10 reasons why you DON’T need Disaster Recovery for your TV Channel

Do you really need disaster recovery? Isn’t it a waste of time and money? Come on, it’s another trick from your supplier to have you paying for useless services! Let’s have a look at all the good reasons you should NOT use a disaster recovery plan when you run a TV channel.

1. Black screen isn’t that bad anymore. In a world where half the audience abandons a video stream that takes more than 10 seconds to load[1], we’re pretty sure you can afford to have a black screen for two minutes!
2. SPOF (Single Point Of Failure) is an urban legend! There’s no such thing in real life. That famous bulldozer that cut your connection doesn’t exist.
3. The impact on your image is not that bad, even though it is estimated that it cost a mere $537 billion in the United States alone
4. If you start backing things up, you’ll never stop. Not only will you be backing up the playout system but you’ll then search for a satellite backup if you’re on satellite and then a streaming server backup if you’re into streaming. It will never end so better not start!
5. Your recovery plan won’t work because you never used it so on the day you need it, it won’t work! So should you train people on it regularly then? Another waste of time and money!
6. Let’s work on preventing disaster rather than backing up! Let’s invest in machines against natural disasters or earthquakes. That’s a good investment.
7. If there’s a black screen, your audience will turn to streaming, maybe on your streaming service. And what can happen with that? There’s no such thing as black screen when it comes to streaming, Is there?
8. Cybersecurity is not needed anymore because there are no more hackers. They shut down the entire network last week!
9. Your audience is sooooo much into you and patient they can wait forever. They’ll be waiting when you’re back!
10. Trick me once, shame on you. Trick me twice, shame on me. We all remember Y2K!

Shall we talk about Covid-19? OK, there’s no way to make light of COVID-19. This is a major global situation that might make you evaluate this list again and consider, after all, disaster recovery for your playout or media factory is a must have.

[1] https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/white-paper/maximizing-audience-engagement-white-paper.pdf