This November it will be 10 years since the Video Services Forum published the TR-03 and TR-04 specifications, which went on to provide the foundation for SMPTE ST 2110 – the group of standards that greatly accelerated the broadcast industry’s migration from SDI to IP connectivity. But while IP is now firmly established, the level of adoption varies considerably between territories, and there continues to be a widespread shortfall in the number of engineers and technicians who possess a thorough grounding in IP.
What is in no doubt is that any engineer looking to forge a long career in broadcast will need to acquire an extensive knowledge of IP, including specific standards such as ST 2110, at some point. Adam Marshall, chief product officer at Grass Valley, confirms: “To anybody that asks, I say yes – if you’re a broadcast engineer, you absolutely have to get skilled on IP. But it’s not just 2110 – it’s all the compressed standards as well as understanding the network configuration stack, how packets are traversed, and how you configure and monitor those networks. As a vendor, we are working to make our UX easier and give insights in a more simplified way, but you still need engineers who fully understand the traversal from one point to the other – and that’s the piece which seems to be getting skipped over a bit at the moment.”
No easy answers
As the broadcast and IT worlds have gradually moved closer together thanks to shared technologies, a few key questions have inevitably arisen, namely: To what extent should broadcast companies look to train their existing employees in IP, and is it also a valid path to recruit engineers with a more ‘pure’ IT background to help plug the shortfall? Unfortunately, it appears this is one area of endeavour where there are no one-size-fits-all solutions.
“I’ve spent time thinking about this because it’s important, and I’ve concluded it depends on several factors,” says Gerard Phillips, who has been with Arista Networks for the past eight years and brings more than 30 years’ experience in broadcast engineering. “Delivering an effective IP-based media infrastructure requires a wide range of skills – broadcast engineering, IT, network engineering, and security among many others. How an organisation provisions for these needs will very much depend on the individual organisation; their objectives, its scale, and the skill-sets within their technical teams.”
That said, some clear principles are emerging. “Whether it’s a private or a public broadcaster, the broadcasting team’s job is to deliver compelling content to the end-customers,” says Phillips. “Their focus shouldn’t be on the network. I believe the best approach is to train the broadcast team to understand enough about how IP works for them to communicate effectively with the Network and Security teams and ensure that the Network and Security teams understand how media operations necessitate specific optimisations and operational patterns. This balanced approach creates a shared understanding that empowers both teams to collaborate effectively.”
While acknowledging that there are IP skills shortages in parts of the broadcast industry, Phillips is optimistic about the future – especially given the surge in training opportunities in recent years. “There’s tons of training out there,” he confirms. “Whether you engage a training organisation, bring in a vendor like us to deliver bespoke sessions, or build your own lab and train internally, the key is to ensure you’re training people in relevant skills they’ll use day to day so they retain the knowledge. With consistent use, that short-term learning becomes long-term capability.”
The pace of change
Ben Swanton is founder and CEO of broadcast, media and entertainment recruitment specialist 808 Talent. In addition to the specific concerns around IP skill sets, he highlights the broader “pace of change of technology over the past ten years, which has been dramatic and even more so since Covid. So whether it’s IP, cloud or now AI, it’s very difficult to keep on top of all that. But then you need to consider the additional elements of the sports ecosystem in that the hours can be pretty antisocial and there is a lot of travel. Which means there tend to be two different types of profiles these days: the very junior, fresh sort of engineers who are relatively new out of college or university, and then the older hands who’ve been there a long time.”
While there are plenty of signs that we are in the midst of a generational cycle that involves a lot of senior engineers retiring, the younger engineers may not be willing to take on the antisocial hours and possibly (in comparison to some areas of broadcast) lower salaries in the way that their predecessors were. Covid-era personal reassessment is “absolutely” a factor too, confirms Swanton, in explaining the increased emphasis on work-life balance. “As an industry that’s always been driven by people who are passionate about the space, it’s a challenge and one that’s difficult to reconcile from a talent shortage perspective.”
In terms of IP, the individual who has “a good level of experience and background operating in hybrid SDI/IP infrastructures” will be much in-demand, although it’s more likely that broadcasters will conclude they can’t always get all the skills they require in one person. “There might be a few people on a shortlist who have those skills, but the rest could be made up of those with some live sports broadcast engineering background and a willingness to learn – and an acknowledgement that they need to learn,” says Swanton. “Then it’s up to the company to be willing to invest in that training and configure the budgets accordingly.”
Still, however challenging this might all seem in the short- to mid-term, there is a general feeling that the IP skills shortfall will lessen in time. As Marshall notes: “We’re one of the most resilient industries in the world. Broadcast and media engineers always find a way, no matter what the situation, and I do think that the training will keep pace with demand. For now, the main priority is to make sure there is the right investment and direction within an organisation to ensure they train their people in that space.”
