Red Bee Media’s Steve Nylund talks keeping operations running during COVID-19

Red Bee Media CEO Steve Nylund

Steve Nylund, CEO at Red Bee Media, has given SVG Europe his take on how his company is dealing with the coronavirus situation, and how it is helping customers.

What is the most important message from your company to customers and partners around Europe in light of the coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic?

As each and all of us are managing the uncertainty caused by this ongoing crisis, our first and foremost priority as a company is to ensure the health and safety of our employees, customers and partners. In doing so we take our responsibility for the people we work with, while safeguarding the integrity of the mission critical services that our customers depend on.

Business continuity and service resilience is inherent to the way Red Bee operates and many of our services can be delivered remotely or from alternative locations. This means we can mitigate most threats to our services and keep operations running as usual under most circumstances.

Red Bee’s global operating platforms, processes and toolsets has enabled many of our teams to swiftly move to a 100% homeworking model. This includes our content discovery and access services teams where collaborative online workspaces; real time communication and shared resources ensure accuracy and consistency in our delivery. We continue for example to deliver both live captions and fast turnaround translations to customers around the globe.

Where homeworking is not always possible, including in some of our playout and MCR operations, we have implemented many safety measures and precautions, including increased cleaning, physical distancing and no non-essential visitors. This way we can keep our staff safe at work while delivering mission critical service for our broadcast customers.

The conclusion is that despite this crisis, Red Bee is still keeping the show running and making sure that people around the world get access to entertainment and news while confined to their homes.

Is there a way your company’s technology or services can specifically help sports media organisations and their workers to continue to produce content in more remote and collaborative ways at this time?

As a managed services provider with an end to end portfolio covering most needs across the media supply chain, Red Bee will provide a steady hand in an unpredictable world. Not just during a crisis like the one we’re experiencing now, but also as a partner through disruption and shifts in the media landscape.

This of course goes for sports focused media organisations as well. Outsourcing services to Red Bee mean that we not only can keep your existing media operations up and running, but with our range of services we can assist any type of content provider in expanding or shifting focus when needed. As a Red Bee customer, you also have access to the technical and operational experience developed through 15 years of working with major global broadcasters and niche media companies, as well as cloud-based innovations and platforms that are practically impossible to develop as an independent content owner.

Right now, sports media organisations need to keep fans engaged until regular broadcasts and streams can pick up again. Whatever content they want to provide – archived games, fan engagement videos, eSports or chat shows – Red Bee will make sure it is packaged and enriched in the right way and reaches its destination anywhere across the globe. When live sports pick up again, Red Bee will be ready to enrich content with live captions, distribute it in high quality broadcasts and streams globally and re-package it for highlight shows and VOD.