The media industry is changing fast but from where I sit, it's still not changing fast enough!
The conversations I have with content owners every week tell a consistent story. The old divisions, broadcast versus digital, linear versus streaming, in-house versus outsourced are breaking down. Audiences have already moved on. They don't organise their viewing lives around the distinctions we built our industry on. They just want their content, on whatever screen they are looking at, without friction. The endpoint is the customer. Everything else is internal plumbing.
The question I keep coming back to is why are so many media businesses still structured around divisions that their audiences gave up on years ago?
Stop Arriving with the Answer Already Written
One of the most common frustrations I hear from content owners is that their technology partners arrive with the answer already decided.
There is a trap a lot of providers fall into, they build a capability, and then they go looking for problems that fit it. It's a solution in search of a problem and customers end up paying for something that was never quite right for their situation. The provider has a preferred stack, a preferred commercial model, a preferred way of working, and the customer gets squeezed into it whether it fits or not.
That's not how Levira work. We come in wanting to understand the problem first what’s not working, where the commercial pressure is coming from, what growth looks like for that business. Only then do we work out what the right solution is. It sounds obvious, but it's genuinely rarer than it should be. And in a market where too many providers are still leading with their own agenda, a genuinely consultative approach makes a real difference.
We are not a consultancy we get things built and we get them done. But we start from the same place a good consultant would - understanding the customer's reality before recommending anything.
Built to Flex, Not to Defend
To deliver that kind of approach consistently, you must build your business in a way that doesn't lock you into one answer.
We run four different playout stacks. We support private cloud and public cloud environments. We work with six different SLA and service provisioning models. That's not complexity for its own sake, it's what genuine flexibility looks like in practice. We don't preference any one vendor or push any one architecture because it's convenient for us commercially. If a particular solution is the right fit, we use it. If it isn't, we don't. Full stop.
That flexibility carries through into how we structure commercial relationships too. We work with monthly recurring models, short-term contracts, and low barriers to exit. We actively avoid locking customers into long, capex-heavy commitments. If a customer wants to test something new, we make that easy. If they need to scale up quickly, we can do it. If they need to pull back, that's fine too.
This is possible because of how we are set up as a managed service provider. We're running services for multiple customers simultaneously, which means we have real capacity available at short notice. In-house teams are built to a fixed ceiling when demand exceeds that ceiling, everything becomes difficult. We don't have that problem. Scale up, scale down it's not an issue. And I think that's one of the strongest practical arguments for the outsourced model right now.
Outsourcing Is Having Its Moment. But the Conversation Needs to Grow Up.
Cost pressure is driving a lot of the current interest in outsourcing, and I understand why. But if that's the only lens through which content companies are evaluating it, they're leaving most of the value on the table.
What's happening in the industry right now is a dual squeeze. On the broadcast side, cost cutting is aggressive. On the digital side, the pressure is different, it's about monetisation, about getting more value from every piece of content, more revenue from more eyeballs. Both ends of that equation need external partners to achieve what they've set out to do. The targets content companies have put on themselves are simply too ambitious to hit by working harder internally. It won't work. You need partners who can help you move faster, think differently, and access capability that isn't sitting inside your own four walls.
So yes, outsourcing is in a stronger position than it's ever been. But the conversation should be about growth and reach and new revenue models, not just about trimming the cost base. That's the shift I'd like to see happen more quickly.
The Audience Doesn't Care. Neither Should We.
Here is the thing that frustrates me most about how the industry is still structured, content companies have a broadcast division and a digital division, and in many cases, they operate almost independently of each other. Different teams, different workflows, different KPIs, different thinking.
Meanwhile, the viewer sitting on their sofa has absolutely no idea which division delivered the content to their screen. They don't care. They found what they wanted, they're watching it, and that's the end of their involvement.
The question every content owner should be asking is brutally simple, how do I get this piece of content in front of as many people as possible? Not is this a broadcast project or a streaming project. Just how many eyeballs, and what do I need to do to reach them?
Answer that honestly and the unified workflow becomes obvious. You need a channel out, a stream out, VOD assets out, and presence on every relevant platform, connected TV, apps, linear, on demand. That's not complicated. The technology to do it exists. What's holding it back is the thinking, not the tools.
What Excites Me Right Now
The most encouraging thing I see is that content owners are beginning to genuinely understand the value of what they hold. They're starting to recognise that the more access points their content has, the more valuable it becomes. Viewing time is increasing across the whole spectrum. There is more content, more platforms, more demand and the businesses that move fastest to meet audiences where they are will capture a disproportionate share of that.
We are entering a phase where the industry needs to move faster. The technology is ready. The commercial models exist. What's needed now is the willingness to let go of legacy thinking and organise around what matters which is getting great content to as many people as possible, as efficiently as possible.
That is what gets me out of bed in the morning. And it's exactly what Levira Media Services is built to help with.