The Long Game: From VCR cue dots to broadcast AI

🎂 Episode thirty-five lands on a birthday — and rather than let that pass quietly, Ben and AI co-host RaIAna use it as a reason to go all the way back to the beginning.This is the origin story behind Broadcast Media: The Inside Track. Ben Anchor — eighteen year broadcast veteran, UC Berkeley AI graduate, and founder of Ancast Intelligence — traces the through-line from a curious kid in Manchester reverse-engineering scrap appliances, to designing real-time AI scheduling systems for the future of broadcast.What you'll hear in this episode:🎮 The Amstrad CPC464 moment — writing code at age eight just to see what was possible📼 The VCR cue dot hack — editing out adverts from live broadcasts before anyone called it automation🎧 VJing, Eboman, and the Prodigy concert that changed everything📡 Cisco exam, no passport, dial-up internet, and an 86% pass📺 ESPN, live Premier League playout, and the birth of Ancast✈️ Hong Kong, Turner APAC, and the first major international consulting engagement🏛️ Channel 4, EveryoneTV, and twenty-five years of broadcast transformation🤖 UC Berkeley, the AI pivot, and where nowcasting fits into all of itThe big theme running underneath everything: technology is never the hard part. The hard part is the human system around it — the governance, the trust, the change management. That's true whether you're running a VHS recorder in the nineties or deploying a real-time AI scheduling system in two thousand and twenty-five.If you've been listening to this series and ever wondered what shapes Ben's perspective on AI in broadcast, this is the episode that answers that question.🎙️ Hosted by Ben Anchor and AI co-host RaIAna📍 Ancast Intelligence — broadcast AI consulting, nowcasting strategy, AI Discovery Sprintswww.ancast.co.uk#BroadcastAI #AIinBroadcast #BroadcastMedia #FAST #Nowcasting #AIStrategy #BroadcastConsulting #AncastIntelligence #MediaTech #OTT #StreamingTV #Podcast