News Broadcasting
MIPCOM unveils plans for 20th anniversary
MUMBAI: Mipcom 2004, the world’s television and entertainment market in autumn and Mipcom Junior, the international showcase for children’s programming, have announced their programme of events covering a wide range of highly relevant topics for the international television industry.
Mipcom 2004 will be held from 4 October to 8 October and the MIPCOM Junior from 2 October to 3 October in Cannes.
According to an official release, the upswing in attendance seen at MIPCOM 2003 is expected to continue for 2004 and Reed MIDEM, organisers of Mipcom, expect over 10, 200 participants in Cannes this October.
Director of the Television Division at Reed Midem Paul Johnson is quoted in the release as saying, “The 20th edition of Mipcom will host a particularly broad and relevant range of conferences on new emerging sectors in the industry such as advertising, interactive content for mobile devices, licensing and merchandising, DVD and High Definition.
In addition to the breadth of the topics debated this year, our conferences will present numerous leading professionals and key players from the audiovisual sector”.
For the first time at Mipcom, an international giant of the advertising division will deliver a keynote speech to market attendees on 5 October, président du directoire de Publicis Groupe Maurice Lévy will look at the new relationships that are developing between the worlds of advertising and television.
As part of the dedicated conferences on licencing and merchandising, Disney Consumer Products chairman Andy Mooney will present a keynote address on 4 October, examining the latest trends in children’s television licencing and merchandising.
RTL Group CEO Gerhard Zeiler has been nominated Mipcom 2004’s Personality of the Year. The accolade recognises Zeiler’s outstanding career and the success of the entire RTL Group. Top international television executives will attend a VIP gala dinner on 6 October to honour both Gerhard Zeiler and RTL Group, the release continues.
In partnership with the French Ministry of Culture and Communication and the Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC), Mipcom has designated 5 October as France Day. Throughout the event, a series of conferences, presentations and workshops will highlight the best of French television production, the strategies of leading programme exporters and promote the increasingly vibrant regional commissions who seek to bring national and international film and television production activity to their doorsteps.
As part of the celebrations, TVFI president Jean-Louis Guillaud will receive the MIPCOM “Prix d’Excellence” award for his contribution to French television.
Debuting this year are the Mipcom DVD Awards, 6 October. In partnership with the DVD Association (DVDA, USA) and the International Video Federation (IVF, Belgium) the awards will pay tribute to the creativity that makes DVD-viewing such an original and enjoyable experience and will reward the best artistic quality in graphic design, web features, interactivity, navigation devices, content restoration and bonus features.
A focus on book publishing will be included in the conference programme for the first time. The panel, entitled “Book to TV/ Film: What are you missing out on?” organised in partnership with the London Book Fair, examines the developing links between producers and publishers and how to adapt original written works to film. Leading publishing houses participating in the case study session include: HarperCollins Entertainment, Orion Publishing Group, Curtis Brown and Penguin Television.
High definition specialist companies will also come together at Mipcom 2004. In collaboration with Outside Broadcast (Belgium), MIPCOM has organised a series of conferences, 6 October, dedicated to this evolving market and will broadcast screenings in HD over 4 days (4 October – 7 October, Auditorium K, Palais des Festivals).
Milia, the international forum for interactive content will make an impressive entrance at Mipcom, presenting 5 conference sessions on the impact of new media and digital technologies in the future of television.
Finally, in celebration of its 20th anniversary, Mipcom’s opening cocktail, sponsored by LatinAmerican Television Corporation and Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution, is slated to take place in the Martinez Hotel on 4 October. Fox TV stars including Nicole Richie (The Simple Life), Lake Bell (Boston Legal), Brooke Burns (North Shore), Portia de Rossi (Arrested Development) and Marjolaine (Marjolaine et les Millionnaires – Joe Millionaire – Season 2) will light up the evening.
Preceding Mipcom, the 12th edition of Mipcom Junior would reveal the latest international programmes for youth viewing and present two days of exceptional conferences on the theme of licencing and merchandising. Kicking off for the first time is the Mipcom Junior Licencing Challenge, an event put together by the MIPCOM team in partnership with Licence! magazine, on 3 October.
An international jury, chaired by Warren Kornblum, chief marketing officer of Toys “R” Us, Inc., will evaluate the licencing and merchandising prospects of selected programmes. Continuing on this theme, MIPCOM Junior attendees will have the chance to participate in a licencing and merchandising workshop, featuring experts from the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association (LIMA), officially represented at the event for the first time. Other events including the “Programmers Showcase”, the “Licensing Club” and the case studies “Conquering America ” will contribute to Mipcom Junior highlights, concluded the release.
News Broadcasting
Newsrooms rethink AI, trust and revenue models
Editors and tech leaders debate tools, deepfakes and viability.
MUMBAI: If yesterday’s newsroom ran on caffeine and chaos, tomorrow’s may well run on code but with a human still holding the pen. At the 22nd edition of the Video Broadcast and Broadband Tech Summit hosted by IndianTelevision.com, some of the sharpest minds in Indian media gathered to examine how artificial intelligence, automation and shifting audience behaviour are reshaping journalism. The session, titled The Newsroom of Tomorrow Tools, Trust, and Business Viability In Focus, did not descend into techno-utopian hype. Instead, it wrestled with a more uncomfortable question: how do you stay relevant, credible and profitable when the audience is changing faster than the headline cycle?
The panel featured Govindraj Ethiraj, Editor of The Core, Dr Nilesh Khare, COO of Sakal Media Group; Prakaran Tiwari, Chief Executive Producer at NDTV Profit; Manoj Padmanabhan, Head of Business Media and Entertainment at AWS; Neeraj Mishra, Key Account Manager at Vizrt and session chair; and Mayuresh Konnur, Bilingual Correspondent at Collective Newsroom, publisher for BBC in India.
Govindraj Ethiraj set the tone with a frank assessment. “The reason people do not consume as much news through us is because they are consuming news through other sources they trust more,” he said. In a fragmented ecosystem flooded with content, trust has become the real differentiator.
Yet AI is undeniably transforming workflows. Ethiraj admitted he now uses AI tools to proofread his own articles. “Sometimes it is scary how much it picks, but it helps,” he said. What once required layers of sub-editing can now be assisted by machines trained to flag errors, inconsistencies and structural weaknesses.
He pointed to how newsroom roles have evolved. The desk editor, widely advertised over the last 15 years, barely existed in its current form before the internet boom. As digital publishing accelerated, tasks such as curating listicles, ranking stories and optimising headlines became specialised functions. Now, many of those responsibilities can be performed or at least supported by AI systems. The disruption is not hypothetical; it is operational.
Dr Nilesh Khare approached the issue from both a business and technological standpoint. Sakal Media Group is developing its own large language model, built on 60 years of text and photo archives. The goal is independence. “We won’t need to depend on other platforms to develop ours,” he said, underscoring the strategic value of proprietary data.
For Khare, AI represents opportunity as much as anxiety. It can help expand content across geographies and languages, particularly in bridging North and South Indian markets. It can streamline production and reduce costs. He did not shy away from the implications. “As a journalist I feel bad but as a content producer I feel good that we will require less manpower,” he said, articulating a tension many in the room recognised but few openly admit.
He also highlighted how audience behaviour is evolving. Today, a retail investor can follow a stock using Gemini or GPT instead of toggling between multiple news channels. News is no longer consumed linearly; it is queried, personalised and synthesised. The newsroom must therefore produce content that survives not just on screens but within AI-generated summaries.
Prakaran Tiwari offered a more philosophical reflection. “AI has developed itself and adapted on the basis of how news is consumed. It’s all about giving a perspective,” he said. In his view, the competitive edge will not lie in speed alone but in interpretation. Facts are increasingly commoditised; context is not.
He also suggested that formats are fluid. While short-form video dominates social feeds, long-form audio is resurging. Govindraj Ethiraj noted that in the United States the 2024 election was described as the “podcast election”, reflecting how audiences are investing time in deeper, long-form discussions. The newsroom of tomorrow must cater to both scrolling and sustained listening.
Manoj Padmanabhan of AWS reframed the debate. Technology, he argued, is not an existential threat but an amplifier. “The power is given to the human journalist with all this technology in their hand, with it acting as a support or assistant to deliver the correct and relevant news to the people,” he said.
The traditional divide between a “normal” newsroom and a “digital” newsroom is fading. “It will not be two newsrooms,” he said. “It will be one newsroom.” In that integrated environment, the storyteller remains central. AI may assist with research, editing and distribution, but editorial judgement remains human.
Neeraj Mishra of Vizrt echoed the assistive narrative. India, he said, is a market of organised chaos, where news broadcasters are pushing ever-increasing volumes of content. AI will help manage scale. It is not here to replace people but to assist them.
Production barriers are already collapsing. “You don’t need a green screen to produce content now,” Mishra observed, hinting at virtual production tools and real-time rendering technologies. And this, he said, is only the beginning. In a cost-conscious market like India, AI adoption in both B to B and B to C segments is likely to rise sharply. The skills are available, he argued, the real question is whether organisations are willing to invest.
If opportunity was one half of the conversation, risk was the other. Mayuresh Konnur warned that fake news is now being peddled with alarming ease using AI tools. Deepfakes, synthetic audio and fabricated visuals can damage credibility overnight. Several journalists, he said, have already faced instances where manipulated content was circulated in their name.
“Eventually it becomes a question of how authentic you are in the market,” Konnur noted. In a crowded information economy, credibility is the ultimate moat. Regulations and clear guidelines, he argued, are necessary to curb misuse without stifling innovation.
Mishra added a note of caution against overuse. “AI should not be everywhere. It has to be used optimally,” he said. The value lies not in blanket automation but in strategic integration.
One of the most resonant metaphors came from Padmanabhan. AI, he suggested, is like a brush in a human hand. Powerful, versatile, transformative but inert without the artist. It cannot survive without the human touch.
Konnur distilled the session’s core takeaway, AI is inevitable, but the art of storytelling will never disappear.
In a media landscape defined by speed, shrinking attention spans and intense competition, the newsroom of tomorrow is not simply a technological upgrade. It is a recalibration. Between efficiency and ethics. Between automation and authenticity. Between reducing manpower and retaining meaning.
The algorithms may write cleaner copy and generate sharper graphics. They may even predict what audiences want before audiences know it themselves. But the enduring task remains unchanged to tell stories that inform, interrogate and inspire.
And for that, the human newsroom is still very much open for business.
