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Video: What Makes Live Linear So Challenging?

Learn more about live linear at Streaming Media West

Read the complete transcript of this clip:

Scott Rutherford: Live is particularly interesting because it's just so incredibly challenging--because it's live. Its concurrency is very, very difficult. From our perspective, one of the most interesting things to try and solve is, what would the world look like if we were genuinely streaming a huge, live sports event, like the Super Bowl, live globally over IP, trying to put personalized advertising into it? That becomes a serious, serious technical issue. It's probably not even viable over the current bandwidth in the world, is it?

On top of that, the interesting thing is, with a lot of the short-form engagements, or short-form videos that people make, talking to each other, how can you then turn some of that into a more prolonged engagement? How can you keep people in the system? What happens when you get to the end of that, either moving from live and then being able to stitch in following content--bumpers, post-rolls, whatever that might be--to keep people engaged? Generally, what you see is, as you'd expect, the less buffering, the less bumpy, the more seamless, the more people stay, and then the content is, obviously, incredibly important. If it's just not relevant then people are gonna bounce.

The interesting thing, then, is if you can get it right--having all the short-form content, every single one of those once archived, or even live, is really a funnel into a potential linear experience. So long as you keep the people there, you can keep stitching in personalized content, figuring out what they would want, and figuring out how to create, basically, individualized channels. Then, once you've got somebody there, just don't do anything to make them leave!

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