Across Europe’s audiovisual sector, organisations generate and manage large volumes of content every day. News agencies produce verified material at speed, broadcasters maintain extensive archives, and producers create works that move across markets and partners. Yet despite their different missions, they face a shared challenge: the value of their content is often limited by fragmented workflows and metadata that is inconsistent, incomplete, or difficult to reuse.
TEMS is being developed to help address this reality by supporting a more coherent, connected approach to production and archive data. The focus is not on replacing existing systems, but on helping organisations make better use of the information they already create—strengthening discoverability, enabling responsible reuse, and improving operational efficiency across the ecosystem.
Keeping critical information intact as content moves across systems
For news agencies, metadata underpins the reliability and circulation of their output. Agencies manage source information, rights data, and descriptive fields that must remain intact as content moves across clients and platforms. In practice, this information can be lost or altered as assets pass through different systems or delivery specifications. A photo may retain IPTC fields in one workflow but lose them in another; a video clip may be delivered with varying rights expressions depending on the recipient.
TEMS aims to support agencies by promoting more consistent metadata handling and helping ensure that essential information travels with the asset throughout its lifecycle.
Making large, diverse archives easier to navigate and reuse
For broadcasters, the challenge is often the scale and diversity of their archives. Collections may span decades, produced under different technical standards and organisational structures. Metadata can sit in multiple systems, with varying levels of completeness or alignment. This makes it difficult to fully activate the value of their archives—whether for internal production, public service missions, or licensing.
TEMS is being developed to support more coherent metadata practices, enabling enriched information to move more easily between production, archive, and distribution environments. Examples include harmonising identifiers across legacy catalogues or reducing manual reconciliation between systems.
Ensuring works remain identifiable as they travel across partners
For producers, metadata is increasingly tied to the visibility and circulation of their works. Funding bodies, distributors, and platforms often require different reporting formats, and smaller companies may lack the resources to manage these obligations efficiently. A single work may need to be described multiple times, with variations in contributors, rights, or technical specifications.
TEMS aims to simplify this reality by supporting a single entry point for enriched production data, helping ensure that works are properly identified, attributed, and discoverable across Europe—regardless of company size.
Towards a more connected audiovisual ecosystem
Across all three subsectors, the opportunity lies in making metadata more reliable, more portable, and more useful. By supporting clearer structures and more consistent flows, TEMS aims to help organisations unlock the potential of the assets they already manage.
The result is a more connected audiovisual environment where content can be found, understood, and reused with greater confidence—strengthening both operational efficiency and long‑term cultural value.