Pat Horridge:

I'm glad to see it's developing and the contributors so far look to be able to bring a specific broadcast view to the table.

I'm still hopeful this will bring some much needed broadcast input to the development discussions.

More broadcast oriented is exactly what I fear the most: broadcast is yesterday's story, the things are evolving in a different way and the company should look ahead building the tools for tomorrow instead of making yesterday's tools better.

luca.mg:

More broadcast oriented is exactly what I fear the most: broadcast is yesterday's story, the things are evolving in a different way and the company should look ahead building the tools for tomorrow instead of making yesterday's tools better.

This.

I wonder what percentage of professional paid video producers are  creating content for "broadcast"?  Maybe 2%?  Probably a lot less than that.

Broadcast had to be dragged kicking and screaming into Hi definition. The idea was that advertisers were not going to pay any more for HD over SD programming, and that sets, lighting that were "good enough" for SD visuals would look "shabby" in a HD environment.

When Avid first came out, back in the early '90s, they used to sell a relatively small number of high end NLEs with expensive proprietary hardware at very high prices to a restricted number of users in the film and broadcast industries; many of us around here remember the days of 300k Avid rooms... today the scenario has dramatically changed: technology is more affordable than ever, there's not high end expensive hardware anymore, everything is taken care of in software and by the CPU, while content distribution (and formats) is not only theaters and TV only anymore; to be profitable a company has to sell flexible and affordable tools to a large audience, rather than selling specialized and expensive tools to a small group of users, like Avid used to do in the golden age; Avid as a company has a tradition in not understanding how things develop, and the ACA, focusing on the needs of the broadcast niche, is yet another confirmation of this. When Avid first came on the market it used to be "the future today", now it's slowly becoming a thing of the past, being unable to adapt to a business changing at a fast pace; I'd really like Avid to be able to envision the future again, instead of wasting resources running after a past that it's gone forever, but I would have been happy enough if they invested the money wasted on the ACA to fix the known weakness of the software and to deliver the many already existing features requested by ordinary users instead of collecting new requests from a small number of privileged users.

Would love to have Kelli give us an update and see if any of the concerns raised here are being addressed with marketing and management.

luca.mg:

the needs of the broadcast niche

Luca,

I agree with the larger part of your concerns on the ACA but to call broadcast a niche is from my perspective absurd. Both from the broadcast market size perspective and economic size of the individual broadcast clients.

Get me right, As a model I understand the Apple business model with its products portofilio, the iPad iPhone, macbooks and Mac pro etc...their respective market footprint/profit and I understand that this model also applies to our NLE market. So you are fully right that Avid needs to focus on what kind of customer it wants. Building a "swiss army knife NLE" that works for everybody might simply not be possible and trying to do so would probably result in a schizophrenic software package that should have all the features the world wants but is as easy to operate as iMovie. I think we all understand this.

What the "right" target group is for MC, broadcast or the one man production house, is something that's hard for me to simply pin down. I do believe Broadcast is not niche as the amount of broadcasters has exploded during the last 2 decades and I don't see any decline any time soon.

What's a better approach is if you point your arguments to the ACA instead of the Avid products. In other words is the ACA only aimed at broadcast (even if you consider it a niche) or also at the one man shop because from the current council it shows a clear image and there I agree with you.

Hi Jeroen, I should have written "broadcast segment of the market" then! Don't get me wrong, I do a lot of broadcast work, and I know that the broadcast industry is big, but I understand that broadcasting as we have it now it's on a dead end, even if it could take a couple of decades for it to disappear, or to evolve into something totally new, while the developing market is elsewhere, it's big already, and it's going to be bigger than traditional broadcast in the near future; that said I'm not thinking of Avid competing with Apple in the i-You name it arena, but focusing on tomorrow rather than yesterday, and I don't think of a swiss army knife NLE, but things are cruel and the editor has to be both versatile and usable, and it needs way more features than those of interest for the bradcast bunch of users alone.

luca.mg:

the editor needs way more features than those of interest for the bradcast bunch of users alone.

Luca,

I agree with you that the tool sets both need are different (of course) but not that broadcast's needs are less then those of post production and while different both also share a set of features requests and bug fixes build over years. 

(It's outside of the topic of this thread and it's so obvious it's not necessary say but I think both markets share the need of wanting reliable tested products from Avid. That's my main concern.)

Of course the broadcast market is, like all tech related markets, undergoing fast changes and keeping up is a struggle for most of us. From that perspective staying ahead must even be more difficult for Avid. Here I see a role for the ACA. The question with your arguments in mind is if Avid should rename the current ACA to ABCA (Avid Broadcast Customer Association) and also question if a APPCA is needed (Avid Post Production Customer Association) or that this forum should take that role. 

As long as the ACA represents the user target group of the Avid products all is well, if the ACA just represents a niche within that group it's not IMHO. There I'm with you.

I think the bigger point is that one has to "pay to play".  Looking at the roster of the folks at Avid Connect, I think they could learn a lot more from listening to a panel of editors or moderators from these forums than the average editor will learn from them.  Where are the panelists who can address the day to day issues all editors face?  It looks like a wide gap between the panel and the end user.  I am having a tough time figuring out the return, if any, on the ACA investment. And sadly, per usual with Avid marketing, the silence is deafening....

When it comes to the toolset indeed the broadcast, film, indie, web, corporate, You name it, share a lot of needs, but on top of that each one has specific needs; if Avid wants to address a broad audience of customers, which is required to remain in business, the products have to meet different needs, finding a balance between them all, but if I pay to play I want something back, and I will lobby to have my own specific needs addressed; for example in the near future we will have better tools for file delivery to the networks, but will never get resolution independence.

The new website of Avid Customer Association just launched.
Go take a peek at www.avidcustomerassociation.com and find out all about 

Avid Connect

The Inaugural Event of the Avid Customer Association. 

April 4 – 6, 2014  |  Bellagio, Las Vegas

and remind me again why I should pay for this?  

No need to pay or come...

This Community has a strong voice in the ACA as you can see here:
http://www.avidcustomerassociation.com/advisory_councils.html 

We are in good hands, and our voice will be heard!!

Community Advisory Council

The Community Advisory Council represents the professional community that uses Avid solutions to make the broadcast, music, entertainment and media products that provide amazing experiences to the world. Advisory Council Members aggregate feedback and provide a single voice for the community. For more information on the Avid Community, please click here.

Liaison: Marianna Montague, Director of Online Communities and Forums, Avid
Avid Executive Sponsor: Jeff Rosica, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations, Avid

Advisory Council Leadership:

• Jesse Averna, Series Editor, Sesame Workshop
• Jamie Beedy, Post Production Manager, Karlproductions
• Job ter Burg, Film Editor
• Joseph C. Bond IV, Editor
• Chris Bove, WNED TV, AlwaysEditing.com
• Steve Cohen, Editor
• Terence Curren, President, Alpha Dogs, Inc.
• Andrew Hillman, Senior Editor and Technical Lead, Action Broadcasting and Television
• Shane Johnson, Sound Editor
• David Kalmusky, Owner, Producer, Director, Addiction Sound Studio
• Harry Miller, Editor, Miller 3 Editorial
• Tom Thomas, Metro Studios
• Randall Rike, Systems Engineer, Discovery Studios West
• John Rodd, Music Recording and Mixing and Mastering Engineer, www.johnrodd.com
• Martyn Suker, Head of Production Innovation, ITV Studios

Wim Van den Broeck:

No need to pay or come...

This Community has a strong voice in the ACA as you can see here:
http://www.avidcustomerassociation.com/advisory_councils.html 

We are in good hands, and our voice will be heard!!

I wish You were right Wim, the fact that Marianna and a very small number of well known and respected users are in the club doesn't mean that their voice will be taken into consideration. And what Avid will make of the advice coming from the ACA is to be seen. I bet that a single financial advisor will have  way more voice than all of the ACA members together. Time will tell, I keep thinking that this money and effort could have been better invested. The ACA will perhaps discuss things that have already been discussed over and over again here and in other forums, if nothing else it's a waste of time! In the meanwhile the competition is not wasting time.

luca.mg:

I bet that a single financial advisor will have  way more voice than all of the ACA members together.

If you consider the vast achievments Marianna has made on behalf of the forum members by herself and then give her a solid platform of support I fail to see a downside.

I could imagine Avid's CEO conversation with a negative financial advisor going like "The advice coming from the ACA which, as you are aware, represents the views a significant majority of our customers is the we need to ........ so Avid needs you and your financial advisors to raise your game, and find ways to make it happen NOW"