collaboration and the supporting collaboration tools, team members can be located anywhere news is breaking. This allows teams to instantaneously communicate to other production personnel, while giving instant access to tools and media. News production, whether at a local station, a medium-sized broadcaster, or a large broadcaster, can now be done in real-time as events occur.

David Isola, global director of product marketing, Black Box: Collaboration tools such as multi-user KVM and shared control interfaces allow dispersed teams to work on the same systems simultaneously. This approach supports real-time decision-making across roles and locations, ensuring that members of production teams remain coordinated and efficient, even when working remotely.

How is remote production influencing the evolving roles and skill sets of production crews?

Roberto Musso, technical director, NDI: Traditional broadcast roles are evolving, now requiring a mix of technical skills like IP networking, cloud platforms, virtual environments and remote system monitoring. Production crews are becoming more tech-savvy, with job roles overlapping between engineering, operations and creative tasks. Overall, remote production is creating a more flexible, multi-skilled workforce.

Dave Lanton, senior broadcast architect, Vizrt: I don’t think there is a necessary change in skill sets for crews per se, I think it’s just a shift of personnel from the field back into the office or home. With less crew traveling, you save money, travel time, and improve your carbon footprint. And, without spending time on travel days, your best crew people can be available for more productions.

Henry Goodman, director of product management, Calrec: Audio has always been seen as the problem child of remote broadcasting due to the latency of in-ear monitors (IEMs), but broadcast manufacturers have found many ways to address these challenges. Edge processing, which takes place on the edge of the network, can be controlled remotely but processed wherever the talent is, ensuring that audio processing is local even if operations like mic gain, fader level and signal routing are thousands of miles away.

How are smaller broadcasters utilizing remote production to compete with larger networks?

Matthew Williams-Neale, VP, marketing, Appear: Remote production democratizes access to premium-quality tools, allowing smaller broadcasters to deliver polished, multi-camera productions at a fraction of traditional costs. This levels the playing field, enabling them to produce content that rivals top-tier broadcasts.

Jon Finegold, CMO, Signiant: Smaller broadcasters gain access to high-quality tools without the need for large-scale infrastructure investments. Cloud-based workflows and remote collaboration allow them to produce live events and content with the efficiency of larger networks. This levels the playing field, enabling them to deliver professional-grade productions while staying cost-effective.

Sam Bogoch, CEO, Axle AI: Smaller teams are leveraging lightweight platforms like Axle AI to access professional MAM and editing capabilities without large IT overhead. This democratizes access to high-end production workflows, allowing local stations and digital-first outlets to deliver high-quality, multi-camera content at scale. Best of all, this can be accomplished with our private cloud software and internal AI engines, so that valuable media and metadata are never shared with public-cloud AI that might be used to train Generative AI models.

Eric Chang, marketing content architect, Telestream: Remote production lowers the barrier to entry for high-quality, high-definition broadcasting by reducing expenditure on large OB vans, hardware infrastructure, and extensive travel. It allows smaller players to cover more events affordably, particularly when IP, cloud, and hybrid technology are deployed. This empowers them to deliver content previously beyond their capabilities and budget.

Simone D’Antone, global strategy leader, broadcast, AWS: The beauty of remote production with the cloud is that it’s very accessible. It can be used by larger broadcasters to reduce their costs or by smaller broadcasters to leverage the same tools that larger organizations use at fraction of the cost. Smaller broadcasters can achieve productions that would not otherwise be financially viable with CapEx barriers, and they can do so at a high quality with dynamic elements such as graphics and replays.

Deon LeCointe, director, networked solutions, Sony Electronics: Smaller broadcasters are turning to IP-based remote workflows and cloud production tools to slash costs and run leaner crews — for example, they send only minimal staff to events while streaming all camera and audio feeds back to a central hub​. These flexible, software-driven pipelines let them cover multiple locations and speed up delivery (remote feeds can be set up in seconds​, enabling even local or niche stations to produce professional-grade live broadcasts on tight budgets​.

Greg Macchia, product marketing manager, live production, Riedel Communications: Smaller broadcasters are using remote production to level the playing field with larger networks by reducing the need for travel and on-site resources. With specialists no longer needing to be at each event, they can work remotely and help cover multiple events with a smaller crew. This allows smaller broadcasters to manage more events from one central location, something that previously only larger networks could afford with their full sets of equipment and staff. 

Dave Lanton, senior broadcast architect, Vizrt: With the lower cost of entry for cloud vs on-prem infrastructure, it means productions of all sizes can happen without breaking the budget. This has a huge impact for smaller broadcasts, especially when it comes to niche sports. With a cloud infrastructure, smaller production teams can produce live coverage at a quality that used to be impossible due to budget constraints.

Henry Goodman, director of product management, Calrec: It is enabling many smaller broadcasters to adopt direct to consumer OTT models to compete in new distribution channels and monetize content; this not only enables them to a distribute a wider range of live content, but it does so without having to invest in new hardware and use what they already have.

Ben Hayes, director, client services, BitFire: Access to cloud-based, broadcast-quality production tools without significant capital investment enables small organizations to leverage the very same technologies used by the national networks. Smaller broadcasters can reduce costs by scaling production up or down according to the size of the event, and they also can enhance the quality of on-air storytelling by integrating top-level talent into the remote production workflow. With dramatically lower travel, setup, and equipment expenses, smaller broadcasters can reallocate resources toward producing more live events.

Richard Rees, CEO, QuickLink: Today, the rise of remote production has helped level the playing field for smaller broadcasters, with one major advantage being the reduction in overhead costs. By leveraging cloud-based and virtualized production tools, smaller broadcasters can avoid the expense of building and maintaining extensive physical infrastructure. Remote production also offers greater scalability, faster content delivery, real-time editing and distribution, keeping them competitive in fast-moving media environments, at a fraction of traditional costs.

Marcus B. Brodersen, CEO, Pixotope: Smaller broadcasters are taking advantage of cloud-based production platforms, which give them access to advanced tools through subscriptions or usage-based models, so they don’t have to make huge upfront infrastructure investments. These platforms also often come with collaboration features, allowing small teams to tap into specialized expertise whenever they need it, boosting their capabilities even more. We’re also seeing smaller broadcasters get creative by forming resource-sharing alliances, combining technology and talent to compete with larger players in the industry.

Gordon Kapes, president, Studio Technologies: The fact that costs can be greatly reduced has significantly leveled the field. This would be readily apparent in the quality of the on-air personnel that can be utilized. No longer having to travel to event sites will allow cost reduction and expansion of the available talent pool.

How is remote production changing live event coverage and multi-location broadcasts?

Adi Rozenberg, director, RIST Forum and CTO and co-founder, Alvalinks: Remote production is making live content distribution much more available, especially for smaller broadcasters. By implementing remote production workflows and utilizing security protocols such as RIST, content providers can ensure that legal and regulatory standards are being met, with all data and content efficiently transmitted for live events across multiple locations. As is the case with many instances of live event coverage, content can be mission critical and in high demand on a short deadline. It is absolutely essential in these instances to ensure that live distribution workflows are secure and reliable, a concept that is becoming more applicable for remote production.

Erling Hedkvist, business development manager, Arkona and Manifold: There is an increasing demand from the rightsholders to provide remote production for both costs and environmental reasons, so you’ll see it listed as a top line demand. In addition, more and more large events are spread out over multiple locations for both cost sharing and increased engagement. Take the next World Cup for example, which is jointly hosted by 16 cities.

Colin Moran, VP, production products, LTN: Remote production opens new opportunities for localized event coverage and reach across new markets. Some of our biggest customers in Europe see huge value in a remote centralized approach for delivering language-tailored coverage of major sports events in the US. Advances in low-latency connectivity and IP video transmission erase geographic barriers, enabling real-time interaction between on-site presenters and studios worldwide, delivering dynamic audience experiences and unlocking new markets.

Daniel Lundstedt, head of sales and marketing, Intinor: Remote production has changed how we think about live coverage. Broadcasters can now cover more events at once or connect multiple locations without moving large crews around. It’s more flexible and more sustainable, and it’s opened the door to covering events that might not have been feasible before.

João Tocha, owner and founder, Digital Azul: Remote production has fundamentally changed the way we manage and deliver live events, particularly those involving multiple locations or complex logistics. At Digital Azul, we frequently broadcast international events, including major sports competitions and large-scale conferences, from a central hub in Lisbon. This setup allows us to reduce costs, minimize environmental impact, and deliver consistently high-quality and engaging storytelling.

Simone D’Antone, global strategy leader, broadcast, AWS: We’re seeing the broadcast and pro AV industries merge. As a result, the tools behind both are becoming more cross-functional. Regionalization is increasing through remote production, because it’s easier to create and deploy alternate feeds. Event teams can even use AI to create voice overs in different languages or commentate secondary streams.

Greg Macchia, product marketing manager, live production, Riedel Communications: Now, teams can manage everything from one central spot – or even several locations, so they’re not tied down to being at a particular location. This makes it way easier to cover more events, even across different places and time zones, without all the hassle and costs of travel. Plus, it opens up the possibility of locally producing events that happen globally, giving broadcasters more access and flexibility than ever.

John Mailhot, SVP, product management at Imagine Communications: As an industry, we’ve grown to trust networks and the ability to execute remote and split productions — including for major events. This shift fundamentally changes the planning of live events. Instead of focusing on space to park production trucks, organizers now prioritize robust network infrastructure to meet the needs of multiple broadcasters and deliver the high reliability required for remote and split productions.

Henry Goodman, director of product management, Calrec: Increasingly flexible connectivity and control technologies are encouraging the adoption of even more distributed production workflows that combine remote, on-prem and cloud models of operation. These distributed workflows are designed to meet the needs of the production rather than the other way around, and in a world where consoles no longer operate in isolation, networks necessarily become more complex with remote and distributed workflows locating IP processing cores on site, on edge, and on prem. In this new flexible broadcast environment, being agile makes all the difference.

David Edwards, product manager, Net Insight: Remote production allows events production to capture the attention of a content hungry audience and revenues that flow from that. The very nature of remote production means that it is equally realizable to ingest content from multiple locations as it is from a single location. Live sports enriched with presentation elements and studio-based discussions are a prime example of this ability to deliver a rich viewing experience.

Marcus B. Brodersen, CEO, Pixotope: We’re moving from an era where geography dictated the scope of a broadcast to one where creative vision drives the approach. Multi-location productions that once required massive coordination of OB vans and satellite time can now be orchestrated through networked production systems that bring disparate locations into a cohesive broadcast. For example, sports broadcasts can now integrate analysts from home studios, field reporters, and real-time virtual graphics — all coordinated through remote production infrastructure that spans multiple perspectives and locations simultaneously.

What else should we be thinking about with remote production?

Adi Rozenberg, director, RIST Forum and CTO and co-founder, Alvalinks: Remote production depends entirely on network reliability. Even the best cloud solutions won’t function if connectivity fails. Ensuring stable performance can be costly, but protocols like RIST offer an alternative. While SRT is more widely known, RIST offers powerful interoperability benefits. Broadcasters should ask vendors which transport protocols they support.

Robert Nicholas, CEO, SipRadius: Choose your connected devices with care. Avoid devices with backdoor access, or which need to connect to the vendor for validation, or even — and this is astounding but true — which store critical data like passwords and IP addresses in the clear. Similarly, think about the OS on each device, so you can be sure they are appropriate for the task and are updated with the latest security patches.

Roberto Musso, technical director, NDI: Futureproofing means staying ready for what’s next, especially as remote workflows keep evolving. Production crews should be thinking about how they can stay adaptable in a rapidly evolving industry. AI-driven automation, virtual production and cloud-native editing tools are reshaping how content gets made, offering faster, more flexible and scalable ways to work.

Colby Winegar, CEO, Storj: The best cloud infrastructure solutions offer an enhanced experience compared to on-premise systems. This means an enhanced experience with collaboration tools but also means using open-source code and providing an open architecture so a platform can interoperate with industry tools to enhance the end user’s experience.

Henry Goodman, director of product management, Calrec: Maintaining audio broadcast quality is key to guaranteeing engagement, and immersive audio is already a broadcast standard for global sports events like the World Cup and the Olympics. Remote broadcasting means broadcasters can deliver much more nuanced immersive mixes by enabling A1s to mix audio content in a remote studio that is acoustically designed for immersive formats, rather than in a cramped remote truck that may not have the space for full Dolby Atmos monitoring. This not only delivers a better product, but it also maximizes a broadcaster’s investment in its fixed facilities as well as enabling them to use regular A1s who are accustomed to the space.