Press releases

CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES – London-based media technology business, Blue Lucy, has set up a US division of the company and appointed Dina Behar Hevert as VP Americas. The company’s entry into the US market follows significant growth in the UK and the launch of new solutions targeting the broader media market. 

Blue Lucy creates products that close the expensive technology gaps in media operating models across the world. Global media companies including BBC Studios, Banijay Rights and Blue Ant Media rely on Blue Lucy’s flagship product, BLAM, for integration, workflow orchestration and media management at scale. The company launched their new product, BOLT, at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC Show) in September this year. BOLT is an asset portal that provides effortless access to content, allowing executives to receive, review and share content without needing any technical expertise – making it faster and easier to monetize media.

Dina Behar Hevert has worked in media and entertainment for almost twenty years and brings extensive industry knowledge and a vast contact base to Blue Lucy’s newly-created position of VP Americas. Her career started in broadcast transmission roles at Globecast, FOX Sports and The Switch before she moved into business development for localization companies including SDI Media, SPG Studios and Deluxe. Most recently she’s worked as VP of business development for Emmy-winning language customization company, The Kitchen.

“What attracted me to Blue Lucy is that their products answer a very real need in both the traditional media and entertainment world and in the broader media market,” said Behar Hevert. “In particular, the flexibility they provide for integrating multiple tools into existing technology stacks is really impressive and I am genuinely excited to introduce Blue Lucy’s solutions to the US market.”

As Blue Lucy’s VP Americas, Behar Hevert is responsible for growing the company’s US customer base and recruiting local staff. She reports to CEO Julian Wright and joins Blue Lucy’s senior management team which has already seen significant growth this year with the addition of Alison Pavitt as chief marketing officer, Joshua Martin as head of product and Joe Hegarty as director of IT.      

Julian Wright, CEO of Blue Lucy said, “Expanding our team into the US is a natural next step for Blue Lucy and part of our strategic plan for growth. It was critical that we find the right person to help establish our first international division – someone who is enthusiastic about the value our products and who has a deep understanding of the local market. We’ve found that in Dina and we’re thrilled to have her on board.”

Blue Lucy is bringing its new media portal, BOLT to MIPCOM 2024, Cannes, October 21-24^th.  On stand P-1.C50A at the MIPCOM Innovation Lab 2024, the team will demonstrate how BOLT provides effortless access to content, allowing media executives to receive, review and share content without navigating complex UIs or waiting for technical teams to deliver files. Blue Lucy will also host a discussion at the Global FAST and AVOD Roundtable Event on October 22^nd during the show. 

Blue Lucy is exhibiting at MIPCOM for the first time this year, but the company and its products are well-known by many of the attendees and other exhibitors. The business was founded by technology consultants who have worked with broadcasters and content creators for over two decades, and global media companies rely on Blue Lucy’s flagship product, BLAM, for integration, workflow orchestration and media management at scale. Launched at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC Show) in September this year, BOLT is designed to address the fundamental issue of content accessibility for non-technical team members. 

BOLT reconnects commercial media teams with their content through three core functions:

Receive: BOLT provides a simple-to-use, intelligent upload function that ensures content is received with the metadata your business needs. Rather than waiting for content to arrive and then adding metadata to it, with BOLT the content request is delivered along with set parameters and metadata requirements so it’s immediately searchable and can be set to trigger specific processing workflows on arrival.  So, your media hits the ground running.

Review: BOLT puts your entire content library at your team’s fingertips – regardless of their technical capabilities. The portal’s stunningly straightforward operation and user-focussed functionality means sales teams can search and view content from any web browser without having to request access or learn how to use advanced toolsets.    

Share: BOLT provides a simple platform for content owners to showcase [and monetise] their content catalogue. Now, sharing content with potential customers is as easy as adding items to a shopping cart, while secure links to viewing copies are automatically created and delivered to your prospects.

Julian Wright, CEO of Blue Lucy said, “BOLT not only provides commercial teams with easy access to content, but it also provides analytical data about how customers’ interact with the media. It’s all about showcasing content and sharing data to support commercial success. What better place to demonstrate BOLT’s capabilities in this area than MIPCOM, an event dedicated to showcasing the best content in our industry!” 

On October 22^nd Blue Lucy CEO, Julian Wright, will lead a discussion at the Global FAST and AVOD Roundtable Event. The session will draw on the company’s experience supporting FAST channel delivery for clients like BBC Studios to explore how automation and AI processes can remove obstacles and reduce labour-intensive tasks that make FAST delivery difficult. Participants will also discuss what data sets and metrics content owners need to make informed decisions about future content offerings.  

Blue Lucy has announced plans today to launch BOLT on stand 6.C29 at IBC 2024, Amsterdam, September 13-16^th.  Described as an asset portal, BOLT provides effortless access to content, allowing media executives to receive, review and share content without navigating complex UIs or waiting for technical teams to deliver files. The Blue Lucy team will also demonstrate extensive integrations and a powerful AI assistant in BLAM, Blue Lucy’s proven tool for asset management, workflow orchestration and integration, at the show.

BOLT is designed to reconnect commercial media teams with their content through three core functions:

Receive:

BOLT provides an intelligent upload function that ensures content is received with the metadata your business needs.  Rather than waiting for content to arrive and then adding metadata to it, with BOLT the content request is delivered along with set parameters and metadata requirements so it’s immediately searchable and can be set to trigger workflows in BLAM on arrival.  So, your media hits the ground running.

Review:

BOLT puts your entire content library at your team’s fingertips – regardless of their technical capabilities. The portal’s stunningly simple operation and focussed functionality means sales teams can search and view content from any web browser without having to request access or learn how to use advanced toolsets.  

Share:

BOLT provides a simple system for content owners to showcase and monetise their content catalogue. Now sharing content with potential customers is as easy as adding items to a shopping cart and secure links to viewing copies are automatically created and delivered to your prospects.

BOLT will be shown working as both a standalone product and in conjunction with BLAM on the Blue Lucy stand at IBC 2024.    

The Blue Lucy team will also demonstrate the power of BLAM’s extensive integration capabilities at the show and introduce visitors to its new AI assistant “Lucia.” 

BLAM’s unique approach to integrations:

With nearly 500 existing connectors and an almost limitless ability to quickly add new integrations due to the platform’s microservice architecture, BLAM allows media teams to connect disparate systems in their media supply chain. IBC 2024 attendees can expect to see demonstrations of BLAM’s integration with products including Adobe Premiere Pro, Amazon S3, Monday.com and Rascular on stand 6.C29a. The team will also highlight the company’s open-access approach to integration that sees their customers maintain control of the commercial relationship with each vendor to maximise business value.  

Meet BLAM’s multitasking AI assistant:

Visitors to Blue Lucy’s stand will be the first to meet Lucia, BLAM’s new AI assistant. Lucia takes the grunt work out of media management and workflow orchestration in BLAM and is especially useful when multi-step, bulk actions need to be performed. For example: users can type instructions in plain English to set up complex workflows like automatically generating placeholders, removing bars and tone and creating a folder for a batch of incoming content. 

Julian Wright, CEO of Blue Lucy said, “Blue Lucy is known for helping media companies manage their media, orchestrate workflows and integrate technologies.  At IBC 2024 we’re expanding the reach of these benefits by putting content in the hands of commercial teams and leveraging integrations and AI to make media supply chains even more efficient. We’re looking forward to showing IBC visitors what our products can do!”   

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Blue Lucy has signed a multi-year contract with BBC Studios, who will continue using its BLAM media management platform. The new contract is an extension of a previous agreement and sees the content provider using BLAM to automate the collection, repurposing, and delivery of content to internal and external partners, including servicing BBC Studios FAST channels. 

BLAM was originally deployed on BBC Studios’ AWS instance to bring disparate content under management, implement a uniform data structure, and support distribution with basic content repurposing functions. However, over the course of the initial contract, BLAM use has expanded and the international BBC Studios team now uses the platform to orchestrate both automated and manual tasks. The ingest workflow has been enhanced with closed-loop integrations with Telestream’s Cloud Qualify, GrayMeta’s Iris Anywhere and Yella Umbrella’s Nebula and Stellar tools to provide an automated quality-control process that triggers a manual QC when necessary. Content is repurposed to remove bars and tone, create slates and add transitions with minimal user intervention. The Blue Lucy team has also worked with BBC Studios to develop an accessible content fulfilment system that allows the technology operations teams to trigger BLAM Work Orders from outside of the platform to orchestrate content searches, transcode media and gather supporting assets for delivery. To date, BLAM has supported BBC Studios’ processing of over 20,000 titles / 100,000 assets under management, which equates to more than one and a half petabytes of data.

“Our use of BLAM has grown over the last three years as we discovered the platform’s capabilities and worked with Blue Lucy’s engineers to create bespoke workflow configurations,” said Adam Jakubowski, VP technical operations at BBC Studios. “BLAM supports our teams’ agility and the demands of the business to manage, transform and monetise our content, assisting our global teams. New workflows have been rapidly iterated and integrated to meet our evolving needs by the Blue Lucy team.”

Julian Wright, CEO of Blue Lucy added, “BLAM’s low-code / no-code workflow configuration model makes it a particularly attractive solution for businesses with rapidly changing objectives to support new revenue lines such as FAST channels We’re really pleased that BBC Studios has seen such a rapid return on their investment in BLAM in recent years and we’re looking forward to continuing our work with their team.”

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