MAM
Value airtime to maximise resources: James Wilkinson
MUMBAI: Broadcasters need to value airtime in order to maximise their resources, James and Wilkinson Media co-founders Alan James and Jo Wilkinson said at PromaxBDA 2012.
“This asset helps in not one but four ways. It serves as your biggest marketing tool, can be used for branding, reduces off-air spends and is under your control. This is especially true in India where you can charge up to Rs two million per TRP,” explained James.
The market today is much more fragmented than two decades back and, thus, to reach out to a specific set in the audience, one needs to have a targeted marketing strategy and air time is a valuable ally in doing so.
Next on the list is setting clear objectives, outlining single-minded strategies and having effective campaign tactics. When the first two are well defined, the latter will follow. With a plethora of channels out there, these three tenets will make sure that your channel is differentiated from the lot.
Also, while deciding one’s promotional campaign, the channel needs to be clear about the demographic profiles of its audiences and the expected ROI on the campaign.
Annual planning and setting priorities by allocating funds accordingly is another aspect a broadcaster needs to pay heed to. It is important to analyse, differentiate and decide whether the priority is strengthening brand equity or delivering volumes and revenue. The ideal model is one that does both.
Things like the TRPs your channels garner, the break routines and the reach of your channels need to be kept in mind while planning promotional activities. Apart from this, other resources like the web, radio and mobile also need to be considered. Having taken all this into account, a network then needs to decide how many promotional campaigns it can sustain effectively in a week, month and a year respectively.
Aspirational targeting can lead to programme credibility, brand repositioning and future proofing the network to an extent which also helps in extending the reach of the content. The next step is to then decide the frequency to maximise the effectiveness of the creative.
“This effective frequency maybe defined as the number of times a person must be exposed to an advertising or promotional message to get a response and before exposure is considered wasteful,” says James.
Considering that audiences today use more than one screen, the idea of cross promotion is beneficial for a channel. Here too, it is necessary what to cross promote to whom. Making use of the sister channels, radio and web are tools for cross promotions that come handy in this case. Audience relevance, editorial relevance and timeliness make for good cross promotion guidelines.
A very important tool for any network is its break regime. An ideal break allows for three things – give the viewer a chance to navigate, deliver information or choice and make the broadcast network recognised. Navigation is the part that needs special attention.
There are different kinds of viewers: the programming led viewers who rarely surf, the surfers who surf moderately and the super surfers who keep jumping from one channel to another. While the first category needs to be informed, the second needs to be enticed and the third needs to be navigated.
Using on-air announcers is a concept novel to India, but has been a success elsewhere like in the UK. This tool helps contemporarise content, make the transitions and breaks seamless, and add a personal touch to the programming content to evaluate every step.
Artificial intelligence is a topic that is frequently discussed in terms of “spectacle,” and this means that people tend to think about the images that have been produced, the voice that has been generated, and the predictions that have been made about the potential of machines replacing the jobs of creatives.. In reality, one of the most interesting shifts is happening in a less obvious part of the media world. AI is changing the hidden labor behind entertainment content, the practical work that happens before a story, promo, clip, or campaign reaches the audience.
That shift becomes easier to notice when looking at the daily routines inside production and marketing teams. A streaming release, celebrity interview, music launch, or television promo now has to live across many formats at once. Visual preparation, fast editing, asset cleanup, and image adjustments all matter more than they did a few years ago, and this is where tools connected to remove background fit naturally into the conversation. They show how AI has moved into the background of media work, where it helps shape the speed, consistency, and visual language of modern entertainment.
The Entertainment Industry Runs on More Than Big Creative Ideas
The end product that the public consumes is the finished product. They see a poster, a small image, a brief promo video, a still image, or a social media post. They don’t see the behind-the-scenes labor that goes into the preparation of this content. They don’t see the many different versions of the image that have been prepared for different websites, different mobile interfaces, different streaming interfaces, and different press kits.
This is when the practical application of AI comes in. It supports the repetitive visual tasks that used to absorb a large share of time. Background cleanup, subject isolation, formatting assistance, smart resizing, and automated enhancement may sound like small actions on their own, but together they shape how quickly a campaign can move from rough material to public release.
That matters because entertainment now works in overlapping cycles. A trailer leads to social clips. Social clips lead to stills. Stills lead to articles, banners, and platform previews. The same content needs to look strong in many places, often within very short time windows. AI helps teams keep up with that pressure without turning every routine step into a bottleneck.
Why the Real AI Story in Media Is About Volume
One of the least discussed pressures in entertainment media is volume. Teams are not simply making one good piece of content. They are creating families of content. A TV series launch today may require a homepage image, a vertical promo, a YouTube cover, cast portraits, article art, behind-the-scenes visuals, and platform-specific variants for regional distribution.
This is where AI has changed the economics of attention. The issue is not only whether a team can create a polished asset. The issue is whether they can create many polished assets without losing coherence. AI-powered assistance gives production teams more room to handle this expansion.
A few examples make the shift clearer:
● entertainment editors can clean and prepare supporting visuals more quickly
● promo teams can adapt image assets for multiple formats in less time
● digital newsrooms can publish faster when visuals need light processing
● branded content units can prepare sponsor-ready materials with fewer delays
This does not remove the need for designers or editors. It changes how their time is used. Instead of spending long hours on repetitive prep work, they can focus more on visual priorities, campaign tone, and platform fit.
That is one reason AI feels especially relevant in entertainment and media technology. This industry runs on deadlines, but it also runs on repetition. Any tool that reduces friction inside repeated tasks can affect output far more than it first appears.
AI Is Influencing Editorial Packaging
There is another angle that deserves more attention: AI is influencing how stories are packaged, not just how they are produced. In entertainment coverage, presentation has become almost inseparable from editorial reach. A news item about a show launch or creator deal may be accurate and timely, but its visibility often depends on the strength of its supporting visual format.
This means packaging is no longer a secondary layer. It is part of the editorial strategy. This is when the practical application of AI comes in. It is when the “packaging” of the content becomes easier because of the assistance that has been given in the preparation of the images.
The effect is especially strong in areas such as:
● OTT platform announcements
● celebrity and talent coverage
● music releases and promotional campaigns
● television show launches and event-based content
In these spaces, timing and visual readiness often define performance. This is why AI is useful: it helps close the gap between editorial intent and publishable execution.
This is also why AI is becoming part of the normal conversation when it comes to news promos. The discussion is no longer limited to futuristic experiments. It now includes ordinary questions such as how quickly a team can prepare artwork, how many visual versions they can test, and how consistently a campaign can be carried across channels.
What This Means for Smaller Media Players
Large entertainment brands have had access to more people and more production capability for a long time. AI is changing the game for small publishers, small studios, individual producers, and small entertainment brands. It’s providing them with something that will help their output compete from a visual standpoint.
That does not guarantee equal reach, but it does reduce some long-standing disadvantages. A smaller team can now handle certain visual tasks with greater speed and consistency. That makes it easier to maintain a strong publishing rhythm, support stories with polished assets, and react to trends before they fade.
This may be one of the most important consequences of AI in media technology. It opens room for more players to look prepared and credible in environments that once favored only the most heavily staffed organizations.
Still, there is a limit to automation. Taste remains human. Context remains human. Editorial judgment remains human. An AI-assisted asset may be technically clean, yet still feel generic, awkward, or tonally off. Entertainment audiences are sensitive to presentation, and poor visual instinct becomes obvious quickly.
That is why the strongest use of AI in this space is selective. Teams benefit most when they use it to handle structure, repetition, and first-pass execution, while keeping human attention on style, meaning, and consistency.
The Future of AI in Entertainment Will Feel Ordinary
The most lasting technology shifts usually stop feeling dramatic. They become normal. That is likely what will happen with AI across media production and entertainment publishing. Rather than being talked about as a novelty, it will be part of the normal infrastructure alongside editing suites, scheduling systems, media libraries, and content management systems.
The point to note is that AI is already affecting the labor that goes into modern entertainment. It is helping teams deal with scale, speed, and visual fragmentation. It is making it easier to transform one core idea into many usable assets. It is giving production and editorial teams more flexibility in moments when timing matters most.
From the outside, this may seem like a technical adjustment. Inside the industry, however, it is an even larger concept. It alters the way work is distributed, the speed at which ideas are pushed through the system, and the number of finished versions of the story that can exist at any given time. In an entertainment media environment that is characterized by constant publication, such an evolution cannot help but catch the eye.
The conversation about AI and technology in media and entertainment often veers into the realm of hyperbole. Perhaps the most telling approach, however, is the small print. The real revolution is happening behind the scenes, in the workflows, in the preparation of assets, and in the packaging of the work itself.
