Business

Will Kreth, executive director of the Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR), was on a panel at NAB’s New York City event in October of last year when a CTO of a major rights and scheduling (avails) database company came up afterward to share that his company already supported EIDR in their tools.

“Having worked with his company’s database back at a previous job, I was stunned, as the lack of EIDR support there was a major “wish list” item for us,” Kreth told the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA). “It sparked a thought: If I don’t know this company supports EIDR, then a lot of other people don’t know that, as well.”

Thus was born the EIDR Ready program, an awareness and branding campaign designed to bring a spotlight on media and entertainment supply chain companies in the EIDR ecosystem, including initial qualifiers Allocine/Webedia, Aspect, Crown Media, FilmTrack, ITV plc, Mediamorph, My Eye Media, Orchestra Networks, Rightsline, The Title Registrar, V2 Solutions and Verance.

Covering the breadth of the supply chain — from workflow management, rights and avails and scheduling software companies, to media processing labs and subtitle and closed captioning firms, to audience measurement companies and more — the EIDR member companies qualified as being “EIDR Ready” demonstrate their active support of EIDR ID’s in their toolsets, metadata feeds, and workflows, Kreth said.

“We want to recognize our member companies from the vendor community who support EIDR, thank them for doing so, and amplify the message of their support within the M&E supply-chain to a wider audience,” he added. “We want all of the customers/clients of these vendors to know they can rely on EIDR ID support being there when they ask for it.”

EIDR first shared the idea of a branding campaign with member companies in January 2018, then followed through with qualification surveys in March of this year. The NAB Show in Las Vegas is EIDR’s first public announcement of EIDR Ready.

“Any EIDR member company that can demonstrate that they support EIDR ID’s in their supply-chain tools can qualify for EIDR Ready,” Kreth said. “It’s basically a survey and a screenshot of the usage that we ask for. From there, it’s a small license agreement for the use of the logo.”

EIDR will announce a full list of companies at the NAB Show and expects even more companies to qualify as EIDR Ready throughout 2018. And after eight years, with nearly 2 million EIDR IDs registered, it’s the right time to tout the benefits of EIDR, Kreth said.

“The message of the demonstrated, valuable network effect of EIDR usage continues to need to be heard by all parts of the media and entertainment industry, not only in the U.S., but globally,” he added.

Please email [email protected] for more information about EIDR Ready and EIDR.