Company contribution
Company contribution
Broadcast has entered its intelligence era
Francesco Cataldo, Chairman and Chief Business Officer, IKO Media Group, explains why the next decade will be defined not by how content is delivered, but by what broadcasters can learn from every screen
The debate has moved on
Broadcast technology has evolved through satellite, IP, linear television, streaming, digital platforms and, more recently, FAST. Today, these technologies are coming together to create a broader, more flexible and more powerful media ecosystem. Their combination gives broadcasters more ways to reach audiences, distribute content and create new business opportunities.
The more important question today is whether broadcasters can build businesses that understand where audiences are, reach them efficiently, learn from their behaviour and turn that knowledge into stronger programming and commercial decisions. That is a very different challenge from the one we faced a decade ago.
When iKO Media Group was founded ten years ago, much of the industry still thought in relatively straight lines. A channel was acquired, played out, distributed and received. Success was heavily associated with technical reliability and geographic reach. Those things still matter enormously, but they are now only the beginning of the story.
Broadcast has become an ecosystem rather than a pipeline. A single channel can exist simultaneously on satellite, pay-tv, OTT, FAST, connected television and social media. The opportunity is much larger, but so is the complexity. The next era of broadcasting will be defined less by adding another endpoint and more by creating intelligence across all of them.
Satellite is not disappearing. Its role is changing.
Satellite shows why the industry needs to move beyond replacement thinking. Predictions about its decline have circulated for years, yet it still delivers television at enormous scale and remains critical in many markets. Its strengths are clear: coverage, resilience, consistent quality and the ability to reach millions of homes efficiently.
What is changing is the expectation around it. Historically, satellite distribution could tell a broadcaster a great deal about the signal while audience intelligence tended to be broader, more expensive and more cumbersome to obtain. Audience measurement existed, but it was often centred on penetration and high-level viewing figures rather than the detailed, content-level insight broadcasters increasingly expect today.
Today, broadcasters can go beyond measuring where their content is distributed and gain a much deeper understanding of how audiences engage with it. Knowing who is watching, for how long, on which devices, where engagement is growing and which content performs best provides valuable insights. These insights can guide content
decisions, optimize distribution and identify new monetization opportunities.
This is where I believe satellite is entering a new phase. Its proven strengths in reach, reliability and efficiency can now be combined with deeper intelligence about content consumption, audiences and connected devices.
Bringing satellite infrastructure and digital intelligence together creates a more connected, measurable and valuable ecosystem for broadcasters.
Distribution is abundant. Attention is not.
One of the biggest changes in television is the expansion of distribution. Content can now reach audiences across more networks, devices and platforms than ever before, creating new opportunities for broadcasters to extend their reach, engage viewers and develop new business models.
That should make life easier. In practice, it has created a different kind of pressure: broadcasters can reach more people, but audiences are fragmented across an extraordinary number of destinations. Consumers move between linear channels, streaming apps, FAST services, on-demand catalogues, short-form video and social platforms without thinking about the infrastructure behind them.
For the broadcaster, presence alone is not a strategy. Being on ten platforms is not automatically better than being on five, and another feed does not automatically create value. The important question is what each distribution point contributes to the business.
This changes the role of data. It is no longer a reporting function at the end of the process. It should help determine where a channel is distributed, which audiences matter most, what content is scheduled, how services are localised and where commercial opportunities are emerging.
In other words, the industry is moving from distribution at scale to decision-making at scale.
FAST and OTT are part of television now
The same shift is visible in FAST and OTT. A few years ago, both were frequently discussed as separate digital categories. Today that distinction feels increasingly artificial.
FAST has brought something familiar back into digital viewing: the scheduled, lean-back experience of television. Viewers do not always want to search for a programme; sometimes they simply want to switch something on.
But the next stage will not be won by launching more FAST channels. The market is moving towards quality, discoverability, audience fit and financial sustainability. The channels that last will understand why people are watching and turn that engagement into a viable business.
OTT is going through a similar maturation. The early streaming conversation focused heavily on acquisition and subscriber growth. Today there is much greater attention on churn, engagement, advertising, content performance and the economics of operating multiple services.
This is healthy. It means broadcast and streaming are increasingly judged by the same standards: audience value, efficiency and return.
Hybrid delivery still has an important role because audiences and infrastructure differ from market to market. Satellite, IP and cloud will continue to work together. But I would argue that hybrid is now the means, not the headline. The more interesting story is what broadcasters can do once those environments are connected.
Monetization must begin with understanding
For years, monetization was often treated as something that happened after distribution: first get the channel on air, then sell the audience around it. That sequence is
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