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Sky News announced a bid to add semantic search to its platforms and prepare for a world when AI chatbots display video results when broadcasters spoke to Press Gazette at the Web Summit in Lisbon.
Press Gazette hosted a discussion on the future of broadcast news with Sky News Executive Chairman David Rhodes, ITN CEO Rachel Corp and Euronews Chairman Pedro Vargas David.
British satellite news channel Sky News has adopted a “video-first” model as part of its Project 2030 sought to expand its audience and become more financially sustainable.
Asked about Youtube and Tiktok can support high-quality broadcast news in the future, Rhodes said: “In terms of the value our company gets from the investment, it’s a great value. There’s a real market for news on the platforms you’re referring to.
“We’ve had, in the last seven days, 100 million Tiktok video views. We see these platforms as an important audience acquisition tool and increasingly we’re seeing good actual financial results from engaging with these audiences.”
He added: “We talk about being video first. Keyword search is dying. That economy wasn’t great for publishers like us initially, it wasn’t great for journalism, it wasn’t great user experience.
“How about when these chatbot models come for video? We work with Prorata on an accurate attribution model. But what’s better is if video is the answer you get.
“Yesterday we announced a partnership with Arc XP to add semantic search capabilities to the Sky digital estate. What we all need to think about is not what is happening in the text ecosystem now, but what will the video ecosystem look like in three to five years? And how will it work as a chatbot? That’s what we think about at Sky.”
He later added: “I think the world we have to prepare for is one where you ask and you get a video result and you get the pictures. Are those our pictures and are their payments in the background?”
“We need to be very early adopters” of AI
Euronews chairman David spoke about how the technology had enabled his journalists to report from the field without camera operators, using three iPhones and a tripod.
He said AI has also had major benefits for the pan-European satellite news channel and online publisher: “We operate in 19 languages. AI has freed up a lot of journalistic time to do proper stories, rather than translating and adapting.
“We have to be very early adopters. We use it in a lot of streamlining and in a data collection perspective, but not in a driving the story perspective. If we go into driving the story, we’re all going to be in trouble.”
“All these eyeballs on Tiktok give nothing back”
ITN is contracted to produce television news bulletins for Channel 4, ITV and Channel 5 in the UK.
Corp said: “We are seeing some digital revenue but it will not replace the funding we have.
“With our public service media mission, I want to get eyeballs everywhere, I want to go to the audience where they are. I don’t need to monetize any of them at the moment. Thank goodness all those eyeballs on Tiktok don’t give anything back.
“We should not be satisfied that traditional models will be replaced by revenue from platforms.”
Corp said ITN uses AI agents in its production gallery for tasks such as spell-checking and retrieving stock photos: “So just improve what you’re doing and make it better.”
When asked whether journalists should generally be concerned about Donald Trump’s attacks on the BBC and his threatened $1 billion lawsuit against the broadcaster after a misleading Panoroma editshe said: “We have something very valuable in the UK with the public service media system.
“There has never been a more important time for impartial fact-checked news. It’s important that we hold on to that ecosystem and the BBC is part of it.
“A weakened BBC is not good for anyone and not good for the world.”
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