By Chris Lee

Content providers are faced with daily challenges when distributing material over the multitude of platforms available on the market. Issues such as formatting, transcoding, regional compliance and managing meta data add complexity to the delivery of content to audiences.

UK firm JCA was formed by a group of media specialists to “work with media customers on distribution and provide strategic IT support so that they in turn can focus on sales”. NMK caught up with the company's managing director, Simon Kay, to learn how media companies can overcome formatting challenges and monetise their content more effectively.

Briefly introduce JCA to us

JCA is a dedicated digital, TV and film specialist service provider helping broadcasters and media companies monetise their existing content. JCA’s solutions focus on the capture, preparation and delivery of content. JCA works with clients such as BBC, Channel 4 and NBC Universal to supply services including encoding, transcoding, restoration, digital transmission workflows, content management and file delivery.

Why aren't content owners monetising their content efficiently at the moment? What needs to be done?

The number of platforms has expanded at a phenomenal rate and therefore the currency of programme value is inconsistent. In addition to this, content owners have not progressed with their digital strategies as quickly as they could and therefore the digitisation process is seen as expensive when it is considered for single projects. However, once companies take the first step the process becomes more cost effective; “create once, use many".

You specialise in digitising content. What are the challenges media owners face when trying to 'update' legacy material?

There are several challenges that media owners face.

Regional formats: When content is to be distributed across more than one region there are certain alterations that are time consuming, such as changing the language and the entire format to fit within that region's specifications.

Restoration: Restoration can be on many levels of difficulty depending on the age and quality of the original content. The size of project to restore the content also reflects this.

Compliance in different countries: There are particular rules and guidelines that must be considered when updating legacy material. Certain questions need to be asked such as who is the content for? What language can we use?

Intellectual property: The content could possibly fall into the wrong hands

Meta data: Meta data relating to the material can be limited or not even catalogued properly. This is a crucial factor to associate to the digital asset. In terms of legacy formats some are so old that suppliers no longer have necessary equipment. Also some clients’ elements are not centrally stored and a true digital content model requires all assets to provide a complete material set.

Format redundancy is also an issue.

What are your market predictions for 2010?

[We foresee] increased interest in monetising legacy content and more partnerships between media companies and online players. [There'll be] a reduction in use of physical media and more online platforms will fail due to inappropriate business models.

Ownership and illegal download issues will edge further into the spotlight and more environments/markets for legacy content will emerge.