By Arnaud le Roij, Head of Sales at Cuez
Tighter budgets have changed how broadcasters buy tech. And not just the size of the cheque. Nobody rips out a working system because it turned eight anymore. There has to be a reason that shows up in the numbers.
Modules, not platforms
So you get modules instead of platforms, proof within a season instead of a budget year, and "new" running alongside "old" instead of a hard switch. That last one has a cost people rarely put in the business case: double licences, plus staff working two ways of doing the same job. Pilots don't usually die of technology. They die of exhaustion.
It's worth asking how long the overlap actually needs to be. If integration is a matter of weeks rather than quarters, you're not paying for it twice for a year. Our own timeline at Cuez is roughly a month from implementation to training, assuming nothing new has to be integrated. That assumption is doing real work in that sentence, and you should ask any vendor what theirs is.
The real TCO problem
The bigger issue is Total Cost of Ownership, and it gets calculated badly almost every time. Licence versus licence, that's the comparison most people make. It's wrong. Every list should also include:
- What do the licences cost?
- What does the hardware cost?
- What does the SLA cost?
- What devices can I integrate with that would cost me less?
- What are the SLAs on those devices?
- How does it improve my workflows?
- What other costs does it take out of my operations?
That's a full TCO exercise. If you've never run one, run it now.
Who actually starts the conversation
IT and editorial still start it, often. But the moment it accelerates is the moment it becomes a savings question, because that's when the fear of change management finally gets overruled. IT validates it, editorial has to live with it, and projects fall over when those three never sit in the same room.
Earning versus spending
Broadcasters' business models are shifting in two ways: how they make money, and how they spend it. The answer is both.
On earning, the bulk still comes from advertising. What's changed is that expanding into streaming and social isn't only an audience play anymore. Those spaces are starting to bring their own revenue with them. It's additive rather than a replacement at this stage, but it's real, and it wasn't there a few years ago.
The sharper change is the cost base. Because revenue is harder to come by, there's a direct correlation to spending. The actual spending may have changed less, but spending to save money and a clear, easily defensible ROI, is becoming increasingly important.
From CapEx to OpEx
CapEx is giving way to OpEx: contracts that flex instead of locking you in for ten years. Public broadcasters have direct funding pressure and have to show where the money went.
There's a trade-off in that which doesn't get said out loud, and it isn't really about accounting. The reason a paid-off system got left alone is that everyone remembers what it took to put it in. Servers spun up, an army of engineers, PMs and consultants, months of it, headaches the whole way. Then change management on top, because the thing it replaced was legacy too, and getting people properly trained took longer than the install. Anyone who's lived through that has one instinct about doing it again: God no. Not unless the house is on fire.
That's a rational position, and it's what OpEx quietly removes. You gain flexibility, and you lose "it's already bought, leave it alone" as a defence. Every system is now up for argument every year.
Cheaper doesn't mean worse
So "shifting business models" mostly means restructuring cost and hoping the workflow follows. It usually doesn't, and I don't think that's inertia.
Part of it is a reflex that cost-effectiveness must mean poor. If it's cheaper, it must be worse, so people stay with what they know. On output, honestly, I understand that. What you're looking at hasn't changed, so why touch it?
But that's the wrong test. A good solution is user-friendly, better on features, interoperable, scalable. All fine. The one that matters is whether it makes the workflow leaner. That's when it stops being a preference and becomes a business decision, and that's the argument that hasn't been won at production level yet.
What annual contracts change for buyers
There's an upside in this for buyers that doesn't get said enough. When a contract renews annually rather than every ten years, no vendor can coast on the fact that you're locked in. Software-based solutions usually have support built into the product, so there's a live record of how fast anyone actually responds. Accountability stops being a quarterly review and becomes a running score.
That leaves vendors two honest options: step up and deliver the service level, or price the SLA to match what you're really providing. Both are fine. What's no longer available is charging for the first and delivering the second.
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