NAB Show 2026 Preview – Professional Essentials Guide

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THE ROAD TO

NAB SHOW

THE TOPICS STEERING

THE CONVERSATION

C-BAND COUNTDOWN

BROADCASTERS PREPARE FOR IP DISTRIBUTION

PAGE

NEXTGEN TV CROSSROADS

ATSC 3.0 WILL USHER IN MORE THAN HDR

PAGE

PRO PERSPECTIVES

EXPERTS WEIGH IN ON TRENDING TOPICS

PAGE

APRIL 2026

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PAGE

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MICHAEL P. HILL

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more measured set of questions: how to

run streaming operations efficiently, how

to generate sustainable revenue across a

fragmented audience and how to deliver

reliably at scale.

At the 2026 NAB Show, those operation-

al and commercial realities are expected

to shape the conversations around con-

nected TV, FAST channels and the infra-

structure supporting them.

The exhibit floor will reflect an indus-

try that has largely moved past the launch

phase and is now focused on making what

exists work harder.

Doing more with existing content

For broadcasters managing content

across linear, digital, social and streaming

platforms simultaneously, the challenge

is less about what to produce and more

about how to move it efficiently across an

expanding number of destinations.

“Audience behaviour continues to shift

toward digital formats, so broadcasters

are producing more variations of the same

stream than ever before,” said Sam Peter-

son, chief operating officer at Bitcentral.

“The real challenge – and opportunity – is

creating workflows that let teams quickly

shape content for multiple platforms with-

out slowing down core news operations.

When content can move fluidly across

channels, broadcasters can reach more

viewers and maximize the value of every

story.”

That efficiency pressure is visible at the

distribution level as well.

Media companies are less focused on

launching new channels than on mak-

ing existing assets easier to package and

move.

“Streaming expansion has entered a

more pragmatic phase. Instead of launch-

ing more channels, media companies are

focusing on how to make existing content

easier to package, localize, and distribute

across a fragmented platform landscape,”

said Jean-Christophe Perier, chief market-

ing officer at Globecast. “Expect more dis-

Streaming’s next phase

puts focus on smarter

approaches, revenues

Continued on Page 9

STREAMING

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cussion around operational efficiency and

rights-aware workflows than around raw

channel growth.”

Managing rights across that many plat-

forms adds its own layer of complexity,

particularly for scheduling teams working

across FAST, linear and digital simultane-

ously.

“As channels and distribution outlets

span across FAST, linear, digital and social

platforms, scheduling teams face grow-

ing pressure to manage complex rights,

improve programming performance, and

deliver schedules faster, often with fewer

resources. The only way out is to trans-

form scheduling from a static task-based

process into a dynamic system that auto-

mates continuous channel optimization,”

said Ivan Verbesselt, chief strategy and

marketing officer at Mediagenix.

Business models in motion

The subscription-only streaming model

has given way to something considerably

more varied.

Services now operate across advertis-

ing-supported tiers, premium subscrip-

tions, promotional bundles and distributor

partnerships, often simultaneously, and

the infrastructure required to manage that

complexity has become a product catego-

ry of its own.

“Direct-to-consumer streaming contin-

ues to evolve as services refine how they

package and distribute content. Subscrip-

tion offerings now exist alongside adver-

tising-supported tiers, promotional bun-

dles and partnerships with distributors,

telecom providers and other platforms,”

said Sahil Dhar Hakim, chief business

officer at Evergent. “That dynamic envi-

ronment requires infrastructure that can

support constant changes in offers, access

rights and billing relationships without dis-

rupting the viewer experience.”

Free ad-supported streaming television

has become a key part of that diversifica-

tion, particularly for broadcasters seeking

to extend their reach without the overhead

of a subscription-based operation. Analyst

forecasts have projected the FAST mar-

ket’s ad revenues will roughly double by

2030, according to research firm Omdia.

“Broadcasters are increasingly adopting

a broad-beam strategy to reach as wide an

audience as possible. This requires con-

tent to be delivered in a diverse range of

formats, from traditional linear distribu-

tion to AVOD, subscription-based services,

as well as hybrid services. FAST channels

are increasingly being added to the mix

as a means of increasing reach, attracting

a broader audience, and opening up new

opportunities for ad revenue,” said Lelde

Ardava, chief operating officer at Veset.

Advertising as a technical problem

As more streaming services add adver-

tising tiers, the ad experience has moved

from a commercial consideration to a

technical one. Errors in ad delivery affect

revenue directly, and a poor ad experience

affects retention.

“Streaming is entering a new phase of

speed and scale, and advertising sits right

at the core of it. With CTV ad inventory

growing, streaming providers cannot af-

ford errors in ad delivery because it im-

pacts revenue and leads to a poor viewing

experience. This is driving demand for

video-specific observability that can de-

liver real-time insights into playback per-

formance and ad engagement,” said Ian

Baglow, co-CEO of Bitmovin.

Dynamic ad insertion, the technolo-

gy that places targeted advertising into

streams in real time, continues to see in-

vestment as hybrid monetization models

expand.

“Broadcasters and streaming services

are increasingly relying on ads to monetize

their content, which makes dynamic ad in-

sertion a critical component of streaming.

With innovations like server-guided ad

insertion and new ad formats, DAI tech-

nology is developing fast, helping stream-

ing services improve viewer experience,

increase platform reach and monetize at

scale,” said Paul Davies, head of marketing

and partnerships at Yospace.

The ad experience itself is increasingly

being framed as a competitive differentia-

tor, not just a revenue mechanism.

“In the current market where it is diffi-

cult for services to stand out, the ad expe-

rience may well turn out to be a key differ-

entiator, so there will most likely be a lot

of investment in this area on show at NAB

Show,” said Mrugesh Desai, vice president

for North America at Accedo.

Delivering at scale

Underlying all of it is a delivery infra-

structure question that becomes more

acute as audiences grow and viewing

behavior fragments across devices, plat-

forms and global markets.

Peak events, such as the Olympics or

World Cup, stress-test streaming infra-

structure in ways that routine viewing

does not.

“We expect a lot of discussion around

how

platforms

can

reliably

deliver

high-quality streams to peak audiences

while managing latency, cost, and network

efficiency. Broadcasters and platforms are

increasingly exploring new delivery archi-

tectures and emerging protocols such as

Media over QUIC, alongside investing in

features like multiview that allow audienc-

es to watch multiple streams simultane-

ously, particularly around premier global

sports tournaments,” said Elodie Levrel,

corporate marketing and communication

director at Broadpeak.

Media over QUIC, commonly referred to

as MoQ, is an emerging transport protocol

designed to improve the efficiency and la-

tency of media delivery over the internet.

It has gained attention as an alternative

to existing streaming protocols for large-

scale live events where responsiveness

and reliability are both critical.

The questions around scale, monetiza-

tion and operational efficiency are con-

nected: a platform that cannot deliver re-

liably at peak cannot monetize that peak

effectively. How vendors are addressing

all three simultaneously is likely to be the

central thread running through streaming

discussions at the show.

Continued from Page 7

///

Services now operate across

advertising-supported tiers, premium

subscriptions, promotional bundles

and distributor partnerships, often

simultaneously, and the infrastructure

required to manage that complexity

has become a product category

of its own.

10 NCS | NEWSCASTSTUDIO.COM

The question of whether remote pro-

duction works has been answered. The

industry spent the better part of five years

proving it could – through pandemic ne-

cessity, cost pressure and a gradual accu-

mulation of real-world deployments.

What the 2026 NAB Show will reflect is

a different set of questions: how to make

distributed production consistent, reli-

able and scalable as a permanent operat-

ing model.

“Remote production has matured from

an emergency solution into a long-term

operational strategy. Broadcasters are

building workflows that allow teams and

systems to operate across locations with-

out sacrificing reliability or speed. The

result is more agile operations, where

teams collaborate more efficiently and

publish content faster, regardless of

where people or resources are based,”

said Sam Peterson, chief operating officer

at Bitcentral.

The ambition has shifted alongside the

maturity.

“The next phase is less about reduc-

ing travel and more about enabling high-

ly specialized teams to collaborate from

anywhere while maintaining the reliabil-

ity and responsiveness required for live

events. As productions become more

distributed, robust communications and

unified control layers are becoming es-

sential to keeping complex broadcasts

coordinated in real time,” said Joyce

Bente, president and CEO of the Ameri-

cas at Riedel Communications.

Consistency at scale

Remote production’s proof-of-concept

phase produced workflows that worked un-

der controlled conditions. The harder prob-

lem is making them work consistently –

across locations, operators and production

types – without requiring individual exper-

tise to compensate for system variability.

“Remote production is no longer about

proving it can work, the focus is on deliv-

ering consistency across locations,” said

Continued on Page 12

Remote production growing

up to take its place in world

of professional broadcasting

REMOTE PRODUCTION

Exhibitors, presenters

to focus on solutions

that boost reliablity,

consistentcy and

scalability for remote

production approach

NCS | NEWSCASTSTUDIO.COM

Hybrid production infrastructure

has become a permanent reality

for today’s broadcast production

The cloud debate that defined much of

the broadcast industry’s infrastructure con-

versation for the better part of a decade has

largely been settled, not by a decisive shift

to cloud but by an acceptance that cloud

is one part of a more complex operational

picture.

The conversations around virtualization

and software-defined production are ex-

pected to reflect that maturity: less focused

on whether to adopt cloud and more fo-

cused on how to make hybrid environments

function as a single, manageable system.

That shift in framing is significant. The in-

dustry spent years weighing cloud against

on-premises infrastructure as competing

options. The working reality for most orga-

nizations is that both coexist, and the opera-

tional challenge is managing them together

rather than choosing between them.

“The industry has largely moved past

the cloud versus on-prem debate. What’s

emerging instead is a modular approach

where cloud, edge, and physical infrastruc-

ture are combined depending on the work-

load. The organizations getting the most

value out of virtualization are the ones

designing systems to evolve continuous-

ly rather than treating infrastructure as a

once-a-decade rebuild,” said Jean-Christo-

phe Perier, chief marketing officer at Globe-

cast.

Not everyone shares that optimism about

where cloud has landed.

“The cloud has not proved the savior of

the media industry as some predicted. Me-

dia producers and distributors like to have

their content and their workflows where

they can see them, and the business models

of the big cloud providers still do not reflect

the unique challenges of our industry,” said

Jan Weigner, chief technology officer at Cin-

egy.

Weigner’s point frames a tension that

runs through the topic: cloud adoption in

media has been genuine and substantial,

but it has also been more selective and

more complicated than early projections

suggested. Both things are true, and 2026

NAB Show will reflect both.

Hybrid as the permanent model

The language around hybrid infrastruc-

ture has shifted from transitional to perma-

nent.

Organizations that once described hy-

brid as a stepping stone toward full cloud

migration are now describing it as the end

state, not because cloud fell short, but be-

cause the workload economics and opera-

tional realities of broadcast production do

not favor a single infrastructure model.

“The hybrid model is no longer a transi-

tional architecture — it’s the permanent op-

erating reality for most serious broadcast

organizations. The question has moved

from ‘can we run workloads in software?’

to ‘how do we maintain control and visi-

bility across ground and cloud simultane-

ously?’ The organizations scaling fastest

aren’t necessarily those with the deepest

cloud investment, but those who’ve built

the clearest operational layer above it,” said

Michael Demb, vice president of product

strategy at TAG Video Systems.

The practical implication is that orches-

tration, the software layer that coordi-

nates how work moves between cloud and

on-premises environments, has become

as important as the underlying infrastruc-

ture itself.

“Virtualization

and

software-defined

systems are allowing broadcasters to

move beyond rigid, hardware-centric in-

frastructure. In practice, most organiza-

tions are adopting hybrid models, keeping

continuous high-value workflows on-prem

while using cloud resources for remote

production, pop-up channels, and peak

capacity. The key is orchestration and

automation, which unify cloud and on-

prem resources so operators can manage

workflows seamlessly and deploy services

wherever they make the most operation-

al and economic sense,” said Steve Reyn-

olds, chief executive officer of Imagine

Communications.

“The cloud is no longer a question of if, but

how. The conversation has moved on from

migrating everything to the cloud to what it

takes to run production environments in a

way that is flexible, predictable and sustain-

able. Many organizations have encountered

Continued on Page 12

CLOUD PRODUCTION

12 NCS | NEWSCASTSTUDIO.COM

Paddy Taylor, head of broadcast at MRMC.

“The goal is to make these systems feel

immediate and reliable, so remote opera-

tion matches the responsiveness of being

on-site.”

That reliability is harder to maintain

than it appears. As signal chains extend

across networks, timing and synchroni-

zation issues can develop gradually and

silently, often going undetected until they

affect the output.

“Remote production has moved from

a cost-saving experiment to a core op-

erational model, with signals travelling

through complex networks between stadi-

ums, production hubs and cloud environ-

ments before reaching viewers. As these

workflows scale, endpoint-only verifica-

tion is showing its limits, as timing can

degrade silently across the path between

those points without being detected until

it affects the output. Particular attention

is needed where SDI and IP environ-

ments meet within the same signal chain,

as these boundaries are often where as-

sumptions about synchronization break

down first,” said Anna Hurd, head of sales

at Hitomi Broadcast.

The SDI-to-IP boundary issue is one of

the more specific and underreported fail-

ure points in distributed production. Most

facilities in active transition are running

both environments simultaneously, and

the handoff between them is where timing

assumptions made in one domain can qui-

etly fail in the other.

REMI and the centralized model

REMI has become one of the more es-

tablished frameworks for live event pro-

duction, particularly in sports. The model

keeps the on-site footprint minimal while

centralizing production resources at a

hub, reducing both logistical complexity

and cost.

“Remote production, and particularly

REMI workflows, will be a key focus at

NAB Show 2026 as broadcasters expand

event coverage without increasing the

operational footprint at each venue. By

centralizing production resources and

keeping on-site deployments minimal,

REMI reduces both logistical complexity

and cost while enabling more scalable

coverage. These workflows rely on main-

taining precise timing and synchroniza-

tion across distributed environments,

whether using AVC or HEVC over con-

strained networks or JPEG XS where ul-

tra-low latency is required,” said Stephan

Stadler, vice president of product man-

agement at Appear.

JPEG XS is a lightweight compression

format designed for low-latency appli-

cations where image quality needs to be

preserved and processing delay kept to a

minimum, qualities that make it well suit-

ed to live production over IP networks.

Appear’s X Platform supported NBC

Sports’ coverage of the 2026 Milan Corti-

na Winter Olympics and Paralympics, pro-

viding a large-scale test of REMI across

a high-profile live production. Stadler

noted that customers are also moving

away from all-cloud thinking toward hy-

brid approaches that balance cloud and

on-premises performance, a shift already

evident in how major sports productions

are being architected.

“Remote production has become part

of our daily workflow, not just a stopgap.

The challenge, and what we’ve learned,

is making distributed production feel as

natural as working together in the same

control room,” said Roberto Musso, tech-

nical director of NDI.

The cultural dimension

The technical challenges of distribut-

ed production get most of the attention.

But operators and production managers

working across remote workflows have

identified a parallel challenge that is hard-

er to engineer around: the human one.

“The more subtle shift is cultural. By

building the working trust between col-

laborators who may never meet in per-

son, productions are developing new

flows. Remote review sessions, shared

reference libraries, and workflows that

allow collaboration without creating bot-

tlenecks,” said Duncan Beattie, market

development manager at Tuxera.

Beattie also noted that hybrid work-

flows connecting on-premises and cloud

environments are enabling productions

to draw on talent pools that would have

been inaccessible under traditional lo-

cation-based staffing models, a practical

benefit that compounds as productions

develop working relationships across dis-

tributed teams.

Emerging frameworks

As remote production matures, atten-

tion is turning to the next layer of infra-

structure: frameworks that will enable

systems from different vendors to work

together more efficiently in cloud-native

and virtualized environments.

“Emerging frameworks such as the Me-

dia Exchange Layer are gaining attention.

MXL is an open framework designed to

allow media applications from different

vendors to share audio and video direct-

ly within the same memory environment,

enabling far more efficient, interoperable

workflows in cloud-native and virtualized

production environments. Although still

in early stages, initial workstreams are

picking up momentum and seeing positive

results — we’ll start to see more of these

proof-of-concepts shown and discussed

on the show floor,” said Costa Nikols, exec-

utive team strategy advisor for media and

entertainment at Telos Alliance.

MXL represents a different approach to

interoperability than protocol-level stan-

dards.

Instead of defining how content moves

between systems, it defines how applica-

tions share media within the same com-

puting environment, reducing the over-

head of repeated encoding and transfer.

Whether it gains meaningful traction be-

yond proof-of-concept at NAB Show 2026

will be one of the more technically specific

threads to follow on the exhibit floor.

REMOTE

Continued from Page 10

The technical challenges

of distributed production get most

of the attention. But operators

and production managers working across

remote workflows have identified a parallel

challenge that is harder to engineer around:

the human one.

///

NCS | NEWSCASTSTUDIO.COM

the challenges of rip-and-replace approach-

es and are now taking a more phased path,

with hybrid models allowing them to evolve

without disrupting what already works,”

said Craig Wilson, principal enterprise spe-

cialist for broadcast at Avid.

Where cloud makes sense

Within hybrid environments, cloud re-

sources are being applied selectively to

workloads where they offer clear advan-

tages: flexibility, speed of deployment and

cost alignment with episodic or variable

demand.

“There’s a realisation that it doesn’t nec-

essarily have to be an all-or-nothing ap-

proach. Broadcasters can still extract value

from the flexibility, scalability and efficiency

that the cloud delivers by supplementing

their existing workflows with cloud-native

solutions for certain workflow functions.

We’re seeing this type of measured ap-

proach with broadcasters who may be using

cloud playout only for certain channels in

their portfolio, to launch FAST channels or

temporary pop-up channels, to experiment

with new channel formats, or for disaster

recovery systems even where the main

channel playout may not be running in the

cloud,” said Lelde Ardava, chief operating

officer at Veset.

The compute-on-demand model is also

changing how production infrastructure

is sized and managed. Rather than main-

taining permanent systems built for peak

capacity, organizations are beginning to

scale infrastructure to match the episodic,

event-driven nature of modern media pro-

duction.

“What we’re seeing now is a move to-

ward compute-powered production, where

broadcast functions that once required ded-

icated hardware run as software workloads

wherever the appropriate compute re-

sources exist. That approach allows organi-

zations to spin up and scale production and

distribution services as needed, aligning in-

frastructure with the episodic, event-driven

nature of modern media rather than main-

taining permanent systems built for 24/7

channels,” said Jim Akimchuk, president

and chief executive officer at BitFire.

Weigner’s counterpoint is relevant here

as well.

Modern software running on commercial

off-the-shelf hardware, he argued, can deliv-

er high performance and flexibility without

the cost and operational complexity that

cloud can introduce, a perspective that will

find an audience among broadcasters who

have encountered unexpected cloud costs

or latency constraints in practice.

Visibility across environments

As infrastructure spans cloud, on-prem-

ises and edge environments simulta-

neously, maintaining clear operational

visibility across all of it has emerged as

a defining challenge. The organizations

managing hybrid environments most ef-

fectively are those that can see everything

happening across the full infrastructure in

a single operational view.

“In 2025, Iconik customer deployments

remained split with 71% cloud and 29%

on-prem environments, reinforcing that

media organizations still need to operate

effectively across both. The opportunity in

2026 is to make infrastructure more soft-

ware-defined, adaptable, and resilient so

teams can place content where it makes

the most sense. That only works if you

have clear visibility across environments

— a single pane of glass to understand

where content lives, how it’s being used,

and how to manage it effectively at scale,”

said Kathleen Barrett, chief executive offi-

cer of Backlight.

“The real opportunity is creating envi-

ronments where workflows can move be-

tween locations — facility, cloud, or venue

— without forcing operators to change how

they work,” said Joyce Bente, president

and chief executive officer of the Americas

at Riedel Communications.

Timing and synchronization

in virtualized environments

One of the less visible but operationally

significant consequences of moving pro-

duction workloads into virtualized and

cloud-based environments is what it does

to timing and synchronization.

Hardware-defined broadcast infrastruc-

ture was built around deterministic timing.

Software-defined environments introduce

variability that can affect the entire signal

chain if not actively managed.

“As production infrastructure moves

into virtualized and cloud-based environ-

ments, timing and synchronization are

becoming harder to predict and manage.

Software workflows introduce multiple

processing stages, buffers and network

paths, meaning latency can vary signifi-

cantly depending on where and how sig-

nals are processed. The priority now is

moving beyond isolated measurement

points toward a unified view of timing be-

haviour across the entire chain, from cap-

ture through to final delivery, because that

is where the difference between a stable

workflow and an unpredictable one be-

comes visible,” said Anna Hurd, head of

sales at Hitomi Broadcast.

This is a problem that does not resolve

itself as cloud adoption matures. If any-

thing, it becomes more acute as more of

the signal chain moves into software, and

as productions draw on a wider mix of in-

frastructure types simultaneously.

Standards and interoperability

Underpinning the move toward soft-

ware-defined production is a set of emerg-

ing standards and frameworks that enable

components from different vendors to work

together in virtualized environments with-

out requiring custom integration at every

boundary.

“Cloud virtualization and software-de-

fined production are redefining how me-

dia workflows are built, orchestrated, and

scaled across modern infrastructures. Ini-

tiatives like the EBU’s Dynamic Media Fa-

cility, alongside technologies such as MXL,

TAMS, and Matrox ORIGIN, enable mod-

ular, interoperable systems where media

services, storage, and processing operate

independently yet cohesively across dis-

tributed environments. This software-de-

fined approach gives broadcasters greater

agility to deploy, manage, and scale produc-

tion workflows while maintaining the per-

formance, precision, and reliability expect-

ed from broadcast-grade solutions,” said

Francesco Scartozzi, vice president of sales

and business development at Matrox Video.

The EBU’s Dynamic Media Facility is a

reference architecture developed by the

European Broadcasting Union designed

to define how software-defined broadcast

components should interoperate in cloud

and hybrid environments. Media Exchange

Layer is an open framework that allows me-

dia applications from different vendors to

share audio and video directly within the

same memory environment, reducing the

processing overhead of repeated encoding

and transfer.

TAMS, the Timeline-Addressable Media

Store, is a specification for storing and ac-

cessing media using timeline-based refer-

ences rather than file-based ones, enabling

more flexible and efficient access to content

across distributed workflows.

These are not yet universally adopted

standards, but their presence on the NAB

Show floor, in proof-of-concept demonstra-

tions, and in vendor implementations will

indicate how quickly the industry is moving

toward a more interoperable software-de-

fined infrastructure model.

HYBRID

Continued from Page 11

///

14 NCS | NEWSCASTSTUDIO.COM

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BROADCAST

DISTRIBUTION

C-band satellite reallocation

to have significant impacts

on distribution approaches

The broadcast industry is heading into

the second major reallocation of C-band

satellite spectrum in less than a decade, and

this time the outcome is expected to look

fundamentally different.

Where the first repack was largely man-

aged within the satellite ecosystem, the sec-

ond is pushing broadcasters toward a more

permanent reckoning with how they dis-

tribute programming – and the IP networks,

hybrid architectures and transport tools on

display at NAB Show 2026 are central to

how that transition gets resolved.

The Federal Communications Commis-

sion voted last November to advance a

notice of proposed rulemaking that would

clear between 100 and 180 MHz in the 3.98

to 4.2 GHz range for auction by July 4, 2027,

as mandated by Congress. Final rules are

expected this summer. The first C-band re-

pack, completed in 2023, cleared spectrum

from 3.7 to 3.98 GHz. This time, the math

does not work the same way. The consen-

sus among broadcasters and vendors is that

even at the 100 MHz minimum, there will

not be enough spectrum remaining to sus-

tain current distribution loads — meaning

some broadcasters will need to move off

C-band entirely rather than simply repack

into a smaller slice of it.

The data is starting to reflect that reality.

Broadcasters are rebuilding live opera-

tions around IP delivery and cloud-based

workflows as reliance on satellite and

dedicated fiber declines, according to a

report from Caretta Research produced

in conjunction with Zixi. The report found

that IP delivery over internet and cloud

infrastructure is providing more flexibility

and allowing operators to scale workflows

across multiple live events in ways that

satellite and private fiber circuits, which

required long-term capacity commitments

and high operational costs, could not.

“IP delivery is fundamentally changing

the economics and flexibility of live video

distribution,” said Robert Ambrose, chief

executive and co-founder of Caretta Re-

search. “Broadcasters are moving away

from fixed satellite and fiber infrastructure

Continued on Page 16

Second major repack this decade fuels boost

in IP networks, hybrid architecture, transport

16 NCS | NEWSCASTSTUDIO.COM

toward software-defined workflows that

allow them to scale production, reach new

distribution partners and respond much

more quickly to changing audience de-

mand.”

What is different this time

The first C-band repack was financially

and technically manageable. The auction,

completed in early 2021, raised $81.17 bil-

lion from wireless carriers including Veri-

zon and AT&T. Part of that windfall funded

$3 billion in relocation costs for program-

mers and incumbent earth station opera-

tors, covering new encoders and integrat-

ed receiver/decoders, as well as filters to

eliminate interference from 5G signals. An

additional $9.3 billion in accelerated relo-

cation payments to satellite operators —

SES and Intelsat, which have since merged

— is widely credited with completing the

spectrum-clearing process more than two

years ahead of its original December 2025

deadline.

Broadcasters managed that transition

by replacing legacy MPEG-4 encoders

with more efficient HEVC gear, adopting

advanced modulation technology and

compressing more programming into less

spectrum. The capital expenditure was

reimbursable. The second transition does

not offer the same path.

No amount of encoding efficiency will

sustain current distribution loads if the

upper end of the auction range is real-

ized. Some broadcasters will have to move

off the C-band entirely, and the financial

model will shift with them. Where the first

transition was largely a capital investment,

new hardware with a defined, reimburs-

able cost, the second involves ongoing

operational expenses for managed IP de-

livery services, occasional Ku-band capac-

ity and wireless backup links. Reimburse-

ment for operating expenses is expected

to be more complicated and harder to ob-

tain than the hardware reimbursements

that covered the first transition.

The

urgency

sharpening

deci-

sion-making that might otherwise move

slowly.

“The well-known satellite distribution

method using C-band frequencies simply

won’t be a viable long-term option, and

2026 is the year when broadcasters need

to shift to alternative models,” said Roger

Franklin, chief strategy officer at LTN.

“The FCC’s upcoming C-band decisions

will intensify pressure to simplify distribu-

tion architectures and accelerate the shift

toward end-to-end IP workflows,” said

Alan Young, vice president of strategic

business development at Zixi. “The oppor-

tunity is to rebuild distribution around sys-

tems that deliver reliability, transparency,

and scalability without adding complexity.”

Hybrid as the working answer

No major broadcaster is currently plan-

ning a clean switch from C-band to a single

replacement. The working model is hybrid:

combining two or more delivery paths to

replicate the reliability that C-band has his-

torically provided.

Ku-band satellite is the most direct sub-

stitute, sharing the same basic infrastruc-

ture and operational familiarity.

NBC is currently the only major broad-

cast network using Ku-band as its primary

distribution path, maintaining C-band as a

backup, a real-world data point for an ap-

proach other networks are now evaluating.

But Ku-band is susceptible to rain fade, sig-

nal loss in heavy weather, which limits its

viability as a standalone replacement for

mission-critical distribution. Cross-strap-

ping technology, which allows a satellite

to receive a C-band uplink and retransmit

it as a Ku-band downlink, offers a practical

bridge for broadcasters who want to avoid

modifying their existing uplink facilities.

SES has new satellites with that capability in

development.

One capability that IP has not fully repli-

cated is what broadcasters call determin-

istic switching — the ability for a network to

simultaneously cue hundreds of affiliates to

cut to local programming at the exact same

moment. It is a specific operational require-

ment for live network television that C-band

satellite handles reliably and that any re-

placement architecture needs to account

for.

IP terrestrial delivery has been gaining

ground as the costs of managed networks

have declined and real-world deployments

have addressed reliability concerns.

Several major networks, such as the

Tennis Channel, TelevisaUnivision, MSG

Networks and Scripps, have already tran-

sitioned primary linear feeds to managed

IP distribution in advance of the spectrum

transition. The challenge is not perfor-

mance in major markets but reaching every

affiliate a network needs to serve, including

those in smaller markets with limited or

non-diverse internet connectivity.

Physical path diversity is a related con-

cern.

Most stations are served by a single fiber

duct regardless of how many internet ser-

vice providers they use, meaning a severed

cable can take down multiple redundant

IP paths simultaneously. A wireless back-

up, Ku-band, 5G or low earth orbit satel-

lite, provides the physical separation that

purely terrestrial IP cannot. The emerging

consensus is that full reliability for primary

program distribution requires at least two

delivery technologies, providing both net-

work and physical diversity.

“Broadcasters want to reduce tech debt

and operate hybrid infrastructure with

far more predictability, which makes soft-

ware-defined, verifiable IP delivery increas-

ingly attractive,” Young said.

Format requirements

and the operational case for IP

The transition away from C-band coin-

cides with growing demand for higher-qual-

ity distribution formats. IP-based infra-

structure offers capacity advantages over

satellite multiplexes that are relevant to

broadcasters planning for next-generation

feeds.

“Broadcasters will be required to distrib-

ute different versions of individual chan-

nels, with the most popular being 1080p60

HDR — offering twice as many video frames

per second as HD, and significantly bet-

ter color gradients and contrast,” Franklin

said. “These will be distributed to affiliates,

especially virtual pay-TV services like You-

Tube TV and Hulu, using terrestrial, broad-

cast-grade IP that supports a far higher ca-

pacity than satellite.”

The transition also creates an opportu-

nity to shed infrastructure complexity that

has accumulated over decades of satel-

lite-based distribution.

“Part of the simplification will be moving

to IP — using transport stream over internet

protocol technologies, and shedding com-

plicated legacy ground infrastructure, such

as satellite antennas, outdoor cabling, pow-

er, heaters, snow clearance procedures,

physical real estate, muxes, conditional ac-

cess systems and amplifiers,” Franklin said.

“Broadcasters are moving beyond simply

replacing satellite circuits with IP transport,”

said Marc Aldrich, chief executive of Zixi.

“They are rebuilding live operations around

flexible, cloud-based workflows that allow

them to scale events, reach new distribu-

tion partners and maintain broadcast-grade

reliability across global networks.”

IP delivery and the protocol layer

It is worth drawing a clear distinction be-

tween IP terrestrial delivery as a distribu-

tion model and the transport protocols that

make it viable. They are related but not the

same thing.

IP terrestrial delivery, whether over man-

aged networks or the public internet, is what

Continued from Page 15

Continued on Page 17

NCS | NEWSCASTSTUDIO.COM

is replacing C-band as a distribution infra-

structure. The protocols SRT and Reliable

Internet Stream Transport (RIST) sit under-

neath that infrastructure. They define how

video moves reliably over IP networks, ad-

dressing the packet loss, latency and securi-

ty problems that historically made the pub-

lic internet unsuitable for broadcast-grade

contribution and distribution. They are not

themselves distribution platforms, they are

the technical foundation that makes IP de-

livery reliable enough to use as one.

“IP technology is enabling broadcast-

ers to manage remote production and live

events more efficiently and cost effectively.

The RIST protocol is one of several proto-

cols in use across the industry for transport-

ing video content, but unlike other transport

protocols, RIST is an open-source specifica-

tion so any vendor can implement it in their

equipment and innovate freely. As such, the

number of RIST-enabled products is con-

stantly expanding and now covers each part

of the contribution and distribution work-

flow,” said Ciro Noronha, president of the

RIST Forum.

For supplementary wireless paths, newer

approaches are emerging that use 5G and

low earth orbit satellite alongside public

internet delivery rather than as standalone

alternatives.

“While packet loss and latency have his-

torically been a major challenge when using

the public internet for remote and distribut-

ed production, new technology is becom-

ing available that enables broadcasters to

get the best of both worlds — the flexibility

and cost savings of public internet and the

low latency that remote production needs

— by leveraging supplementary networks

such as 5G or satellite,” said Kieran Kunhya,

founder and chief executive officer at Open

Broadcast Systems.

Interoperability format challenges

Even where connectivity is resolved,

the operational complexity of IP distribu-

tion introduces its own set of challenges.

Broadcasters managing distribution to

hundreds of affiliates and cable headends

are dealing with varying levels of IP read-

iness, different codec environments and

multiple vendor ecosystems that need to

function together without manual inter-

vention at each endpoint.

“Remote production pipelines have ma-

tured considerably in the last few years,

but today, complexity, security, and laten-

cy remain core challenges. Teams are jug-

gling more cameras and equipment, and

working with so many different video reso-

lutions, frame rates, codecs, and transport

protocols. IP interoperability and con-

version are likely to drive conversations

at NAB Show, as professionals look for

solutions that make it easier to integrate

diverse sources across a production and

push them out in the appropriate delivery

formats,” said Mike Boucke, senior prod-

uct manager at AJA Video Systems.

The codec transition adds another layer

of complexity.

Many smaller cable programmers are

still distributing in MPEG-4 AVC while

major broadcast networks have largely

moved to HEVC. Upgrading to HEVC offers

a path to repacking into whatever C-band

capacity remains while simultaneously

preparing headends for a transition to IP

delivery — but it requires new integrated

receiver/decoders across the distribution

chain, a coordination challenge involving

multiple vendors, operators and facilities.

What comes after

The transition timeline, once the FCC is-

sues final rules, will be measured in years.

Once the auction concludes in mid-2027,

significant migration activity is expected to

extend through 2028 and into 2029. That

means NAB Show 2026 arrives at an early

but critical point in the process, one where

options are being evaluated, proof-of-con-

cept testing is underway and early movers

are already committed.

Chris Pulis, chief technology officer at

Globecast, framed the window plainly.

“Companies that wait for a clean, predict-

able migration window will find themselves

playing catch-up in a world where delivery

expectations, quality standards, and busi-

ness models evolve in near real time,” Pulis

saids. “The defining challenge in 2026 will

be navigating the final stages of the shift

from legacy C-band satellite-driven distri-

bution models to a fully networked, cloud-

first future. Companies that have already

mastered cloud and IP delivery will be in the

driver’s seat.”

The

longer-term

direction,

broadly

shared across the industry, is that IP terres-

trial delivery becomes the primary distri-

bution method for most broadcasters, with

satellite retained as backup. How quickly

that shift happens depends on connectivi-

ty reaching every affiliate that needs it and

on a reimbursement framework that makes

the move from capital to operational expen-

diture financially manageable.

The protocols, conversion tools and hy-

brid delivery architectures on the NAB

Show 2026 floor will reflect an industry that

has largely accepted that direction and is

now working through the practical details

of getting there.

Continued from Page 16

///

The IP Showcase will return to the

2026 NAB Show in Las Vegas, with a fo-

cus on the transition of IPMX from spec-

ification to real-world deployment.

The Alliance for IP Media Solutions,

Advanced Media Workflow Associa-

tion and the Video Services Forum an-

nounced the showcase will take placein

the West Hall of the Las Vegas Conven-

tion Center, highlighting how open IP

standards support broadcast and Pro

AV workflows.

AIMS will demonstrate certified IPMX

products at booth W1355 and host train-

ing sessions in room W317, offering

hands-on insights into IPMX architec-

ture and implementation, the organiza-

tions said.

“With IPMX finalized and an opera-

tional certification program in place,

NAB 2026 marks the shift from roadmap

discussions to real-world deployment,”

said Andrew Starks, an AIMS board

member and director of product man-

agement for Macnica. “We’re no longer

talking about what the standard could

enable — we’re demonstrating a growing,

deployable ecosystem that manufac-

turers and end users can build around

today. Part of what makes that possible

is IPMX’s ability to bridge accessible AV-

over-IP systems and fully deterministic

SMPTE ST 2110-class environments, en-

abling real-world deployments that can

start simple and scale as performance

and timing requirements grow, while

aligning naturally with cloud and micro-

services-based architectures.”

The IP Showcase Theater will feature

presentations in the Tech Chat Theater,

covering topics including SMPTE ST

2110, IPMX, AES67, AMWA NMOS and

VSF TR-1001, along with monitoring,

quality control and maintenance in IP-

based environments and more.

The event will also mark the debut of

the IPMX Training Series, an online ed-

ucational program developed by AIMS.

The three-level curriculum will cover

foundational concepts, systems design

and advanced networking topics such

as PTP and SMPTE ST 2110.

IP Showcase

to highlight

shift to IPMX

deployment

///

18 NCS | NEWSCASTSTUDIO.COM

Sportscasting facing expanded

coverage demands amid tighter

budgets, higher expectations

Sports broadcasting has always demand-

ed more than other production environ-

ments: faster turnarounds, more simul-

taneous feeds, no opportunity to correct

mistakes after the fact.

What has changed is the scale of those

demands. Rights holders are covering

more events across more platforms while

audience expectations have risen and pro-

duction budgets have not kept pace.

“Sports production will be at the center

of many discussions at NAB Show 2026, in

particular, sports productions’ balancing

act between rising expectations and tight-

ening budgets,” said Joyce Bente, president

and chief executive officer of the Americas

at Riedel Communications. “Audiences

want more content, more perspectives, and

more immediacy, but production teams are

being asked to deliver this without dramat-

ically increasing resources. The industry’s

real innovation challenge now is scale —

producing more content, more efficiently,

without sacrificing the quality audiences

expect from live sports.”

That

tension

between

expectation

and resource runs through nearly every

conversation about sports production

technology heading into the 2026 NAB

Show, from the workflows handling ingest

at major global events to the tools en-

abling smaller leagues to produce broad-

cast-quality coverage for the first time.

Ingest and workflow as the

production enabler

The visible output of a major sports

broadcast is the produced feed. The infra-

structure that makes it possible – ingest

systems, cloud workflows, real-time ac-

cess to media – increasingly determines

what that feed can contain and how quick-

ly it reaches audiences across different

platforms.

“Live sports continue to push the lim-

its of production workflows because

the demands are immediate, global, and

multi-platform. The pattern emerging

Continued on Page 19

SPORTS STREAMING

NCS | NEWSCASTSTUDIO.COM

across major events is that ingest infra-

structure and real-time access to media

are becoming as important as the produc-

tion itself. As audiences expect highlights,

alternate angles, and social content deliv-

ered across the full spectrum of screens

within seconds, the underlying ingest and

workflow architecture becomes the real

enabler of modern sports storytelling,”

said Benjamin Desbois, chief growth and

strategy officer at Telestream.

Desbois pointed to major sports events

this past winter where large-scale live in-

gest and cloud workflows were used to cap-

ture dozens of feeds daily and make content

immediately available for clipping, social

distribution and broadcast partners work-

ing thousands of miles from the action.

The codec infrastructure underneath

those workflows is also evolving. At the

Paris 2024 Olympics, Globo delivered live

UHD 4K HDR at 10 Mbps using a VVC base

layer enhanced with MPEG-5 LCEVC, a

layered codec architecture that achieved

significant bitrate savings compared to

standalone VVC, according to V-Nova.

“The deeper lesson for the industry is

that layered codec architectures, where

an enhancement layer works alongside

the base codec rather than replacing it,

allow broadcasters to achieve the perfor-

mance necessary to better manage their

spectrum, and allow broadcast systems

to compete with and surpass IP delivery

in terms of quality, flexibility and cost,”

said Fabio Murra, senior vice president of

product and marketing at V-Nova.

The software layer coordinating these

workflows has also matured.

“Modern sports production demands

deterministic, low-latency workflows that

scale, from REMI to fully centralized envi-

ronments. Tightly integrated, software-de-

fined solutions that deliver frame-accurate

performance across switching, graphics,

and replay enable broadcasters to pro-

duce more content, more efficiently, with-

out compromising reliability,” said Kevin

Cottam, vice president of sports and en-

tertainment at Ross Video.

As IP contribution becomes more de-

pendable and cost-effective, the opera-

tional model for major events is shifting

toward centralized production hubs that

aggregate feeds from multiple venues.

“As IP contribution becomes more de-

pendable

and

cost-effective,

leagues,

federations and smaller rights holders

are becoming less reliant on traditional

broadcasters or large-scale production

partners, enabling them to build in-house

capabilities and expand distribution,” said

Stephan Stadler, vice president of product

management at Appear.

Democratization of sports

coverage

One of the more significant shifts in

sports production is taking place not at

the top of the market but below it. Smaller

leagues, scholastic sports, regional feder-

ations and emerging sports organizations

are gaining access to production capabili-

ties that were previously out of reach, not

because the technology has been simpli-

fied but because automation and IP infra-

structure have reduced the crew size and

capital investment required to produce

broadcast-quality coverage.

“Sports production continues to act as

a testing ground for new workflows, par-

ticularly where budgets and crew sizes

are limited,” said Claudia Barbiero, direc-

tor of global marketing at PTZOptics. “We

expect to see growing interest in technol-

ogies that allow schools, smaller leagues,

and emerging sports to deliver polished

broadcasts without traditional trucks or

large crews. Automation, remote control,

and AI-assisted tagging are helping these

organizations scale their coverage while

maintaining consistent quality.”

Barbiero identified agentic AI workflows

as a particular area of development at the

lower end of the sports market. Cam-

eras that adjust framing based on game

context rather than just player tracking,

scoreboard readers that trigger graphics

prompts, and automated replay markers

are practical examples of capabilities that

were previously unavailable to smaller

production teams.

“Broadcasters are under immense pres-

sure to make their operations more agile

and cost-effective, which for sports and

live production means finding more scal-

able and cost-efficient ways to contribute

and distribute video. The sports industry is

highly dynamic and evolving quickly both

from a commercial and operational per-

spective, so broadcasters need technology

that is adaptable to these changing needs

and at the same time allows the maximum

value to be squeezed out of sports con-

tent,” said Kieran Kunhya, founder and

chief executive officer at Open Broadcast

Systems.

AI and the value of footage

The volume of footage generated at

major sports events has outpaced the ca-

pacity of production teams to manually

process and distribute it. AI-based meta-

data generation is emerging as the prac-

tical solution, not as a creative tool but

as an operational one, enabling content

to be searched, clipped and distributed

at a scale that manual workflows cannot

match.

“Live sports production is evolving to

meet multi-platform demands by using

AI to transform every second of foot-

age into intelligent, monetizable assets

through metadata. For major events like

the Olympics or World Cup, this allows

broadcasters to move beyond a single feed

and create thousands of personalized, hy-

per-relevant clips for a global audience

in near real-time. This capability not only

services diverse fan passions at scale but

also creates a dynamic, searchable con-

tent ecosystem that maximizes the value

of premium sports rights during and after

live events,” said Sean King, chief revenue

officer at Veritone.

The rights value argument is significant.

Sports content is among the most ex-

pensive programming in the industry, and

the ability to extract more value from that

investment directly affects the economics

of rights acquisition and retention.

The viewer experience

While production infrastructure has

commanded much of the innovation in-

vestment in sports broadcasting, the view-

er-facing experience is also evolving. The

standard 16:9 broadcast feed is increas-

ingly supplemented — and in some con-

texts challenged — by formats designed

to create a different relationship between

viewer and event.

“Sports broadcasters are increasing-

ly stretching their coverage across more

platforms, while striving to keep their sto-

rytelling consistent and create the feeling

Continued from Page 18

Continued on Page 22

Smaller leagues,

scholastic sports,

regional federations

and emerging sports

organizations

are gaining access

to production capabilities

that were previously

out of reach.

20 NCS | NEWSCASTSTUDIO.COM

Signal security becomes

vital in distributed media

world broadcasters face

The shift to IP-based and cloud-dis-

tributed media operations has made

broadcast infrastructure more flexible.

As content reaches audiences across an

increasing number of platforms and de-

livery channels, the points of exposure

have multiplied, turning security and sig-

nal reliability into boardroom concerns

for broadcasters, streamers and platform

operators

At the 2026 NAB Show, conversations

are likely to span several distinct but re-

lated problems: knowing what is happen-

ing across a distributed signal chain, pro-

tecting content from an expanding range

of threats, keeping services on air when

something fails and establishing whether

content itself can be trusted.

Seeing across a distributed

signal chain

Traditional broadcast monitoring was

built for closed, hardware-defined envi-

ronments. As operations move to IP and

cloud infrastructure, that visibility be-

comes harder to maintain, and the conse-

quences of losing it are more immediate.

“When you virtualize your infrastructure

and spread it across ground and cloud, you

haven’t eliminated failure points, you’ve

multiplied them. In a live environment, the

detection window is small, really small, so

the organizations managing this well ar-

en’t the ones with the best response plans,

they’re the ones who never get surprised

in the first place. Continuous, per-frame

visibility across every signal path means

you catch the anomaly before it reach-

es air, full stop,” said Michael Demb, vice

president of product strategy at TAG Video

Systems.

The underlying issue is that IP networks

introduce layers of abstraction that tradi-

tional signal monitoring was not designed

to see through.

“As video distribution architectures shift

to IP-based delivery, maintaining visibility

across the signal chain has become more

complex and more important. Cable and

broadcast operators are now transporting

video inside layered IP networks, which

means traditional monitoring approaches

no longer provide full visibility into where

problems arise,” said Benjamin Desbois,

chief growth and strategy officer at Te-

lestream.

Security as a business problem

The cybersecurity threat facing media

operations has broadened beyond what

can be addressed at the protocol level

alone.

Piracy, ransomware and credential

abuse now carry direct revenue impli-

cations, particularly for platforms with

high-value live rights.

“Piracy has evolved into a large-scale

commercial enterprise that directly im-

pacts streaming revenues, network effi-

ciency, and brand reputation. Credential

abuse, token manipulation, scraping, and

illegal restreaming inflate traffic volumes

and erode the value of premium sports

and entertainment rights, placing addi-

tional strain on delivery infrastructure

during high-profile live events,” said Elodie

Levrel, corporate marketing and commu-

nication director at Broadpeak.

At the protocol level, some in the indus-

try point to transport standards as part of

the answer. The Reliable Internet Stream-

ing Transport (RIST) protocol is an open

standard designed to secure content in

transit over the public internet.

“Broadcasters are increasingly using

the internet for the contribution of valu-

able content and so security is obviously

a critical consideration. The RIST proto-

Continued on Page 21

SIGNAL CHAIN

AND SECURITY