By Kevin Salvidge, sales engineering & technical marketing manager, Leader Electronics of Europe.

In so many ways, it has been a year of decisive – sometimes seismic – change. For instance, in broadcast we have seen final confirmation that the future will be defined by IP and cloud-based infrastructures. The long theoretical discussion is over, and instead people are talking about how, and how quickly, they can achieve the transition.

Of course, many stakeholders are already significantly advanced in their adoption of next-generation workflows. Throughout 2025, I’ve seen broadcasters, remote production companies and system integrators taking decisive steps to re-engineer their infrastructures around IP-first architectures, hybrid cloud deployments and, increasingly, AI-assisted automation.

As a leading innovator in the field of test & measurement (T&M) for many years, these developments have also meant significant change for Leader. Increasingly, the conversation with customers is no longer about traditional signal analysis, oscilloscopes and waveform displays. Instead, they are taking a far more holistic approach that positions T&M as a central diagnostic and assurance layer within distributed, hybrid workflows. In broadcast and media centres that are growing in complexity, and where bandwidth, timing and metadata integrity are critical, there has never been such a laser-sharp focus on accuracy, resilience and interoperability.

Change and challenge

It almost goes without saying at this point that the complete normalisation of IP-based production and contribution workflows has been the greatest single enabler of these new production methodologies. From ST 2110 being an operational reality in most new builds, to remote production becoming a cost-efficient and practical option for live sport and news, IP has initiated a new era of flexibility. With the streamlining of capture, switching and distribution, there is also opportunity to cover more events – and with a reduced environmental footprint thanks to fewer OB trucks being on the road.

Needless to say, such profound change hasn’t been without its challenges. IP workflows have introduced an entire new set of failure modes, including asymmetric links, PTP timing slips, codec mismatches, and metadata translation issues between hardware vendors. For that reason, precision measurement and active monitoring are only becoming more critical. The ability to verify signal integrity — at both the packet and pixel level — is the foundation upon which reliable live production is built.

For those engaged in designing and developing new T&M tools, this had several significant consequences. Rather than just display what’s happening, system users have to be able to access actionable data that can be logged, analysed and shared across teams – ensuring decisions are made on facts, not assumptions. There also needs to be an enhanced consistency of experience across multiple interfaces, supporting the rigorous and quantitative signal analysis that is essential to a broadcast world where infrastructures now behave more like IT networks than traditional baseband systems.

It’s also important to stress that broadcasters are moving to IP at different rates, and in contrasting ways. For instance, there are plenty of broadcast centres that – for now at least – are retaining some elements of legacy (ie, SDI) formats alongside the IP ones. It’s also increasingly common for different standards and protocols to be used in the same facilities, such as ST 2110 for core infrastructure, SRT and RIST for contribution, NDI for studio links, and cloud ingest for distribution and replay.

Interoperability is vital to enabling this new phase of production, with broadcasters requiring gateways and orchestration layers capable of normalising and managing streams seamlessly.

The dawn of AI

Make no mistake, workflows will continue to shift, especially as the longer-term implications of AI become more evident. Indeed, AI is already becoming increasingly pivotal to tasks such as highlight clipping, automated camera framing, live graphics and metadata tagging. Real-time stat overlays are driven by machine learning models, while voice synthesis and automated commentary are no longer experimental technologies.

All of this creates tremendous new opportunities for customisation – for example, it can allow sports viewers to personalise their experiences by adjusting audio commentary, selecting alternative camera angles, focusing on individual players, and so on. However, despite the undeniably impressive amount of innovation taking place, it’s clear that there are a number of outstanding editorial and ethical questions around AI – not least concerning verification and authenticity – that still need to be resolved.

Encouragingly, these conversations are now taking place, and with what feels like greater urgency. Leader’s perspective is clear: as AI becomes embedded in production chains, verification and traceability will be essential. It’s one thing to automate workflows; it’s another to prove that what viewers see and hear remains faithful to the production intent.

Predictions for 2026

Looking ahead to what promises to be another dynamic year, there’s no doubt that we will see ST 2110, hybrid and software-defined workflows continue to be implemented in broadcast operations around the world. With engineering teams increasingly familiar with the underlying technologies, there will be scope for them to concentrate even more on operational efficiency and proactive processes, including those related to fault detection.

I think we will also see – and, it might be argued, not before time – sustainability becoming more fundamental to engineering choices. Power efficiency, data centre carbon intensity and overall system utilisation will become part of every technical tender. T&M vendors who can effectively determine both signal performance and resource impact will be best positioned for the long term.

Suffice to say, the only certainty will be continued change – in the ways that broadcasters operate, and the requirements this places on the technologies they depend upon. The excitement around IP, cloud and AI is certainly justified, but it must be paralleled by an equal emphasis on measurement, validation and accountability. Vendors who can achieve that tricky balancing act will be the ones that broadcasters and service providers naturally gravitate to in these tumultuous times.