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I’ve spent more than a decade in MediaTech, some of it inside traditional, legacy MediaTech, some, now at the bleeding edge of innovation, and after attending this year’s DPP Leaders’ Briefing, I left with a feeling I haven’t had in a long time:
Clarity.
Not necessarily optimism.
Not pessimism.
Just clarity about where the industry really is and where it’s going, whether we’re ready or not.
Across more than 30 speakers, in sessions spanning news, entertainment, production, technology and distribution, one pattern was impossible to ignore:
Nearly every single speaker, bar one, had AI in their top three strategic priorities for 2026. You can’t get much clearer than that.
Not “innovation labs.”
Not “future of newsroom R&D.”
Just core strategic priority.
The signal was deafening. And yet, the story isn’t simply “AI.”
It’s something much bigger.
Before the event, I wrote a piece analysing the DPP MediaTech CEO report. I predicted that collaboration, intelligence and agility would define the next phase of MediaTech, not as slogans, but as practical realities shaping how the industry must now operate. After this event?
Those predictions didn’t just land. They were echoed, repeatedly, by the biggest players in the industry.
But there was more. Much more.
Here are my key takeaways from the DPP Leaders’ Briefing. My version of the “three priorities” every speaker was asked to share. (I know there are five… I like to over-deliver!)
1. AI Is No Longer a Bet. It’s the New Operating Layer
This was the universal theme.
Nexstar, Reuters, AP, Bloomberg, PA Media, Banijay, ITV, Channel 4, Paramount, BBC, the list goes on. Everyone described AI as foundational to their next two years.
Not experimental.
Not optional.
Foundational!
Some quotes and figures:
- “Our newsrooms are now 20% faster after modernisation with AI.”
- “We are targeting 20% efficiency improvements across back-office and production environments.”
- “We are now using agentic orchestration to spot workflow failures before people do.”
60% of journalists use AI every day.
50% reductions in rough-cut time.
Nobody said “AI will save us.”
What they did say, across markets, formats and business models, was:
“We cannot operate the next decade with the workflows of the last one.”
AI is the only realistic route to the speed, scale and adaptability multi-platform audiences demand. But here’s the nuance. And I appreciated this:
No one is pretending AI can replace human judgment.
One major US broadcaster put it perfectly:
“We are strengthening journalism with AI, not replacing it. Human connection is essential.”
2. Clipping, Highlights & Short-Form Acceleration Have Become Strategic
This is the part the industry has resisted admitting for years, but the truth is finally out:
Short-form is no longer promotional. It’s core distribution.
Another direct quote:
“We need to meet audiences on every screen… in every format.”
ITV, the BBC, Channel 4 and Paramount all described archive exploitation, Shorts, FAST promos, and rapid clipping as critical growth engines, not “extra tasks.”
Newsrooms spoke about highlight extraction as essential for:
- rapid turnaround
- syndication
- newsroom productivity
- social reach
- content verification
Even the global news agencies, historically allergic to automation in editorial processes, now use AI to surface key moments, topics, scenes and quotes.
This is the space Framedrop lives in. And it’s been validated.
The media industry feels aligned with the reality we’ve been building for:
"You can’t monetise what you can’t find, and you can’t wait 24 hours to find it."
3. Workflow Modernisation Is No Longer a Project, It’s a Survival Mechanism
Every organisation described a version of the same story:
- Cloud migrations accelerating
- Simplification of legacy tools
- Agentic automation entering operational layers
- Versioning and compliance shifting earlier in the chain
- Rights, delivery, QC and packaging becoming semi-agentic
- Platform-native outputs becoming default
Major commercial broadcasters talked openly about ripping out bespoke systems to regain agility.
Global PSBs described a shift towards consistent, standardised tooling across continents. Others emphasised that automation must catch issues before operators do.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth that many executives acknowledged openly:
“We are running twice the content across twice the platforms with the same number of people.”
Modernisation isn’t ROI. It’s risk management.
4. Trust, Provenance & Authenticity Are Becoming Technical Requirements
For the news organisations, the message was not subtle.
- “Content is being stolen and shoved back in our face.”
- “AI is the new UI — but governance, ethics and risk management must be the backbone.”
- “Reduce the rote work. Amplify the journalism.”
- “Keep local real.”
For years, provenance was an ideal.
Now, as it’s becoming increasingly easy to create synthetic media (Fake News!!!), it’s becoming a differentiator, and soon, a compliance necessity.
C2PA-like verification, source-to-surface metadata, timestamping, watermarking, chain of custody, all of these are becoming table stakes.
The organisations that build trust, speed and scale into the infrastructure of their workflows will win.The ones who don’t will suffer. Commercially and reputationally.
5. Partnerships Have Become the Real Strategy
This was the strongest alignment with my earlier predictions.
Speakers echoed the same sentiment:
- Collaboration is no longer optional.
- Integration beats ownership.
- “Build with” wins over “build vs buy.”
- Closed ecosystems are dying.
- Interoperability is survival.
Broadcasters explicitly said the build/buy debate is over, hybrid is the new normal and they are reshaping their tech stack around partnerships.
Others called for radical new forms of collaboration.
Some said AI tooling itself must be disposable, which only works in an open ecosystem.
And my favourite quote of the week, because it’s exactly what we believe at Framedrop:
“We need a new partnership model between technology vendors and broadcasters. We want real integration, open standards, and to be part of your roadmap conversations — because we’re all facing the same challenges, and we’ll only solve them together.”
The gaps between organisations, not the systems within them, determine the speed of transformation.
Where This Leaves Us
After two days of hearing global leaders describe their priorities, their hopes and their frustrations, here’s what’s clear to me:
The industry is undergoing a structural reset
AI didn’t start this. Audience behaviour did. Platform fragmentation did. Economic pressure did. Legacy architectures did.
But AI is the catalyst forcing overdue decisions. And that’s a good thing.
- Teams can’t scale without help.
- Archives can’t monetise themselves.
- Newsrooms can’t move faster with slower tools.
- Broadcasters can’t serve 10 platforms with workflows built for one.
- The supply chain can’t hide information and expect automation to work.
The next era belongs to organisations that embrace:
- AI as operating infrastructure
- Highlight-driven distribution as a core business function
- Modernised workflows that catch problems early
- Provenance as a product feature
- Partnership as the engine of scale
This isn’t theory. It’s what the smartest leaders in our industry are already doing.
Where Framedrop Fits In
I’m not a fan of turning every piece of content into marketing, but I will say this:
- Everything I heard at the DPP validated the exact reasons Framedrop exists.
Because the pain points everyone described, the friction, the slowness, the gaps, the complexity, the duplication come back to one thing:
Reach.
Reach doesn’t come from volume. It comes from finding the moments that travel and delivering them everywhere your audience is.
That’s what we do. We make teams faster by turning every piece of content into instantly usable, platform-ready moments that drive discovery, engagement and fandom, at global scale.
And that matters now more than ever.
The gap between creativity and audience is almost gone. The companies that close it completely, by moving from content to reach in seconds, not days, will set the pace for the decade ahead.