Live Cloud Production’s Trough of Disillusionment?

March 27, 2025

Over the past five years, live cloud production has become commonplace for digital-only productions and remote commentary applications. It’s also finding its way into certain positions within remote production workflows such as graphics. There’s even been examples of full-on cloud live productions for major sporting events. However, despite the potential economic advantages of cloud compute for event based workflows, as of yet, the vast majority of live productions today are still done using on-premise equipment. As one major broadcaster put it, “we’re actively experimenting, but so far less than 1% of our total annual live productions are done in the cloud”. This begs a question:

Why?

While one can argue that there are perhaps multiple areas where improvements can be made (and there are), most of these are comparatively minor refinements. However, there is one challenge that we must most definitely overcome, one that today neutralizes the economic argument for more widespread adoption of live cloud production:  the engineering toil associated with deploying and connecting a cloud PCR (production control room). 

“Too much toil” is a sentiment that rings true with multiple broadcasters experimenting with live cloud production. As one broadcaster in the trenches with live cloud production stated, “Using infrastructure as code tools such as Terraform, I can deploy the entire infrastructure of a cloud PCR in minutes, but then connecting signals and configuring software on top of that infrastructure can take hours, if not an entire day.” When the toil associated with connecting & configuring a PCR consumes hours of highly trained technical staff, simply put, live cloud production will not scale. The economics won’t work. Yes, it takes months versus minutes to build an on-premise PCR, but once it is built, one can configure the equipment and connect signals quickly. Today, the cloud-based connection/configuration process takes more effort – for each production – in the cloud. And this toil expands linearly with the scale of the production, the more cameras, the more operator positions, the more manual work.

Has live cloud production hit its ultimate plateau, relegated to smaller scale digital only productions and niche applications, or are we in what the Gartner Group calls “the trough of disillusionment” – a transitory phase before we overcome today’s challenges?

My answer is decidedly the latter.

Discovering and securely connecting to signals on the ground can and should be as easy as connecting an Alexa or Google Assistant. One shouldn’t have to worry about spinning up more cloud compute just to distribute a signal to additional destinations. Signal transformation (resolution, dynamic range, frame rate, color space) can and should be automatic based on global settings. And, yes, the broadcast industry can even run intense video processing applications in containers, speeding deployment time and enabling benefits such as auto-scaling. Moreover, all of this can be done in a multi-vendor environment so that media and entertainment customers retain the capability to choose best-of-breed.

At TVU Networks, we’ve laid the architectural foundation to accomplish this. As we approach NAB 2025, we are excited to share that foundation with customers, partners and other vendors. Our aim is to collectively chart a course to deliver the full economic potential of live cloud production. Working together, and embracing industry initiatives such as the EBU’s Dynamic Media Facility, we are 100% bullish on the future of live cloud production.

Stay tuned. 2025 should be an exciting year.

About the author:

Mike Cronk is Vice President of Strategy for TVU Networks where he leads the company’s strategic marketing initiatives to deepen TVU’s customer focused innovation and industry collaboration.  Mike brings a wealth of experience from his leadership roles, including founding Chairman of the Board at Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), Head of Product for Live Media Services at AWS, and numerous leadership roles at Grass Valley including Vice President of Core Technologies where he led the development of Grass Valley’s AMPP platform. 

Cronk has an MSEE and BSEE from MIT, is the author of multiple patents and holds a Technical Team Emmy award for his contributions to NBC’s broadcast of the 1996 Olympic Games.

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