Sandbox Hub 2019 Awards

Open Innovation

Published on September 11, 2019

France Télévisions was awarded two prizes, recognizing both the dynamism of its business with start-ups, as well as the project developed with the start-up Newsbridge around facial recognition and automatic content indexing. These two awards were presented during MediaRoad, on September 15, 2019, at the IBC (Media, Entertainment and Technology Exhibition) in Amsterdam.

A person holds a light bulb surrounded by the 12 stars of the European Union flag.

What is the Mediaroad project?

The MediaRoad project, funded by the European Union, involves several of Europe's leading audiovisual groups, research institutes and independent producers. For the past two years, this consortium has been working on the question of the future of the European media industry, seeking to identify new opportunities and define priorities for innovation policies.

What is the Sandbox Hub?

European television stations united to create a network of media innovation gas pedals. PIRO4D from Pixabay

The Sandbox Hub is one of the pillars of the MediaRoad project. Its main objective is to create a network of media innovation gas pedals and to enable local start-ups and SMEs to establish themselves internationally. It promotes the logic of tests and collaborations with start-ups in the media sector around new technologies, gives them visibility at the international level through participation in tech events.

Prix MediaRoad & Sandbox Hub

France Télévisions: « MEDIAROAD » award QUALITY LABEL

France Télévisions was the first European audiovisual group to join the Sandbox Hub. Five experiments enabled France Télévisions to demonstrate its dynamism and expertise in its cooperation with start-ups and to obtain the "Quality Label" award. This award underlines the value of the projects carried out, the level of their impact in the media universe and the quality of collaboration between start-ups and the public media.

Among all the start-ups presented by the 17 members of the Sandbox Hub, here are the 5 innovative projects presented by France Télévisions:

- Cognitive sciences to optimize audience satisfaction, in collaboration with TheFictionLab.

- The co-development of a facial recognition and video content indexing tool, as part of a Newsbridge acceleration program.

- The system for creating interactive sequences for franceInfo (channel 27), for presentation and animation on touch screens, in collaboration with Excense.

- The testing of the broadcast technology based on a peer-to-peer exchange system for the France.tv platform, in collaboration with Streamroot.

- The personalization of a cartoon by the user on the Zouzous offer, in collaboration with ToonYou.

« SANDBOX HUB » award of the Best Project

Among the 8 start-ups nominated, Newsbridge received the best project award for its initiative around image analysis (facial and object recognition) and automatic indexing of video content. This experiment was conducted in immersion at its France Télévisions newsroom, as part of an internal gas pedal program for start-ups.

Written by Laurence Landoyer