All 6 articles in this series are now available in our free eBook ‘Content Operations In The Multi-Screen Age’ – download it HERE.

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Delivery to all screens, both big and small and in multiple formats, is no longer just a technical challenge involving scaling, color matching, transcoding and resizing inlaid or overlaid elements such as graphics. It now reaches right back into content creation itself, blurring the lines between scripting, pre- and post-production, and delivery. Blending together in the end-to-end workflow, it is increasingly difficult to separate creative from technical aspects of content operations in the multi-screen age.

However, it is instructive and valuable to focus on content related aspects, as these still impinge on different broadcasting departments, which we do in this article with reference to technical points only when strictly relevant. We will dive deeper into some of those technical aspects, especially transcoding, in the next article in this series.

Broadcasters have been embracing streaming for a good 15 years, but until recently have been able to keep it somewhat at arm’s length from content creation. That is no longer possible because those service providers catering directly for multiple screens and audience interaction within their programming are the most successful.  The latest buzzword is hyper-personalization, and on this front the big streaming platforms, especially Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney Plus, are beating broadcasters hands down.

Companion Screens Punching Up

Yet all is not lost, and a few broadcasters are enjoying some success engaging more directly with audiences and making content more conducive to interactivity and viewing alongside companion screens like the smartphone. In some cases, broadcasters are collaborating to meet these challenges by producing joint content optimized for contemporary viewing.

This is most notable in Europe, an example being the New8 initiative for joint TV drama commissioning. Launched in October 2023 and comprising of eight pubcasters in North West Europe with ZDF in Germany, NPO in The Netherlands, VRT Belgium, SVT Sweden, DR Denmark, YLE Finland, RÚV Iceland and NRK Norway, New8’s remit was to “stand strong against the streamers” by focusing on 18- to 45-year-olds. As such it has to match streamers not just for content quality, but also over how viewers engage with it.

That often involves the second screen, which first came onto the agenda over a decade ago, although then without scope for the levels of interaction between the primary screen and content being viewed that there are today. US media website CNET declared 2012 as the year of the second screen, contending that devices such as smartphones, tablets and gaming consoles would all be used for discovery, content sourcing, casting, and obtaining more information about the program being shown, as well as interacting with friends about that same content over social media.

In reality, there was no definitive year of the second screen, but viewers have engaged with all five of those second screen activities at gradually increasing levels. Now that mobile networks offer higher bit rates and better coverage, smartphones have become predominant as second screens, with on average around 75% of consumers engaging with them while viewing in developed markets such as the US and many European countries.

Dumbing Down Or Being Creative?

It is partly by courting viewers on their smartphones that Netflix succeeded in maintaining a slender lead among the streamers under intensifying competition, operating on several fronts. The primary one involves content itself, with several programs or series created almost specifically for the second screen.

These include the likes of Love is Blind, and Selling Sunset, with the ethos of making undemanding content that can run in the background while viewers engage with their phones, conducive for short and reduced attention. This has drawn criticism for dumbing down, such as comments from actress and director Justine Bateman who was quoted by the Hollywood Reporter saying, “I’ve heard from showrunners who are given notes from the streamers that ‘this isn’t second screen enough.’”

But Netflix can contend that it is also catering for viewers seeking to be more creative themselves and participating directly in content creation. It can point to shows like Bandersnatch from its Black Mirror series, where viewers are invited to influence the storyline by making choices. Netflix argues that such interactive content has increased viewer participation and even reduced time spent on second screens by luring users back to the big screen.

Netflix is also tapping into second screen activities that are not related to the primary content at all. It introduced its gaming service in 2021, not out of an ambition to become a significant player in that field but to retain users inside its ecosystem. It can then exploit the user’s second screening in other ways, including content recommendations.

This is all worth mentioning because here lie some of the opportunities for broadcasters. They can emulate the streamers intent while resisting the temptation to dumb down and steer for the creative high ground, just as Europe’s New8 venture is attempting to do.

Getting Personal

At the same time, broadcasters can take a leaf out of the streamers’ playbooks in terms of interactivity and hyper personalization, which can be applied to targeted advertising, as well as the surrounding programming content. This is stimulating demand for data-driven personalization across content and ad delivery.

In particular, it is fostering a more systemic end-to-end approach to Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI), creating opportunities for more precisely targeted and relevant ads within streaming and linear services. Inevitably there are technical ingredients to adhere to, such as the end-to-end implementation of SCTE (Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers) standards.

One of these in particular, SCTE 104, is an interface between master control and production control to signal breaks during production. This works alongside SCTE 35 messages in the transport stream, which can be enhanced with contextual metadata such as details of events, or player actions. If this is done right, ads are not only more likely to be executed upon, but the ads themselves will help attract viewers. 

Increasingly, AI is also featuring on the ad front by enabling the generation of suitable ads on the fly to match both the programming content and the viewer’s known behavior. This is a new era associated with hyper personalization, and it is not yet clear how effective that will prove. 

Roling With The Times

Even when it comes to longer form content, there is a need to cater for changing viewer behavior, even without any explicit dumbing down. The trend towards binge viewing is well known and started some years ago, but there is still scope for broadcasters to adapt to the greater desire for fast paced series. This is leading towards shorter production cycles to keep up with this increased pace, although this can also bring the additional benefit of cutting costs.

There is also an important technical point associated with interactive viewing, which is that some of the applications require the same low round trip delays as two-way video conferencing. This means that some of the protocols like SRT and RIST deployed for streaming are not fast enough for interactive TV. As a result, the ultra-low latency WebRTC is being deployed, a protocol which we will discuss in more detail in upcoming features, but the point is that technical and content aspects are becoming increasingly entwined.

It is also important to acknowledge that programming now has to cater for screens of all sizes, both big and small. On the one hand, there is growing emphasis on smartphones with the prospect of D2M (Direct to Mobile) delivery. This is coming through so-called next generation platforms, like 5G Broadcast, which is gaining favor in Europe, as well as ATSC 3.0 in North America and few other markets like Brazil.

At the same time, the rise of internet-connected smart TVs is reversing the long-term decline in big screen viewing. According to a study from Ampere Analysis published in February 2025, smart TV viewing time has soared by 27% in the US and Europe since the first quarter of 2021. Smart TVs now account for 31% of viewing time among Internet users, higher than any other connected device, having overtaken PCs and mobile devices.

Opposing Forces

So, there are two almost opposing trends; one towards more viewing on smartphones while on the move, but another towards connected TVs rather than other internet connected devices in the home. For broadcasters this means having to support efficient content scaling and resizing, which will impinge on production and even possibly creation.

In practice this might mean having several versions for different screen sizes and formats. Graphics, captions and text inlays that are clear or legible on big screens will often not be on a mobile handset, where they might also detract from the primary viewing to a greater degree. Downscaling would at the very least require either deletion of some elements or recreating them in a simpler or reduced form for the smaller screen.

This not surprisingly also lends itself to AI, and some broadcasters are already employing such capabilities on at least a trial basis. There are now AI-based tools available for resizing ads, as well as primary content, often working on dynamic HTML5 templates.

It is not just about resizing existing content, but also increasingly about creating shorter forms more appealing to the snacking type of viewing on mobile devices. These can be previews, teasers, or just abridged versions of a program, and on this front too AI-based tools are becoming available.

This is obviously more complex and a work in progress, but there are tools that help broadcasters select snippets from live broadcasts on the fly that appear to have greatest impact, or summarize the whole thread, to create engaging clips for mobile platforms. The idea is to enable fast turnaround by repurposing content for mobiles as part of a broadcast service for all screens.

Full Stream Ahead

On the other side of the coin, AI is being employed to remaster content at high resolution and quality for big screens. Here again the big streamers with their deep pockets are in the vanguard, but at least in Amazon’s case some of the technology is being made available to broadcasters in its capacity as a hyperscaler.

This includes AI-based remastering, which the company also notes can be used to overcome deficiencies in the transmission network, such as temporary drops in bit rate. The algorithms step in to fill in the gaps, just as they do when upscaling. This would appear to reduce the need for adaptive streaming, as it becomes possible to ensure smooth playout at constant quality. It also blurs the line between reality and simulation, but then that has been happening for a long time, even in the still image world, with applications such as Photoshop.

It is now reaching new levels though, as we can see from developments like Samsung’s AI Motion Enhancer Pro for its latest 8K TVs, essentially an onboard NPU (Neural Processing Unit). This has been designed in the first instance for upscaling and in particular elimination of motion blur. For example, it can track a ball in the video and replace it with a simulated version on a frame-by-frame basis that moves smoothly in almost linear correspondence with the actual ball.

Such capabilities will extend to whole frames, offering scope for filling out the picture on big screens with additional detail that was not originally captured at all. This could then extend to inlaid content creation, adding new objects to make the picture more interesting.

This highlights the potential as well as the complexities that must be negotiated to develop a multi-screen and multi-platform content operations strategy. 

All 6 articles in this series are now available in our free eBook ‘Content Operations In The Multi-Screen Age’ – download it HERE.