Mike Antonovich is responsible for serving the high-performance, rich-media, video-based needs of the world’s major broadcasters, programmers, producers and aggregators of the world’s global television and media business. He was named managing director in November of 2010, when the company acquired Genesis Networks, where he had served as the company’s president and CEO. Mr. Antonovich brings more than 30 years of broadcast and satellite industry sales, marketing, operations and executive experience to his position.

SatMagazine
Mike, would you afford our readers a look into your history in this industry, considering your wealth of experience in the broadcast and satellite environments?

Mike Antonovich
Well, I’ve been in this business since I was a wet-nosed puppy — that’s more than 30 years, working for some of the best people and companies across the whole broadcast and media spectrum.  I began as a cameraman at ESPN, moved into master control, audio, TD and most every other production job. The great part about ESPN was you might do all these jobs during the same Sports Center!!  What a blast!! I then spent eight years at Group W Satellite doing everything from Earth station operations and microwave maintenance. I even cleared more than my share of seagull poop out of antennas! That was a little less exciting.
At PanAmSat, I did everything from bookings through sales and marketing and played a small part in what was, without a doubt, the most successful satellite company ever.  I’m now working in the video fiber business where the great thing is I’m still dealing every day with my customers and friends who I’ve gotten to know over the past 30 years.  Increasingly, more and more of what they need is best delivered inside our fiber network. 
 
SatMagazine
How was Genesis Networks conceived and what role did you play with the Company?

Mike Antonovich
Most of the credit for the launch of Genesis Networks truly belongs to Paul Dujardin and the rest of the Parente/Dujardin team.  These guys took it from a simple concept into a truly global 70-city network.  Me, I just came along at the right time to help them grow and mature our services and solutions to an even broader set of customers.  The really great news is that the core team that built this company is still in place and is as eager as ever to meet the needs of our customers. 

SatMagazine
What brought Genesis Networks to the attention of Global Crossing? What prompted the acquisition and what will the merging of technologies and talents bring to Global Crossing?

Mike Antonovich
The purchase of Genesis Networks supports Global Crossing’s strategy of investing in emerging areas, deepening penetration into vertical markets, furthering the differentiation of solutions and services, expanding customer relationships, and leveraging the company’s global assets to seize new opportunities.  Global Crossing was looking for a catalyst for their growth in their managed services businesses like the media and broadcast marketplaces. The acquisition provides Global Crossing opportunities to attract new customers and expand service offerings into vertical markets that require high-performance, rich-media, video-based delivery, such as health care, cinema, music, gaming, government and distance learning.Genesis had already built the key technologies and relationships with many of the world’s leading media companies and was essentially operating at a “retail” level in a business that truly requires a global scope and scale. That’s where Global Crossing comes in. We were able to leverage their 700-city network that operates in its essence as an IP backbone that can truly offer a soup to nuts product suite of just about every conceivable service a broadcaster could want: dedicated point-to-point fiber, managed video services, hosting, store-and-forward applications, etc.  We see this powerful combination as a real launching pad for new products and services targeted directly at our television customers. 
 
And let’s not forget, the market for these services is growing. Industry research firm Infonetics Research forecasts that worldwide revenue for video services, including IPTV, cable video and satellite video services, will top $250 billion in 2014. In addition, according to the Visual Networking Index (VNI), an industry benchmark report produced by Cisco, 3D and HD Internet video will comprise 46 percent of consumer Internet video traffic by 2014.

SatMagazine
How do you see the future of satellite broadcasting, given the impetus of IPTV, increasing fiber installations, the increasing use of mobile entertainment, and the decrease of cable viewership?

Mike Antonovich
I think it’s premature to call the death of any distribution platform with hundreds of millions of subscribers around the world. I don’t think there’s going to be less satellite and cable television, simply more and more niche and targeted outlets for programming available on every appliance; available to anyone, anywhere. Who’s to say that in five years you don’t carry a chip with you that allows you to watch the game in the living room and then to instantly display the same game on the refrigerator when you get up for a beer? Think of the possibilities!  The future we see, though, is all based on IP-enabled content to serve as the medium that delivers this content to all these devices and appliances. Global Crossing Genesis Solutions is today one of the only truly global IP video delivery networks and we expect to help listen to and lead this industry to where it’s going next.
 
SatMagazine
What technologies do you see being implemented over the next year or so as far as the primary and secondary businesses are concerned within the satellite broadcasting industry?

Mike Antonovich
You’re going to see a lot more targeted and niche distribution of content across satellite and the other platforms. Long gone are the days of a single “world feed” of the same content to everybody. Increasingly, what is going to feed these satellite DTH platforms around the world are unique customized streams which may be “central cast” from half-way across the world and delivered on our global fiber network. The truth is, we’ve been doing this for almost five years now. And the trend is for continued growth.
 
SatMagazine
The capacity needs of HDTV are enormous. How will compression technologies play their role in delivering product to consumers without the need of various steps at the DTH end of the link?

Mike Antonovich
Given the bandwidth constraints of all satellite platforms, the evolution of digital video compression has been the single biggest driver of DTH platform growth. Platforms that once could have only carried 24 analog TV channels nowadays carry hundreds of channels in every format from standard definition, high definition and even 3D TV. Advances in compression will soon allow for “4K”-type of truly cinema-quality television to be received directly to DTH subscribers’ homes. We’ve not yet seen the best that satellite TV has to offer.
 
SatMagazine
Mike, what role will satellite broadcasting play within the 3DTV environment; within the digital cinema market segment?

Mike Antonovich
3D TV is still a niche “experiment.” And the jury’s still out on just how big a market this will be. Digital cinema is even more complicated and confused at the moment and it may naturally — due to its own bandwidth demands — ultimately require capacity from fiber networks. But for the foreseeable future, a hybrid fiber-satellite model may be what gets the job done.
 
SatMagazine
What can the industry do to accommodate the future... in other words, how do we entice younger students to consider careers within our industry to ensure companies such as Global Crossing have the talented folk needed in the future for continued growth?

Mike Antonovich
As media platforms continue to develop in ways we hadn’t thought about even 10 years ago, what will clearly drive the success of these platforms will be unique and creative content developed especially for the end-user appliance. That is going to require lots of young minds with new ideas who tap into the unquenchable thirst for customized, personalized media experiences. So, we need to give students challenges and opportunities to turn bent-pipe satellite and fiber networking into creative playgrounds of their own. Who knows where the next YouTube or Facebook will come from. We’d like to think that Global Crossing will have the network and the relationships with content and distribution partners to create some of that next-generation media landscape where these kids will want to play.

For more information on Global Crossing, head to...
http://www.globalcrossing.com/