New chief executive says company will focus on major European broadcasters
James Arnold was named Red Bee Media CEO earlier this week, promoted from the role of chief commercial officer.
Arnold, who has been with the company since it split from the BBC in 2007, spoke to Broadcast Tech after his appointment about the next steps for the business. He replaced Steve Nylund, who had been at the helm since Red Bee returned to a separate brand from Ericsson in 2017, and is now relocating to the US with his family.
According to Arnold, Red Bee is, “on the cusp of a change of strategy,” but, “we made the strategic decision a year ago, with the CEO decision coincidental.”
He explained that the company wants to, “reconnect with its customers,” adding, “when we started we grew organically by winning contracts, but in the last few years we’ve had many tech transitions, and maybe turned our attention away a little bit from customer needs.”
The flexibility to offer solutions ranging from end-to-end to single products and cost efficiency is a key part of this, with Arnold revealing the company will focus on its core market, “the major European broadcasters, many of whom have their own operations,” that Red Bee is keen to align with and work alongside.
This strategy is in part due to the challenges in the market, with inflation, the skills shortage, supply chain issues, and more mentioned as reasons why broadcasters may look to financial performance and cutting costs in the near future - including “increasingly evaluating” Red Bee’s services.
In addition, “sustainability is front of mind. Most if not all of our customers are very diligent buyers and want to know how we’re being sustainable.”
However, Arnold is optimistic that the managed services company is in a good place to weather these issues, mentioning that the new strategy isn’t, ”fundamentally different from Red Bee’s original approach,” and that, “customers need the services we provide, it’s not discretionary.” He added: ”It comes back to who is best capable of handling this risk – companies whose core business is dealing with these challenges will be well placed.”
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