7 essential lessons for successful live streaming by Tony Sprando & Newtek

LIVE STREAMING
HOW TO TAKE YOUR
PRODUCTIONS INTO
REAL TIME, BIG TIME
7 essential lessons for successful live streaming
LIVE STREAMING
HOW TO TAKE YOUR
PRODUCTIONS INTO
REAL TIME, BIG TIME

LIVE STREAMING IS BIG
(AND ONLY GETTING BIGGER)
We’re in the middle of a live-streaming revolution. If you’re a broadcast
or video professional, you’ll have been hard pressed to miss it. The evidence is
everywhere—from the businesses, sports teams and other organizations making
it happen through to the analysts, bloggers and publications talking about it.
Not so long ago live productions were the preserve of major broadcast
networks—ones with significant resources and major-league budgets.
But now, more people than ever before can cost-effectively turn their ideas
into compelling shows and live stream them to a global audience.

RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME
For today’s forward-thinking small broadcasters,
companies and independent producers, this
is a perfect storm:
• Bandwidth is plentiful enough to deal with the
demands of all-you-can-eat HD video and cheap
enough to be within the reach of almost anyone
• We’ve seen the emergence of service providers
who can take the hassle and pain away from
live streaming, enabling you to get up and
producing quickly
• There’s no longer the skills barrier that existed
just a few years ago—as a video pro, you
already know most of what you need to know
and can easily adapt to any specialized
technology required
Got an idea? Create the program
The opportunities are virtually endless:
• You can make your ideas happen without
the need for traditional distribution
• You can add valuable new services
to your existing portfolio
• And you can find new clients outside
your normal markets
It means you can capitalize on a radically
shorter time to get in front of viewers. You can
do so with fewer compromises. And you don’t
need to spend a fortune doing it.
In this ebook, we’re going to present seven
essential lessons for anyone taking the first
steps into exploring how live streaming could
benefit their business. Let’s get started.
Looking for a more technical guide?
This ebook’s primary focus is on the business
opportunities of live streaming for video
professionals. To get the technical low-down,
see our white paper: Live Streaming:
Production, Distribution, Monetization »

LESSON 1
THINK ABOUT
YOUR VIEWERS

The first thing to say about live
productions is: This is the stuff
viewers value the most.
We’re talking the kinds of programs
that reward live viewing—sports
fixtures, corporate events, the latest
outing for an up-and-coming singer
etc. These are the events people
value the most and the next best
thing to being there in person is
to watch it live on screen.
Delivering what viewers want
Of course, today, viewers are more sophisticated
than ever. They expect every program they watch
—even on their smartphones—to be a high quality
affair with professional production values from
beginning to end.
Delivering a truly professional production demands
taking a multi-camera approach. Viewers expect
different viewpoints, dynamic shots following
the action and visual breaks to keep things fresh.
And you’ll need to take advantage of all the rich
media options you can bring into the heart of
your productions.
Value from the event, value after the event
While you’ll want to gain the maximum value from
going live with your productions, this needn’t be
a case of air-it-and-forget-it. All productions and
resulting content should have a shelf-life that far
exceeds the live event itself.
Of course, traditionally, to develop a non-live
production you would film a multitude of segments
and cut them together later. The result would be
great but it would take time and cost money.
With live streaming and the right tools, you get
the best of both worlds. You’ll still produce high
quality recorded productions with the visual
impact of a weeks-long project, it’s just that you’ll
complete it much sooner—during the event in fact.
This live-to-disk approach enables you to make
your edit decisions, apply effects and incorporate
graphical elements in real time. It means that by the
time the live event is over, you’ll have a packaged
production ready to go.
But what if something doesn’t work out in the
real-time edit? Don’t worry. If you use a system
that captures all your feeds, you can easily go
back to the raw footage and drop in or chop out
different elements. This will save you a significant
amount of time and effort, give clients a finished
product faster, and enable you to spend less
time digitizing and more time creating.
1: THINK ABOUT YOUR VIEWERS

LESSON 2
GET A POST-PRODUCTION
LOOK DURING PRODUCTION

Every video professional wants
to deliver a great product.
With the equipment now available,
anyone with a creative vision
and the requisite core skills can
deliver productions every bit on
a par with far larger broadcasters.
The secret is in the planning.
A little planning goes a long way
A lot can be achieved in advance of the live
production. You can design all your stings, transitions
and lower-thirds so that they’re ready to go at the
flick of a switch. You can pre-record additional
footage and have it available on-demand exactly
when you need it. And you can stream from a PC,
giving native access to presentation materials as
well as enabling you to bring in presenters and
interviewees via Skype.
But it doesn’t end there.
Get a big studio look without spending
big studio money
At one time, live streamed productions would
be hostages to the space and sets available.
The end result was often programs which
had a home-made, low budget feel.
But that was then.
Now, with the emergence of high quality, easy
to create virtual sets, that’s history. Fundamentally,
this means that as long as you’ve got room to
hang a green screen, light your presenters and get
the shot, you can deliver a high quality production.
2: GET A POST-PRODUCTION LOOK DURING PRODUCTION

LESSON 3
DRIVE GREATER ENGAGEMENT
WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

In an age of ever-increasing social
media engagement, it’s crazy not
to take advantage. Failing to join
in means you won’t be able to
take part in conversations about
your programs. As a result, you’ll
always be at least one step removed
from the active, engaged audience
that every sponsor and rights
owner values.
Major program makers already get it
Mainstream broadcasters are already waking
up to the social media opportunity, regularly
engaging with real-time comments. At the same
time, the more enlightened ones are not only
incorporating social content but delivering content
via these channels too. It’s allowing them to
create productions that are more dynamic, more
engaging and shared more by their audiences.
The good news is: It’s now possible for
independent producers and program-makers
to do exactly the same.
Go social, get engagement
Today’s systems allow you to simultaneously
access and present social media feeds directly
to air. They also enable you to automate the
promotion and distribution of your content via
social channels, expanding your reach. This
means you can quickly move from delivering
one-way broadcast-based productions to
producing two-way conversation-powered ones.
The result? You’ll get a more active, more engaged
audience and an increasing number of well
connected advocates for your content.
3: DRIVE GREATER ENGAGEMENT WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

Every producer wants a passionate
audience of repeat viewers. People
who’ll come back time after time,
pay for subscriptions and evangelize
content to others. A community of
viewers who’ll form the foundation for
a powerful content brand—whether
for a local sports team or a series of
business conferences.
Adding value at every stage
Live streaming offers a direct route to building
your community. Beyond the core show,
it allows you to offer privileged access to
real-time, bonus content that can’t be found
anywhere else. This could include:
• Pre-event commentary, insights and
interviews with key figures
• Behind the scenes footage
• Post-event wind-ups and exclusive Q&As
Building loyalty, growing revenue
Ultimately, by focusing on building a high-value
community of viewers, you’ll be able to deliver
a loyal, highly engaged audience to sponsors
and advertisers. Or, should you choose, you can
create attractive paid membership options. And
you’ll have a greater range of content that can be
re-packaged for a wider audience at a later date.
4: BUILD YOUR COMMUNITY

LESSON 5
MEASURE MORE TO
MONETIZE MORE

Traditional programs have always
relied on ratings as a measure of
success (and a way to ensure future
sales, sponsorship and advertising
revenue). But these ratings are at
best imprecise, giving simply an
averaged overview.
Traditional ratings won’t tell you
what’s working, what’s not and how
to improve your shows. Yet this is
vital if you’re to build a loyal, engaged
following that will watch more and
pay more for your content.
Live streaming is altogether different
With live streaming you can measure everything.
You’ll be able to see who’s watching, how they’re
watching, when and where. You’ll get a clear
picture of where they may be dropping out.
And you can monitor how they’re reacting to
your content over social media.
Better, stickier, more wonderfuller programs
Armed with this information, you can evolve your
programming to make it more relevant and more
valuable to your audience. You can demonstrate
its impact to potential advertisers and sponsors.
And, for live events such as conferences, you’ll
get invaluable input into what you should do
differently next time around.
5: MEASURE MORE TO MONETIZE MORE

THE AMOUNT OF VIDEO
WATCHED ON TABLET DEVICES
AND MOBILE PHONES IN 2012
INCREASED BY 100 PER CENT
OVER THE PREVIOUS YEAR
Turning data into cash
Ultimately, the more you know about your
audience, the better you’ll be able to monetize
your output. Get it right and you’ll be able to
charge far more for your content than you
could with traditional broadcasting models
because you’ll be able more clearly
demonstrate the value of your audience.
Get ready now
The key lesson here is: If you’re moving into
live streaming, get your measurement right,
right from the start. It will give you the foundations
you need to thrive and make an enormous
difference to your long term success.
5: MEASURE MORE TO MONETIZE MORE
WIRED

A professional live-streamed
broadcast will be greatly diminished
if you cannot ensure high quality
delivery. No one wants stuttering
video plagued by dropouts. Likewise,
you won’t want your connection
failing just as your presenters open
their mouths.
Fortunately, for the most part,
these are no longer insurmountable
problems. The traditional reliance
on broadcast networks as the
gatekeepers of airtime has been
replaced with a range of partners
who have built businesses on
getting your content in front
of your audiences.
Get the right connection
You will, of course, need a solid, high speed
Internet connection. Hard-wired is better than WiFi
which can get crowded when too many people try
to access it. It is also a good idea to have a back
up if possible (this could even be a 3G/4G LTE
mobile connection). And there’s no substitute for
testing the connection’s capabilities using the
kind of content you’ll be delivering.
Get the right partner
Beyond the physical connection to the Internet,
you’ll also need a way of delivering your content
across it. The easiest route is to partner with a
specialist provider. The decision will come down
to two main options:
1. Use a content delivery network (CDN)—
also termed content distribution networks,
CDNs are basically large collections of
well-connected servers. They deliver content
of all types (video, audio, web apps etc) and
while many will add in video-specific features
such as multi-bitrate encoding, often they don’t
specialize in AV content.
2. Use a streaming service provider (SSP)—
unlike most CDNs, an SSP will specialize in
audio/video content. They’ll typically add in all
the technical services you’ll need along with
options for how you could monetize your content
(eg ad supported, subscriptions, pay per view).
Whichever route you go, taking care over
selecting the partners you work with will ensure
you can deliver a better live product, more reliably
to your viewers.
6: CAN YOU DELIVER?

In the traditional world, many
businesses are trapped in their local
markets. They have a sports team
with a local following, they have an
event in a certain city, they have a
program restricted to an individual
station. While this is great for a
production of strictly regional interest,
it leaves a lot of value on the table if
your viewers are widely dispersed.
Of course, the Internet is global
by default. Everything is available
to anyone with a connection
no matter where they are in the
world. For today’s producers,
this means you can now expand
your events, programs and
sports matches to a far wider
audience than ever before.
New audiences, new opportunities
An accessible global audience offers valuable new
revenue streams. You no longer have to miss out
on customers simply because they can’t reach you.
Your events can now provide live-stream and even
multi-lingual options for those outside the country.
The answer is easier than you think
It’s never been simpler to make different content
available in different locations. You can restrict
some while opening up other material. And you
can have a variety of approaches to monetizing
your output.
Ultimately, this means that it is now easier
than ever to radically expand the reach of
your programs, realizing their full potential
in the international market.
7: EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS

On you in 3… 2… 1…
The truth is, there has never been a
better time to embrace live streaming.
Audiences are watching more
streamed content than ever. Plus, the
costs are within reach of even modest
budgets—whether for bandwidth,
distribution or the equipment you’ll
need to get started.
It’s also easier to reach out and engage directly
with your audiences. Integrating social media
can turn your productions into two-way interactive
events and radically expand your ability to gain
and retain a committed audience.
Best of all, as a video professional, you’re
perfectly positioned to take advantage of the
massive groundswell in brands, organizations,
teams and other groups exploring the
opportunities live streaming offers. They’ve got
the desire. They’ve got the budget. They just
need to find someone like you who can help
them move forward.
The time to start is now. In the near future,
a producer that doesn’t offer live streaming
as part of their portfolio of services will be
the exception. Now is the chance to get
ahead of the game.
THE TIME TO GO LIVE IS NOW
1
2
3
Three things to do right now…
If you’re excited by the live streaming
opportunity, here are three things you
should start by doing:
Register for our Take 5 videos to see
our experts offer up time-saving tips
and business-building recommendations
covering the areas of live streaming and
multi-camera production – sign up here »
Check out some examples of
organizations embracing the opportunity –
try YouTube, MTV and Miami HEAT
for a start.
Want to get started? Download our
Live-Streaming Cookbook to find
out what you’ll need »

ABOUT NEWTEK
NewTek is transforming the way people create
network-style television content and share it with
the world. From sporting events, web-based
talk shows, live entertainment, classrooms and
corporate communications—to virtually any venue
where people want to capture and publish live
video, we give our customers the power to grow
their audiences, brands and businesses, faster
than ever before.
Learn more at www.newtek.com

7 essential lessons for successful live streaming by Tony Sprando & Newtek

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7 essential lessons for successful live streaming by Tony Sprando & Newtek