The television industry’s pivot to streaming is contributing to a new talent-management headache for senior media company executives.

In addition to having to wrangle the legendary egos of actors and the high-profile producers and directors who make the hits that make the cash register ring, technology talent are the industry’s new stars, according to a report from PwC.

Traditional media companies have been downsizing and consolidating at breakneck speed as cord-cutting and COVID cut into traditional revenue streams. Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said the media industry shed 30,711 jobs in 2020, up from 10,201 jobs the year before.

At the same time, there is still strong demand for certain skilled positions — some of them new to the telecom, media and technology (TMT) sector — and retaining those people is a top concern, according to PwC.

“Competition for TMT talent is as fierce as ever, with more than 90% of TMT leaders reporting higher-than-usual turnover,” the PwC report said. 

Boom for Tech Workers

“More than other sectors, however, TMT workers are benefiting from the pandemic-related tech boom,” the report continued. “They’re switching jobs for higher salaries (48% of TMT executives versus 41% in all industries), top-notch benefits (30% versus 23%), upgraded career advancement opportunities (42% versus 33%) and improved relationships with managers (35% versus 20%). To compete for talent, TMT leaders are shoring up career-development opportunities (47% versus 34% overall) and offering flexible schedules (49% versus 43%).”

Mark Borao, Technology, Media and Telecommunications partner at PwC U.S., told B+C/Multichannel News that the media companies accelerated the hiring of technologists in order to launch streaming platforms. But they continue to seek tech expertise in order to increase the efficiency of both their new and legacy businesses.

Borao, who had helped media companies launch streaming businesses, noted that many legacy media companies “hollowed out” their traditional broadcast and cable businesses, putting their assets into their streaming business. 

“There’s a narrative of media companies grabbing tech folks to launch these platforms, or to enhance an existing platform that needed work,” Borao said. “That was definitely a 2019, 2020 narrative. 

“Now, what you’re seeing is now that they’ve launched these platforms, they’re looking at other processes they can put in the cloud and do more efficiently,” Boroa said.

After years of mergers, some media companies have hundreds of analog systems handling content. That industry consolidation will continue, he said. 

Seeking Heads in the Cloud

The people media companies are looking for now are digital natives who think cloud-first, he said, calling them business technologists.

“They’re people who understand this digital thinking and can lay out the processes, lay out the organization and a model that is exponentially more efficient than the analog modes,” he said. “The cloud has changed the game for them.” 

Media companies used to have to poach that talent from technology firms. Now, they are hiring away from other media companies, offering higher pay and better titles.  

“I have a handful of clients that I personally work with who all in the past 90 days have moved from one media company to another because their skill set is in high demand,” the PwC exec said. “All of them got either title increases or significant pay increases. They’re effectively cashing in on those skill sets and those accomplishments.”

Borao said these weren’t top-level executives. “I’m talking about director-
level people, senior managers. It’s one thing to have a vision. It’s quite another to be able to execute on that. What I’m seeing is a good thing. We’re seeing high demand for those operators.”

The ability to use technology to legacy processes and the ability to be forward-looking about new business models will continue to be valuable, he said. 

Broadcaster spots from the Pearl TV consortium promoting the ATSC 3.0 advanced broadcast TV transmission standard have drawn consumer interest, according to a Magid survey including over better sound, which has become a major differentiator.

The study found that a majority of respondents (60%) said they were “likely“ to purchase a TV set with NextGen TV technology within the next year after seeing the Pearl TV spots promoting NextGen TV.

Also Read: Everything You Need to Know About Next Gen TV

The ATSC 3.0 standard is not backward-compatible, so viewers will need a new set to get all the new features — interactivity and targeted content, as well as better sound and pictures — though they can still get the broadcast signal on their current sets with an adapter.

Also Read: Pearl TV Campaign Looks to Juice NextGen TV Set Sales

People assume that a better picture goes along with the new broadcast transmission standard, Magid executive VP, media strategy group Bill Hague said during an NAB virtual discussion of NextGen TV, so better sound has actually become more of a differentiator.

Still, when Magid polled consumers about what would drive their next TV purchasing decision, significantly better picture quality topped the list at 77%, followed by cost (68%) and then immersive, theater quality sound at 67% — essentially a statistical dead heat for second place.

Magid's data was based on online interviews conducted in February 2021 with 2,000 adults 18-54 identified as decision-makers and influencers in purchasing decisions who own a TV, including a sample of 400 Hispanics.

Sony VP of business development Nick Colsey said during the discussion that the CE maker was ”seeding“ the market with NextGen-capable TVs as stations roll out the technology. Sony was also looking for stations to do some call-outs of the ATSC 3.0-compatible logo on the packaging , which shows the sets are ready to handle NextGen, as well as the website nextgentv.com, which shows the markets that have already lit up ATSC 3.0 and where consumers can sign up for e-mail alerts to let them know when their market adds NextGen TV.

Also Read: FCC: TV Stations Can Team Up for Broadcast Internet

Tim Carroll, senior director of technology, sound group, for Dolby Laboratories, said among the consumer selling points of improved sound is not only immersive sound, but the ability to, say, turn up the dialogue (Voice Plus dialogue enhancement) if there are problems hearing voices, or dealing with “the other old problem — loud commercials.“

The big four broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox in that order -- remain the TV brands that consumers in an annual survey identify as the top "must keep" programmers, Solutions Research Group said.

In the eighth annual such survey, ESPN and Discovery follow in the fifth and sixth position, while HBO has moved up to No. 7, its best showing since the survey began (and one place higher than last year). History, PBS and AMC (which moved up seven spots from 2014) complete the top 10. TNT dropped out of the top 10 this year, slipping to 13 (see chart below).

Other highlights from the online survey of 1,400 U.S. consumers, conducted in April:

ABC, Fox and CBS are the top three brands for the 18-34 age demographic: ABC Family and AMC were new to the top 10 for this age group.

ESPN remains the top cable network among men ages 18-49, followed by HBO and Discovery.

ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and Discovery, in that order, remain the top five brands among women ages 25-54 stay, the same as last year. HGTV and ABC Family made the top 10 in this demo for the first time in the survey; History and Lifetime, which had fallen out of the top 10, made a comeback this year.

ABC and CBS were the top brands among African-Americans. Gains among this group were made by Discovery, PBS, CW, AMC, Comedy Central, Showtime and CNN versus last year.

ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and HBO were the top five brands among Hispanic Americans, followed by ESPN, PBS, Univision, ABC Family and AMC.

ABC, Fox, CBS, NBC, HBO and ESPN ranked as the top five brands among households earning $100,000 and up, followed by PBS, CNN, ABC Family and History.

For the first time in 2015, the survey asked consumers what they would do if their TV service provider stopped carrying their must-keep favorites: 84% said they would take some kind of action. It broke own to: 22% would switch providers, 11% would sign an online petition, 8% would complain on social media, 3% would complain to the Federal Communications Commission and 40% would complain to their TV providers, the survey firm said.

The top 10 channels in terms of fan loyalty as indicated by proportion who would drop their TV subscription in the event of non-carriage were: Telemundo, Univision, NBC Sports Network, Fox News Channel, Bravo, History, ESPN, AMC, ESPN2 and FOX Sports 1.

Survey boilerplate: "Must Keep TV" tracking is an independent syndicated brand tracking survey conducted by Solutions Research Group among a representative sample of American consumers, SRG said. The survey has been done every year since 2007, with questions fielded and presented in the same manner each year. The 2015 research is based on online interviews with 1,400 American consumers ages 12 and up conducted in April 2015. SRG said the sample captures and represents all major population segments. Respondents are shown a list of 74 leading network or cable brands and are asked to identify which ones would be on their "must keep TV" list if they had to choose a limited number. Sample design is balanced by geography, gender and ethnicity, including African- American and English-speaking Hispanics according to known universe parameters.