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TVBEurope’s 2021 Watch List

TVBEurope unveils our people to watch in the media technology industry.

As the first Covid vaccinations start to roll out in the UK and with Christmas around the corner, glimmers of hope begin to emerge from the overriding gloom of 2020 that our recovery from this traumatic period is starting to begin in earnest. 

For the component parts of the media technology industry, this has been a year like few others before it with productions across the world shuddering to a halt as societies locked down to slow the spread of the pandemic. What we’ve seen during that time is an amazing amount of ingenuity and innovation throughout the community with news and sports coverage deploying fully remote IP productions away from the studios, and general programming (including lots of archive footage) being maintained through hybrid studio, field and home-based workforces. 

One of the overarching themes of this period is accelerated change, and how businesses throughout the broadcast supply chain are having to fast-track technology adoption and deployment to meet the demands of a changed landscape. Indeed, an executive from a very large tech organisation gave a recent keynote address that suggested that we had jumped ahead three to five years in terms of digital video adoption. In effect, 2020 has been a leap year for broadcasting. 

With this ongoing backdrop which will extend into 2021 and possibly further still, Future’s media and entertainment editors have each compiled a Watch List of key individuals who we believe will be instrumental in how the industry pivots into its new reality over the next 12-18 months. At TVBEurope, and in league with members of a special advisory panel, we have assembled our list of 25 ‘movers and shakers’ for 2021 and beyond. These are our ‘ones to watch’, and we will be running a dedicated feature on the Watch List in the next issue of TVBEurope.

In no particular order:

Tim Davie, director general, BBC

Alex Green, MD, Prime Video Sport Europe

Delphine Ernotte Cunci, CEO France Televisions & new EBU President (from 2021)

Simon Farnsworth, global head of Broadcast Technology, Discovery

Barbara Lange, executive director, SMPTE and the HPA

Thierry Fautier, president-chair, Ultra HD Forum; VP Video Strategy, Harmonic

Andy Beale/Jamie Hindhaugh, chief engineer, and COO, BT Sport

Antonio Arcidiacono, director of Tech and Innovation, EBU

Guido Meardi, CEO, V-Nova

Reemah Sakaan, group director SVOD – ITV and chief creative officer- BritBox Global

Simon Gauntlett, director of Imaging Standards and Technology, Dolby; SMPTE UK chair

Carrie Wootten, co-founder, Rise

Andy Rayner, chief technologist, Nevion

Mike Cronk, chairman, AIMS; VP Advanced Technology, Grass Valley

Mark Harrison, CEO, DPP

Alex Mahon, CEO, Channel 4

Mark Schneider/Andrew Cole, co-founders, GB News

Cristina Gomilla Torres, MD of Content and Technology, Sky

Anna Mallett, CEO, ITN; in-coming VP of Physical Production, Netflix

Peter Bruggink, CTO, NEP Netherlands and co-chair, Office of the CTO, NEP Global

Neil Maycock, SVP, Strategic Marketing and Playout, Grass Valley

Axel Blackaert, CTO, EVS

Matt McConnell, CEO, MediaKind

Sinead Greenaway, director of Operations and Technology, UKTV

Michael Geissler, founder and owner, Mo-Sys