Ep. 28: Matt Stagg - Media Innovator: Leveraging AI and Immersive Tech

Matt Stagg brings over 20 years of digital innovation leadership in the media and entertainment industry. He has driven mobile, immersive, and digital transformation strategy for prominent brands like BT Sport, Warner Bros. Discovery, EE, and more. His extensive industry background informs his nuanced perspectives on aligning emerging technology with media business opportunities. How Can AI Streamline Media Production Workflows? According to Matt Stagg, a pragmatic approach is needed rather than seeking end-to-end AI solutions for production. He advises focusing AI on assistive roles to augment human creativity: “It's all about having an assistant, or many assistants to free up the editorial and the well trained.” Machine learning has automation potential for onsite cameras while generative AI can handle graphics, statistics and overlays during post-production. Structured AI assistance with mundane, time-intensive tasks allows more human bandwidth for quality control and creative opportunities. What Role Can AI Play in Media Sustainability? Stagg highlighted emerging AI abilities to provide sustainability analytics, gathering the multitude of data points to compare approaches. As he explains, “We can see using artificial intelligence, machine learning to be able to understand the carbon footprint of a remote production versus on site.” This empowers more informed decisions to optimize energy, resource usage and other sustainability factors among various production models. Though AI compute power carries its own footprint, the insights AI delivers can clarify tradeoffs for long-term thinking. Can AI Help Combat Piracy? On anti-piracy, Stagg notes enforcement remains stuck in reactive “whack-a-mole” rather than understanding motivations. He suggests AI’s ability to comprehensively analyze social media links to piracy sites. This can identify access patterns, inform site blocking and IP restrictions. Stagg also called out using these AI-enabled insights on consumer needs to influence business models and pricing. Combined with enforcement, this more strategic approach can get ahead of piracy trends instead of chasing each takedown. What’s Needed for Spatial Computing to Become Mainstream? Stagg is keen on spatial computing’s long-term potential for immersive, volumetric viewing but acknowledges its intensive GPU requirements today. Until there is sufficient market penetration of AR/VR devices needing that extra power, more practical innovation is personalizing screen layouts in spatial environments. As he puts it, “When you have a spatial compute, when you're watching, you have your whole room. I can have the main screen there, I can have statistics there, I can have replays there.” This allows custom viewing that can scale now before volumetric catches up. How Can Media Balance Innovation and Business Realities? For Stagg, real tensions exist between technical teams proposing long-term innovations against executives greenlighting only immediate business needs. He says this comes down to budget prioritization and calls innovators to make better business cases. But part of the challenge is quantifying innovation results like churn impacts. Stagg says providing executive teams the data and support to see strategic innovation value is imperative. Leaders should also nurture a fail-safe culture for the experimentation vital to innovation. Ultimately, Stagg believes educating cross-functional leadership on balancing innovation investments is crucial for seizing opportunities. Avoiding the paralysis of possibilities, Stagg offers actionable frameworks to drive innovation with AI assistants, insightful analytics, strategic pricing, and incremental spatial computing advances. For Stagg, it’s about busines-savvy innovation prioritization, not blue sky imagination. That’s why leaders turn to him for the media innovation radar.