Artificial intelligence and automation are fundamentally reshaping media production and distribution economics. Beyond the recent attention on generative AI, these technologies are enabling media organisations to produce more content at lower costs while enhancing personalisation and engagement. Our research reveals that leading companies are implementing AI strategically to address specific business challenges rather than pursuing technology for its own sake.

Richard Huang from BBC describes how AI is creating practical value in content production: "We're currently testing whether AI can provide accurate live transcriptions for coverage of sports, particularly local clubs. Using generative AI to listen to radio broadcasts and create articles makes covering a wider range of sports economically viable. For big matches, we'll always send journalists—you need the quality and expertise of humans—but for smaller local clubs with hundreds of matches monthly, it's prohibitively expensive."

This targeted application of AI demonstrates how technology can expand content coverage without sacrificing quality. Huang continues: "The voice-over technology has improved dramatically. Some tools we're testing now are genuinely difficult to distinguish from human voices. The marginal cost is minimal—you can process one original video and quickly generate multiple highlights with different voiceovers to attract diverse audiences."

Our polling indicates that "AI/automation integration" features prominently among current technology priorities for media platforms, with "customer satisfaction" and "revenue per user" cited as the metrics most influencing technology investment decisions. This focus on customer-centric metrics suggests that AI implementations are increasingly being evaluated based on their impact on viewer experience rather than merely operational efficiency.