New Media Challenges: Lessons From the Good Old Broadcast Industry
Do we have one of those for creating the right hue on a Flash file? We do not. But we will.
Service Level Agreements
Significant SLAs have come into the European streaming media industry over the past couple of years. In the good old days, we’d make a big show of 99.97% and omit to have any penalties attached. (Sigh!)
The broadcast industry has had such SLAs for 60 years, and as soon as there was enough money around to hire lawyers, we paid them to cut and paste. Lawyers being lawyers, they’ve only had time to copy over half of it (full service description, agreed performance metrics, issue escalation procedures), but the rest is on the way (liquidated damages, complicated liabilities, penalties for changes in corporate control, etc.).
Of course, technological advancement is a powerful force, and it’s capable of overriding precedents, no matter how established they are. But if you want a glimpse of the future for our industry, you could do worse than have a look at the past in broadcasting.