The Real IBC Happened After Hours — and It Wasn’t About the Tech
I’ve just decoded my Amsterdam notes, and the five conversations that mattered most didn’t happen on a stand. They happened in aisles, over coffee, and at a networking event I nearly skipped. Here’s what that tells us about where broadcast is actually heading.
I’ve Spent a Year Watching AI Quietly Become Plumbing — and Nobody Noticed
The revolution didn’t arrive in the keynote. It turned up in the machine room at 3am, wearing high-vis, doing the work nobody wanted to film for the sizzle reel.
The List Is Dead. The Word Is Fine.
We spent decades defining broadcast by its delivery method — towers, schedules, the five sacred mediums. Then someone handed the kids an algorithm and called it progress. Now we’re learning the hard way: distribution was never the job.
The AI Anchor Isn’t Coming for Your Job — It’s Already Doing It
We laughed at China’s robotic news reader in 2018. Eight years on, India’s most decorated anchor doesn’t exist, Mexico runs a stable of synthetic presenters with fan bases, and I’m left wondering whether we automated the wrong half of the job.
I Gave My AI Assistant a Set of Hands — And It Changed Everything
For two years, AI could talk brilliantly but do almost nothing. Then I connected mine to my actual tools. Here’s why the Model Context Protocol might be the most important piece of infrastructure you’ve never heard of.
Why Broadcasters Still Haven’t Built Their Own AI — And Why That’s About to Change
At MPTS 2026, I grabbed two brilliant minds to talk AI adoption in broadcast. What they said confirmed my hunch: we’re still circling the edges. But the IP land-grab is coming.
Stop Buying AI. Start Building It.
Before I left for MPTS, I decided to ask every broadcaster I met one question: What model have you built? The answers told me everything about where broadcast AI really stands in 2026.
The Iceberg Under the Launch Year: What Nobody Tells You About Building in AI
Four months into 2026, I can tell you that the vision board prophecy held—but not in the way I expected. This is the 90% nobody sees.
The Infrastructure Decision That Broadcast Still Gets Wrong
Padraig O’Donovan’s career arc — from stitching together 14 vendors in 2012 to spinning up broadcast production in 30 minutes — exposes an uncomfortable truth about how we’ve been matching infrastructure to content. Spoiler: we’ve been doing it backwards.
Why I stopped pretending I wasn’t the kid who edited live TV on a VCR
Turning 50 on air seemed like hubris until I realised the story I’ve avoided telling is the one that explains everything about how I approach AI in broadcast today.
