Streamer’s editor says AI can ‘pick up some of the mundane work’
ITVX is experimenting with using artificial intelligence to schedule its FAST channels, the PSB streamer’s managing editor has revealed.
But Craig Morris assured delegates at the Edinburgh TV Fest this afternoon that AI was unlikely to replace conventional schedulers anytime soon.
ITVX, which launched in December last year, hosts more than 20 themed FAST channels. Some of these operate on a pop-up basis to react to particular events, which aim to offer viewers a scheduled experience through a streamer.
Speaking in a session entitled ‘Secrets of a Scheduler: How to Build a TV Channel’, Morris said: “We’re trying an experiment at the moment, with FAST channels, we’re running all these channels and they’re fairly automated, they’re like playlists.
“And actually we were interested to go ‘Could we tune up the schedules a bit? Could the AI spot what people like and promote that up?”
He said there were clear benefits to using AI for some tasks traditionally performed by a scheduler.
“There’s less and less people working in TV and actually when you do the sorts of jobs we do, you need thinking time, you need time to plan, to strategise. So if there’s AI that can pick up some of the mundane work and free up our teams to spend time on the good, creative, forward-looking planning, then I think that’d a good thing.”
But, he said: “I’ll be really honest with you, so far we’ve spent more time programming the AI, telling it what to do, than we’ve saved.”
He added that “so far I think we’re a long way off” AI replacing schedulers entirely and went on to say that he didn’t consider algorithm-driven VoD services to be a threat either.
“You need a content strategy ultimately don’t you?” he said. “You need someone to decide when things are going to be released and how money is spent, and interestingly I think there is a link between traditional scheduling and curation, because putting a night of programmes together is no different to putting a great collection of programmes together on a streaming service
“I think the prediction of the schedulers’ demise 15 years ago may be a bit premature – you’ll always need people with a bit of editorial nous at the centre of it all trying to make sense of it… we’re right at the centre of the planning of a channel or streaming service and that’s not going to change.”
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