We Can't Carry On Doing Old Things With New Technology

Last month I spoke with Rowan de Pomerai, CEO of the DPP, the media tech intelligence network, and went back through its 2025 Media CTO Survey: 33 technology leaders at media, news, broadcast and entertainment organisations across Europe and the Americas.

Almost half of you say you are open to working with startups. Read the fine print. A third of you are “very willing”, meaning you actively seek innovation from startups and new entrants. The next 15% are “somewhat open”, which the survey defines as open but tending to prioritise proven, established vendors. One step below the top of the scale, openness already comes with a preference for the familiar.

The supplier risk you most often flag as a high concern is reduced innovation from large incumbent suppliers (62%). Yet only 21% of you describe your supplier strategy as expanding to more specialised or emerging partners.

I’ve spoken to dozens of startups in this space, and they can tell. Asked about the same relationship, only 12% of startup CEOs see media companies as “very willing”.

One media CTO in the survey put it better than I could: “We need to disrupt ourselves much more; we can’t carry on doing old things with new technology.”

Old things with new technology

Now re-read that line against the last fifteen years of this industry.

Streaming grew up next to broadcast, and a growing share of viewing moved from transmitters to CDNs. Viewers went from watching whatever was on to choosing what they wanted, whenever they wanted it.

Most things improved but some moved in the wrong direction. For example, a transmitter costs the same whether a thousand people tune in or a million. A CDN charges for every one of them. Fifteen years on, that is still how delivery is built: one source, serving every viewer separately, with costs that grow in a straight line alongside the size of your viewership.

We changed how people watch television. We never really stopped to ask whether the way we get it to them should change too.

Seeing it from the other side

I spent six years at AWS, working with enterprise media customers such as Disney and NBCUniversal as well as co-building with startups such as Queue-It and App8. When a customer wanted to try something, I didn’t spend much time thinking about procurement, legal, AppSec or pentests. Those relationships already existed. There were people whose job was to help get things done, and I knew who to talk to.

I didn’t think much of it at the time. It was simply how things worked.

Now I’m on the other side, building Sudden, and much of my time is spent talking to media technology leaders about trying something new.

The conversations are good. People are curious, ask sharp questions and genuinely want to understand what we’re doing. But getting from an interesting conversation to an actual production workload is another matter.

Who owns the decision? Who needs to approve it? How do you get something small into production without turning it into a six-month exercise?

Often, nobody has a clear answer. Not because people don’t want to try, but because the organisation hasn’t really made room for it.

One startup CEO in the DPP’s companion survey said media companies seek out smaller suppliers mainly to learn from them, “often with little to no intention to procure outside services.” I wouldn’t put it quite that harshly. But I recognise the experience: plenty of interest, and very little that happens afterwards.

Making it easier to try something new

Not every new technology needs a full procurement cycle, a major integration project or a commitment to replace an existing supplier.

Another CTO in the survey, talking about vendor lock-in, said they prefer “proven interoperability that enables us to replace parts of the machine without breaking it.” I think that’s an important point. You don’t need more promises about innovation. You need ways to experiment without putting the systems you depend on at risk.

Three things would make a difference.

Give someone ownership. Someone in your organisation should be able to take a promising idea from an initial conversation to a small test. If nobody owns that process, even genuine interest tends to go nowhere, and good opportunities are lost.

Make the first project small. A test should be possible within a few weeks, with a clearly defined scope, measurable outcomes and an easy way to roll back. Success should be evaluated against your own numbers, not just the supplier’s dashboard and a “trust me bro”.

Look at something that hasn’t changed in a while. Not everything needs to be reinvented. Sometimes the best place to start is a part of your technology stack that has been operating the same way for years, even as everything around it has evolved.

That’s the approach we take with Sudden. When AB Films TV added it, the integration took an afternoon. Their CDN, origin and DRM stayed exactly as they were, and whatever it saves is measured on their own CloudFront bill, not just in the reports we produce.

Don’t miss November 16

The DPP’s 2026 Media CTO Survey comes out on November 16. I’ll read two numbers first: whether concern about incumbent suppliers has grown, and whether more than 21% of you now say your supplier strategy is widening. I’ll also be interested in whether “somewhat open” still comes with a but.

If the first goes up and the second doesn’t, the gap isn’t about willingness. It’s about the ability to act on it.

One question for the CTOs reading this: when was the last time you put a relatively unknown supplier’s technology into production? Was it this year, or would you struggle to remember?

Thanks to Rowan for the conversation, and to the DPP team for the research.

Findings and quotes are from the DPP Media CTO Survey 2025 (33 senior technology leaders at media, news, broadcast and entertainment organisations in Europe and the Americas) and the companion DPP Media Tech CEO Survey 2025. Quotes are anonymised, as published by the DPP. The 2026 Media CTO Survey is available to DPP members from November 16. Details on the DPP’s site. ↗ (opens in a new tab)