MCB19: All Eyes on the Audience – Decision-Maker, Cash Cow or Victim of Manipulation?

l.t.r.: Joel Lovell (Executive Editor, Pineapple Media), Isa Sonnenfeld (Head of Google News Lab DACH & Co-Founder Rolemodels) and Dirc Seemann (Chief Editor and Director Content, SPORT1)

l.t.r.: Joel Lovell (Executive Editor, Pineapple Media), Isa Sonnenfeld (Head of Google News Lab DACH & Co-Founder Rolemodels) and Dirc Seemann (Chief Editor and Director Content, SPORT1)

How do you keep listeners and viewers entertained? How much are media consumers willing and able to invest in attractive content? And what is being done to protect audiences from fakes and manipulation? At MCB19, leading industry protagonists are debating about which types of content are trendsetting and what risks media future holds.

“The Golden Age of Podcasting”
The popularity of podcasts is ever-growing. Which types of content are attractive enough to make listeners engage with the spoken word and stay interested? This two-part session will have Tobias Bauckhage (Moviepilot & Creators Media) in an initial discussion with Joel Lovell (Pineapple Media) about the history of the current podcast boom in the US. Among other topics, they will shed light on the events, format innovations, entrepreneurs and series which brought about the “Golden Age of Podcasting”. In session two, Tobias Bauckhage will discuss the economic side of the current success of podcasts in the United States with Nick Quah (Hot Pod Media, New York). Together they will contemplate the current state of the industry and the factors that drive the growth in the market. Who are the biggest competitors? How are business models changing? And what can we learn from all this regarding the German podcast market?
 
“All sports, all leagues, all countries: is sports streaming headed for a breakthrough?”
In Germany, there are still a lot of sports events on free TV. However, various streaming providers are working on changing this fact. Live sports are broadcast on all channels, at home on the big screen or out and about on smartphones. Rights owners are selling licenses for all distribution channels. Those who want to see all Bundesliga matches live these days need to subscribe to a total of three streaming services with SKY, DAZN and Eurosport Player. Amazon, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are also expanding significantly on an international level and pushing onto the German market. Zeljko Karajica (7Sports), Dirc Seemann (SPORT1), Roman Steuer (Sky Deutschland) and Stephanie Struppler (Discovery Deutschland) will explore the question of why so many streaming services are emerging right now. What roles do the new services play for stations, associations and leagues? And how are sports themselves changing?

“Fighting Disinformation Through Technology”
Sound and video recordings today can be falsified in an increasingly subtle and sophisticated way. The results are already astoundingly authentic and AI researchers predict that in the future it will become even easier to manipulate videos convincingly. Pessimists are painting a picture of a world in which manipulative videos can provoke political conflict or even war, and one in which we can no longer trust our own eyes and ears. But how exactly are fake images and videos actually generated? How do editorial offices work in the age of deepfakes and which technologies can help fight them? These questions and many more will be clarified by Hazel Baker (Reuters), Sofia Diogo Mateus (DW News), Isa Sonnenfeld (Google News Lab DACH & Rolemodels) and Jenni Sargent (First Draft) in this session.

More Information