With an eye on the close of 2025 and the immediate horizon of 2026, we have consulted diverse industry leaders who have collaborated with the magazine throughout the year, inviting them to share a reflection, based on their experience, on the year coming to an end and the one ahead. Drawing on their testimonies, we take stock of the year and anticipate the key factors that will shape the evolution of the broadcast industry

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*This content is included in the December issue of TM BROADCAST. You can access the full magazine here.

The broadcast industry continues to move forward amid a complex process of transformation, in which new opportunities are emerging alongside significant challenges. This is one of the key conclusions of 2025. The transition is now unavoidable. However, when it comes to putting it into practice, difficulties arise that go beyond purely technological considerations and force the industry to rethink its models, structures and priorities.

To take the pulse of this pivotal moment, we have consulted a selection of industry leaders who have collaborated with the magazine over the past year, asking them for a review of 2025, a look ahead to 2026, and a broader reflection on the levers that will drive the sector’s growth in the medium and long term.

From this analysis, several common vectors emerge: the steady advance of the transition to IP; the progressive convergence of the broadcast, IT and ProAV worlds; growing challenges related to talent and cybersecurity; and, cutting across all of them, the impact of artificial intelligence.

We have divided this special feature —which can be read in full in the latest issue of TM BROADCAST— into seven sections. In this article, we outline the key takeaways from the chapter dedicated to interoperability and collaboration.

Simen K. Frostad (Bridge Technologies): “the future belongs to those who contribute to the ecosystem, not those who guard their corner of it”

Interoperability and collaboration emerge as another major area of consensus among the professionals consulted. This trend has already shaped the sector throughout 2025 and, according to the experts, will gain even greater importance in 2026 as a prerequisite for the evolution of the audiovisual ecosystem.

From this perspective, Simen K. Frostad (Bridge Technologies) stresses that one of the key lessons learned by the industry in recent years is that collaboration is more effective than competition when it comes to driving progress. “We feel strongly that when companies work together on open standards, shared protocols and common goals — with the evolution of IP standards and collaborative frameworks such as IPMX and SRT — the entire ecosystem becomes healthier.”

Frostad emphasises that the results of this approach are already visible, particularly in terms of the democratisation of production. In his view, cooperation between companies has enabled advanced solutions to reach a much broader segment of the market.

The impact of this transformation extends across the entire value chain. “That shift benefits everyone,” Frostad notes, from manufacturers and system integrators to production companies, broadcasters and end audiences, who gain access to more diverse and higher-quality content. In this new scenario, he concludes, “the future belongs to those who contribute to the ecosystem, not those who guard their corner of it.”

Another frequently cited example in this area is the emergence of Media eXchange Layer (MXL), an initiative that, in the words of Jon Wilson (Grass Valley), represents a turning point by moving “from talking about interoperability to actually achieving it at scale.” Wilson recalls that for years the industry has been constrained by closed systems and isolated workflows, and highlights how MXL breaks with that dynamic.

“This is not a theoretical architecture,” Wilson stresses, but rather the foundation on which live media workflows will be built, offering lower latency, greater flexibility and genuine multivendor collaboration. In this sense, he defines MXL as a catalyst for the transition towards software-defined models and platform-level innovation.

This view is also shared by Jan Eveleens, CEO of Riedel Product Division, who confirms the company’s commitment to MXL and positions it as one of the key topics for 2026. “One initiative Riedel will continue to pursue in 2026 is the MXL initiative,” he explains, highlighting its goal of creating an interoperable environment in which software containers from different vendors can coexist and exchange content efficiently.