Distribution
Sports innovation efforts lead at IBC2024 Innovation Awards
AMSTERDAM –The winners of the IBC Innovation Awards – which recognise collaborative efforts to develop solutions that address real-world industry challenges – were announced on 15 August at the Rai Amsterdam. They consisted of five categories: content creation, distribution, content everywhere, social impact, and environment and sustainability.
With 2024 being the year of big sporting events like the Olympics and UEFA European football championships, four of the five winners were those who had innovated in this area.
“Recognising and fostering industry innovation at every level is core to what IBC does, and these awards play a critical role in honouring and encouraging truly ground-breaking work,” said IBC CEO Michael Crimp. “This year’s expanded awards spotlight the fact that there are many areas in which we are seeing the media community collaborate to take us in new, exciting directions. I congratulate this year’s winners for demonstrating the co-operation, imagination and determination needed to really impact our industry.”
The winners in the five IBC Innovation Awards categories were:
Content Creation
* Olympic Broadcasting Services and partners for live broadcast production with more than 200 smartphones contributing video for the Paris 2024 opening ceremony and a sea-based 5G network for sailing competitions in Marseille.
Content Distribution
* The National Hockey League, in partnership with Verizon, AWS, Zixi, Vizrt and Evertz, for producing a 5G and Edge compute framework for assembly, control and delivery of live broadcast.
Content Everywhere
* LaLiga for working with Play Anywhere and Ease Live to enable true fan interactivity for itself and its worldwide broadcast and streaming partners.
Social Impact
* Sesame Workshop for its Watch Play Learn Distribution Hub, which allows government agencies and aid organisations to preview and request videos for children in crisis settings.
Environment & Sustainability
* France Télévisions for reducing CO2 emissions by 300 tonnes via a pioneering 100 per cent glass-to-glass cloud production and private 5G network, as it broadcast a 24/7 channel providing coverage of the Olympic torch relay for Paris 2024.
Also at the 2024 Innovation Awards, this year’s IBC International Honour for Excellence (IHFE) – announced in August – was formally presented to Ukraine’s Mstyslav Chernov for his work as a video journalist and filmmaker. Chernov directed 20 Days in Maripoul, the multi-award-winning documentary chronicling the siege of the city by Russian forces in 2022, when he and his Associated Press (AP) team were among the last journalists there. He previously covered conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Nagorno-Karabakh (in Azerbaijan) and the return of the Taliban to Afghanistan after the US withdrawal.
The Best Technical Paper Award, another pre-announced honour presented at the Innovation Awards, was given to Joshua Maraval, Nicolas Ramin, and Lu Zhang for their paper Advancements in Radiance Field Techniques for Volumetric Video Generation: A Technical Overview. The authors, who are from the Institut de Recherche Technologique, and the Institut d’Electronique et des Technologies du numéRique, were seeking an efficient solution to the complex problem of capturing and rendering volumetric video for three-dimensional VR experiences.
New Delhi: Prasar Bharati has thrown open applications for fresh capacity on DD Free Dish, signalling a timely opportunity for broadcasters looking to expand reach without long-term lock-ins. The public service broadcaster has issued a dual notice for its 95th and 96th online e-auctions, aimed at filling vacant MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 slots on a pro-rata basis for February and March 2026.
The two auctions are tentatively scheduled to begin on January 27, with allotments valid from February 1, 2026. Applications for both auctions close on January 21 at 3 pm, giving channels a narrow window to get their bids in.
The 95th e-auction will cover vacant MPEG-2 slots, while the 96th will focus on MPEG-4 capacity. Participation is limited to satellite television channels holding valid downlinking and uplinking permissions from the ministry of information and broadcasting. International public broadcasters cleared by the ministry are also eligible.
As with previous rounds, channels have been grouped into buckets based on genre and language, with sharply differentiated reserve prices reflecting reach and demand.
For the MPEG-2 auction, Hindi and Urdu general entertainment channels sit at the top of the pile. The starting reserve price for bucket A+ in the first round is Rs 2,63,48,000. Movie, music and sports channels in Hindi and Urdu follow in bucket A at Rs 2,10,14,000. Bhojpuri channels and other Hindi and Urdu genres, excluding devotional content, fall under bucket B with a reserve of Rs 1,78,62,000. Hindi and Urdu news channels in bucket C start at Rs 1,33,27,000, while bucket D, which includes regional language channels, English news and devotional or spiritual channels, begins at Rs 1,13,96,000.
The MPEG-4 auction comes in at a far leaner price point. News and current affairs channels in Hindi, English or pan-India languages, grouped under bucket G1, start at Rs 13,41,000. Non-news genres under bucket G2 have a reserve of Rs 8,80,000. Regional languages such as Marathi, Punjabi and Gujarati in bucket R2 begin at Rs 4,84,000. Southern language channels in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, grouped under bucket R1, start at Rs 81,000, the same reserve price set for other scheduled 8 regional languages in bucket R3.
Prasar Bharati has underlined that compliance will be closely watched. Broadcasters must ensure that at least 75 per cent of their monthly programming, excluding advertisements, aligns with the declared genre and language. Any deviation could trigger show-cause notices or even removal from the DD Free Dish platform.
For channels chasing reach in a crowded market, the message is clear. The window is brief, the prices are set and the audience is waiting. On DD Free Dish, visibility still comes cheap, but only for those ready to move fast.
