'Future Ready Media Organisations' shows artificial intelligence delivering value, despite underwhelming impact of some technology transformation initiatives

The DPP, the international network for media and technology organisations, has released the findings from its Future Ready Media Organisations research which explores how media companies are preparing for future success.

Future Ready Media Organisations found that content providers and broadcast companies have often struggled to realise significant business benefits from their technology transformation efforts, and that support for modernisation initiatives dissipates as you move down through an organisation.

However, it also found that media companies are finally getting value from artificial intelligence investments. This is despite media organisations having underinvested in data governance.

"Future Ready Media Organisations paints a picture of opportunity, preparedness, and significant challenges for broadcasters and content providers in our sector," says DPP Editorial Director Edward Qualtrough, the report author.

Transformation initiatives can be perceived as underwhelming since media organisations have had to focus on updating legacy technology and systems. But they are now focusing on developing new products and distribution models to serve customers.

"Meanwhile, investing in greenfield initiatives, and moving from a project mindset to a product mindset, is seen as a big success area. Here media companies have been able to get widespread buy-in, and showcase much more explicitly the link between tech investment and business benefits."

The DPP's Future Ready Media Organisations report is enabled by Expert Sponsors AWS and Cognizant. To produce the work, technology leaders from 12 major European media organisations took part in in-depth research interviews to investigate how the industry is preparing for future success.

As such it is a qualitative follow-up to a 2022 Future-Ready Business Benchmark study by Cognizant and Economist Impact which involved 2,000 companies from 10 countries and eight industries, including media and entertainment, and compared industries and regions against each other.

The research participants were A+E EMEA, Channel 4, ITV, Mediaset, News UK, NRK, TF1, RTÉ, RÚV, SVT, Yle and ZDF.

Future Ready Media Organisations also revealed concerns that the industry is no longer an employer of choice. As such, retention and training is preferred to hiring in a fiercely competitive market. But some 75% or organisations still do not think they have access to the talent required to implement and utilise the technologies required by their transformation strategies.

The full report is available to download by DPP members here.