WALLe (Walt’s ABC Lineup Loader for executives)
This initiative was to create a strategic planning tool for ABC Network to aid C-Level executives (e.g. Bob Iger et al) in crafting the Prime Time lineup.
As television audiences start to decline due to streaming, Networks continually shift and move their television shows to fight for the coveted Nielsen rating. A system was needed to enable our media executives to develop the Prime Time lineup, easily, quickly, and securely. The lineup is the foundation for the ABC Network Ad Sales organization to sell advertising space. It equates to almost 2 Billion dollars in Ad revenue for ABC Network. This lineup is collectively developed by the most senior-level media executives which includes Bob Iger.
Credits Consolidation, Composition(C3), Planning & Organization (C3PO) would streamline workflows between post-production business units as well as centralize episodic television credits into a single source system.
Credits refer to a list of acknowledgments of those who contributed to the creation of a movie or television program. Production companies are legally obligated by the guilds (e.g. WGA, DGA, PGA, SAG, etc) to display credits. In certain circumstances, there are legal contracts to the order of how their name appears (e.g. special credit at end of primary cast display) or their title (e.g. Executive Producer).
Credits were manually tracked on disparate Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, emails, post-it notes or worse in people’s memories. Credits displayed incorrectly result in financial penalties. The C3PO system would address these pain points.
The Next Generation Reporting & Data (NGRD) project was a major initiative to build and establish an enterprise-wide reporting and data platform for Disney Entertainment.
Existing reporting portals and tools were disparate; on antiquated technology stacks; not built in a scalable manner; and required a large overhead to support and maintain.
NGRD is a hybrid, cloud-based (AWS), and on-premise reporting and data platform that consolidates current reporting portals into a single consolidated flexible, extensible portal that enables any back-end data sources to easily connect with front-end reporting tools.
Future…
Free Ad Supported Television (FAST) is a live-streaming service without a subscription. A free digital service helps us extract value from less-trafficked content on our subscription services. There will always be viewers that will never pay for content. Systems need to be created to manage the new FAST channels we’re introducing.
Virtual Production uses real-time 3D engines (e.g. UnReal and Unity) to create photo-realistic sets, then display them on large LED walls behind physical sets using real-time rendering in conjunction with traditional filming. We continue to proliferate these technologies but need to streamline and lower our point of entry so more business units can capitalize on them.
Generative Artificial Intelligence creates a wide variety of data, such as images, videos, audio, text, programming code, formulas, and 3D models. It does this by learning patterns from existing data and then using this knowledge to generate new and unique outputs. We continue to explore the use of this technology for content creation, forecasting, production, and post-production. That said the use of GenAI is still under legal review and arguably under scrutiny from the entertainment industry.