AsiaTech x Singapore, 2025, 02: Future of Broadcast: Asia-Pac, navigating the shift from legacy TV to a cloud-driven, streaming

AsiaTech x Singapore, 2025, 02: Future of Broadcast: Asia-Pac, navigating the shift from legacy TV to a cloud-driven, streaming era

One of the key themes shaping ongoing conversations in the broadcast and media industry is the Future of Broadcast. 

BroadcastAsia is the premier broadcast trade show in the Asia-Pacific region, bringing together the most influential broadcasters, media executives, and entertainment professionals. The event offers invaluable insights into the technologies and industry trends shaping Asia’s dynamic media landscape.

This year, the event centred around the theme, “Broadcast Future Forward.”

Across the broadcast ecosystem — from broadcasters and technology providers to content creators — the industry is actively preparing to showcase its latest innovations to clients throughout the Asia-Pacific and beyond.

Earlier this year, the NAB 2025, held in Las Vegas from April 5-9, attracted over 55,000 registrants with similar aims to spotlight advancements in media and broadcasting. While there were no major product launches or standout announcements, conference sessions offered valuable insights into the evolving media and entertainment (M&E) landscape.

Notably, concerns were raised around the economics of streaming: demand for content remains high, yet production costs are escalating, and traditional revenue models — particularly in the US market where pay-TV continues to decline — are under increasing pressure.

As the industry navigates this shifting terrain, several key challenges have emerged — from financial and infrastructural pressures to content discovery and the role of Connected TV (CTV) in driving online delivery. Discussions and reports suggest that both broadcasters and studios are grappling with how to stay relevant in an environment where linear TV is losing its grip on its major audience, even as streaming strategies become increasingly fragmented.

Whether the industry can regain its footing in time remains an open question. What is clear, however, is that the future will not be shaped by those clinging to legacy models. Discussions at NAB 2025 made it evident that the next chapter of M&E will belong to those willing to embrace uncertainty, foster deep collaboration, and help rebuild a media ecosystem increasingly defined by cloud technologies and AI.

During the streaming-focused discussions, it was noted that a significant portion of M&E tech revenue still stems from production, broadcast operations, and pay-TV services.

On a more positive note, several major US streaming platforms — including Disney+, Paramount+, and Max — reported profitability in 2024, largely driven by rationalised content spending and platform optimisation.

In contrast, Peacock continued to operate at a loss, while no financial disclosures were provided for Prime Video or Apple TV+. These financial gains, however, have come at a cost — all three profitable platforms undertook substantial workforce reductions to help stabilise their bottom lines.

With technology evolving at a rapid pace, the future-proofing of media platforms emerged as a recurring theme. To stay competitive, platforms must continually adapt by adopting new protocols, video codecs, High Dynamic Range (HDR) formats, and Next-Gen Audio (NGA) standards.

These advancements not only unlock improved performance and efficiency but also directly influence the equipment choices across the production, distribution, and consumption chain. Ensuring compatibility with commercially viable, cutting-edge technologies is no longer optional; it is essential for long-term sustainability.

Many operators have now transitioned major workflows to IP, with some achieving full virtualisation in areas such as remote production, playout, automation, and compression. These shifts are not only critical to enabling greater service agility but also play a key role in cost efficiency.

By adopting the right technologies — which continue to evolve rapidly — operators are better positioned to streamline operations and remain competitive in a dynamic media environment.

NAB discussions also highlighted that much of today’s content delivery network (CDN) infrastructure still depends on physical appliances, though providers like Akamai are beginning to roll out cloud-based delivery models, albeit across varied networks.

Meanwhile, video content is increasingly appearing in apps that traditionally did not feature it, driven not only by user interest but also by the higher advertising revenues video commands.

In parallel, platforms such as Netflix and YouTube are expanding into gaming as a strategy to counter plateauing viewer engagement. Yet despite this diversification, research consistently shows that these platforms continue to dominate in both audience size and engagement, far outpacing traditional broadcast and pay-TV offerings.

Streaming is capturing an ever-larger share of content consumption, particularly in US sports, where broadcasting rights are increasingly dominated by the FANNG companies: Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Alphabet. Despite this shift, there remains room for traditional players like Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), Peacock, and Fox to maintain a foothold in the US market.

The Ultra HD (UHD) Forum recently published a comprehensive directory of UHD live sports streaming services in the US. One notable trend is that several major US streamers, including Amazon, Netflix, Google, Disney, Max, and Paramount, have internalised their technology stacks, bringing more control in-house.

In contrast, platforms like Apple, Peacock, and Fox continue to rely on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors for audio-visual processing, maintaining an outsourced approach to certain technical aspects of their streaming services.

As a result of shifting distribution models, the total addressable market (TAM) for streaming is now smaller than it was during the peak of the pay-TV era. In US sports streaming specifically, the landscape is largely dominated by SaaS offerings from AWS Elemental and Harmonic.

Meanwhile, in Europe, spectrum allocation remains a critical concern for the future of audio-visual services. Broadcast Networks Europe, an organisation advocating for fair regulatory and operational conditions for terrestrial broadcast network operators, recently participated in the Radio Spectrum Policy Group (RSPG) workshop. The workshop addressed the future of the 470–694 MHz band, a spectrum range vital for ensuring continued universal access to TV, radio, and other over-the-air services across Europe.

Broadcast Networks Europe underscored the strategic importance of terrestrial broadcasting and Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) as an open, universal and accessible platform. They emphasised that DTT plays a vital role in:

ensuring free and equal access to news, cultural and entertainment content;

promoting social and territorial cohesion by reaching areas underserved by other platforms;

supporting technological sovereignty and resilience, particularly in times of crisis;

offering a sustainable and energy-efficient model that upholds media pluralism and diversity; and

serving as an innovative foundation for developments such as UHD, Hybrid TV (HbbTV) and 5G Broadcast.

Importantly, the future of the UHF band, currently under review, is not merely a technical debate but a matter of public interest and strategic value. Broadcast Networks Europe reaffirmed their commitment to defending the spectrum’s value and ensuring its availability beyond 2030.

The European Union (EU) has also outlined its strategic priorities for the next mandate, explicitly recognising the role of terrestrial networks in shaping a free, democratic, secure, and competitive Europe. Meanwhile, industry trends continue to point toward a digital-first future.

At the Connected TV World Summit (CTVWS), held in March 2025, a panel discussion on “The Future of TV Networks” revealed that online video is projected to comprise 45% of the global M&E market by 2028. Combined, online video and connected TV are expected to account for over 70% of all industry revenues.

Significantly, traditional TV is the only channel forecast to decline over the next five years. This is a clear indicator that ad spend and viewer engagement are shifting decisively towards online platforms. This transition, driven by evolving consumer behaviours, new monetisation models, and the continued rise of streaming, reflects the rapid reconfiguration of the media landscape.

The CTVWS panel on “The Future of TV Network” also addressed the critical issue of streaming. Panelists emphasised that scalability challenges do not begin at the CDN level in distribution networks, but upstream, at the media processing layer where user requests are managed.

One underutilised yet highly effective approach highlighted was content-aware encoding powered by AI, which can yield 30% – 40% in bandwidth and CDN costs without compromising video quality, all while remaining fully standards-compliant.

Cloud elasticity and resiliency were also recognised as essential components of a scalable streaming architecture. Combining auto-scaling, true cloud-native technologies, and geo-redundancy infrastructure with manual preparations — such as capacity planning, load testing, and pre-warming — is key to maintaining performance during traffic peaks.

The consensus, however, was clear: there is no one-size-fits-all approach, and flexibility must remain a core design principle for streaming operators moving forward.

At CTVWS, UK-based Everyone TV presented Freely, a new platform that unifies live and on-demand content from public service broadcasters (PSBs) and other free-to-air providers into a seamless viewing experience. The platform aims to deliver both depth and variety, making it easier for audiences to quickly discover the content they love.

According to Everyone TV, Freely not only enhances the user experience but also offers significant value to content partners by expanding their reach to broader, more diverse audiences.

Despite major advancements in technology and improvements in monitoring and redundancy, delivering consistently high Quality of Experience (QoE) during live-streamed events remains a significant challenge. Real-world examples from recent major sporting events reveal that technical issues still persist, especially during events with high concurrent viewership.

Load testing remains complex, and real-time troubleshooting continues to push even the most capable engineering teams. Post-event analyses suggest that, on average, 5% – 10% of streaming subscribers may experience degraded QoE, a conservative estimate that reflects challenges with content delivery performance, particularly across harder-to-reach ISP networks.

These networks often lie several hops away from major CDNs, creating longer, less efficient delivery paths and offering limited visibility into QoE metrics. As a result, certain geographic regions or subscriber demographics remain more vulnerable to live-streaming disruptions, or the so-called ‘blind spots’ of the delivery network.

--Dr Amal Punchihewa

Reproduced from the Broadcast Asia website