Future TV

Liberating TV Technology
by Lindsey Clay, Marketing Director, Thinkbox
Broadcast TV is being liberated by new technology and we in turn are being liberated too...
We've all been told that convergence is coming for very long time. It's one of those terms that everyone nods wisely over but isn't completely clear about what the implications are. Convergence seems to be producing what might be experienced as a whole medium, but is actually composed of distinct and interchangeable layers; the convergence sandwich if you like.
The first layer is the distribution technology itself; for TV we're talking all forms of digital broadcasting - satellite, cable or terrestrial - broadband and, you could argue, DVDs. The second layer then is the hardware on which we consume media, whether that's a newspaper or radio. For TV, anything with a screen is now a distribution outlet and we're seeing convergence within this layer, so that rather than me carry around iPod, Blackberry and mobile phone we can now have just one object to leave in the back of taxis.
But the layer of most interest to consumers, whether that's the Guardian, Xfm or Pirates of the Caribbean, is the content itself.

And when people watch Lost online or Emmerdale on their mobile they call it TV, not video.
So it's clear that now, more than ever before technology enables us to consume content any time, any place, any where. Heavily borrowed from Mark Thompson, we sometimes call this the age of Martini TV.
But even though people now have much more freedom and control over their viewing and however commentators might speculate on the idea of a totally on-demand TV environment, people will always need channels and a schedule. Why? Because people don't want to have to work too hard on their selections. They want a trusted editor to reassure them it won't be wasted time. In the same way as the iPOD hasn't been the death of radio. Choice can be a terrible tyranny sometimes and sometimes you just want someone else to recommend or decide for you. TV is about relaxed entertainment, stories that tend to follow a linear narrative.
You also cannot underestimate the importance of the shared experience. People enjoy TV more with other people. It's a great bonding experience for friends and family both to experience together and to talk about afterwards (and during for that matter). Telly continues to be the most talked about thing after friends and family.
It's not quite the same if you're all watching at different times.
That is especially true of Event TV; appointment-to-view stuff like The final of Britain's Got Talent, the Rugby World Cup Final, the first episode of Neighbours on Five, Cookalong Live with Gordon Ramsay.
This was brought home to me very clearly with the premiere of High School Musical 2 (HSM2) on the Disney Channel. I had one friend who was hosting a HSM2 party for a class full of 7-year-old girls and who suddenly discovered half an hour before it was broadcast that she didn't have that channel in her Sky package. Needless to say she was nearly lynched by 15 feral 7-year-olds. Luckily hysterical tears down the phone to Sky did the trick.
Channels and schedules help people find the content they want and act as the cultural glue that bonds people together. They are almost like a retailer: a destination point or distribution outlet for the content they want.
So although the TV landscape is changing dramatically, one thing has remained the same and that is our desire for more. This is not a new phenomenon. Broadcast linear TV has never been enough for us. We've always looked for opportunities to watch more TV and to enhance the whole viewing experience.

• To have a bigger and better set, or better picture quality or sound.
• To catch up with TV we missed. Soaps, favourite programmes.
• To treat ourselves with TV as a form of personal indulgence. Watching the boxed set of 24 at one sitting.
• To interact and find out more about the things you love
• And ideally some mobility, to take it with you when you go.

Bigger and Better

The fact is that viewers are willing to put their money where there mouths are and invest in the technology that enhances their viewing experience. And we're not talking small change, in fact, in an age of ever cheaper technology, the average cost of a TV set is increasing. Most of us spend over £300 and, according to TGI, 10 per cent of us spend £500 or more – and spend is growing as each year passes.
This is partly down to the demand for larger screens. A third of us now have a television of 32" or over in our homes and this is set to increase. It might surprise you to know that the average size of new TV screen is growing by an inch per year as more of us try and replicate the cinema feel in our own homes.
HD is playing a major part in driving TV technology sales. There are now around 10.8m households have HD ready TV sets (42 per cent) in the UK, but its important to remember that not although sets can be HD ready, households need to subscribe before they can receive it. At present only 1m of those households are actually connected a HD broadcast platform.
There are currently 32 specialist HD channels available through Sky and Virgin. In addition, the TV industry is preparing for the launch of high definition (HD) channels on Freeview in late 2009. There will be 4 new free-to-air channels launched on the Freeview platform. Three of those Freeview slots have already been reserved. One is for ITV - together with UTV, stv and Channel TV - while the other has gone to Channel 4/S4C. The BBC will also be broadcasting its HD service on Freeview. Ofcom is currently examining two applications - from Five and Channel4/S4C - to run a fourth HD service on Freeview. They will then be available on a region by region basis as the country switches over to digital TV, starting with Granada.
But the great thing is that HD significantly enhances the viewing experience. Ofcom recently found that HD programming accounts for a third of viewing in HD households and 43 per cent of people surveyed reported an increase in their viewing since acquiring HD.

Catch up

In the past this timeless need state would have been catered for by VHS recorders. And of course, we've had the archive channels for a number of years now. Now there are new ways of catching up.
There are the + 1 channels: so if you've just missed the start you can just watch it an hour later. To give you an example of this Ch4+1 contributes around 6.7 per cent of total C4 share and the +1 channel alone reaches more people monthly than cinema.
Many of us now have Digital television recorders (DTRs) like Sky+, which revolutionize people's lives. We've gathered together a great deal of research on how people use this great piece of kit an you can read all about that here. This is the most widely used catch up device.
Then you have the free web with online services from itv.com, 4OD and Demand Five
And finally Sky Anytime which is available on the latest generation of Sky Plus boxes. Where Sky put the content that they think people would wish not to have missed.
The slide below gives you a very good idea of how the latest catch-up technologies are helping to grow the overall audience for a popular show.


It compares the total audience of episode two of Shameless series one in 2004 with the same episode in series five 2008. The total audience has grown from 4.3 million to 5 million. But the audience for the first transmission on Channel 4 is almost identical. The growth is coming from the first transmission on E4 (purple), recorded viewing (yellow) and then lots of other smaller increments like the first transmissions on the two +1 channels and at the top of the pillar the emergence of some on demand viewing – mainly TV but a little sliver of PC too.
This also illustrates the relative proportion of viewing coming from the broadcast stream relative to on-demand which is growing from a low base but still very small.

Treat

The third telly need, is the need to treat yourself which was traditionally served by renting DVDs or buying them
Then more recently we've been able to:

• Pay a subscription charge for premium content; e.g. Sky Sports and Sky Movies
• Or use "Near on demand" services such as Sky Box Office, where you pay a one off charge and the start times are staggered at frequent intervals so that you're usually only 15 minutes away from the start.
• DTRs can also be used to treat ourselves with the TV we love, but increasingly, we are also downloading treat content.
• Then you have the option of IPTV via various subscription services such as BT vision, Virgin or Tiscali. So it comes to your TV set.
• Finally, downloads from Demand Five or 4OD which usually comes to your computer.

The broadcasters are experimenting with different payment models, to find out what works best and what is the right balance between paid for content and/or advertising.

Depth and interaction

The desire has always been there to find out more about the stuff you love but there never used to be much of an outlet for it. In the early days it was satisfied by:

• Conversations. Chatting about stuff. People have always done this and I suppose you could say that TV is ultimate viral medium.
• TV fan clubs
• And people have been licensing successful TV content for as long as anyone can remember.
• With the rise of the internet then you had the option of online forums and communities
• With red button interactivity you then had the option of pressing it if you want more right now.
• Then YouTube of course and the rise of ubiquitous "user generated content". A huge percentage of the content on YouTube is people taking the telly content they love and having fun with it.
• The most recent TV interaction phenomenon is people making special content for new platforms such as mobile. So, if you really can't get enough of Emmerdale you can get a little mobisode sent to your mobile. Extended content, if you like.

Mobility

The one thing you had problems with traditionally was with the desire to watch TV outside of your living room. There simply wasn't a way to do this. Now of course that's very different. You have all sorts of emerging options.

• You don't have to have mobile technology to watch TV content on the move.
• You can download it to ipod and take it with you.
• Or you can subscribe to a mobile TV service.
• Or you can use a technology like Apple TV. Apple TV takes stuff that comes into your PC (like Web TV) and transfers it to TV screen.
• Then the amazing Slingbox does exactly the opposite. That takes stuff that comes into your own TV and transfers it to a laptop wherever you want to watch it (not quite anywhere in the world) but the idea is you can watch your favourite soaps while you're away on holiday.

Viewing context

With the same or similar content being seen on a variety of screens, we're going to have to understand the context a great deal more. Watching the X-Factor at home on a gorgeous widescreen HD telly with surround-sound, on the sofa with your family around you, is a very different experience from watching it on a mobile phone on the top of a bus. Not better or worse, necessarily but just different. These different viewing contexts will allow TV to address new tasks – a point of sale message maybe for mobile TV or a B2B message for TV viewed online during the office lunch-break, And these incremental TV occasions, serving new communications objectives should generate new money.

Internet TV

There's plenty of jargon to hand and lots to take in if you're trying to get a grip on TV being distributed over the internet. Here's a slide that attempts to give a birds-eye view.



IPTV used to be the catch-all phrase for any TV that was brought to you via internet technology. However, the most accurate catch-all phrase for this technology is Internet TV and internet TV is divided into two types.

1. Web TV which uses the most common internet operating system: i.e. the World Wide Web. This is sometimes called open source (because it's open to all)
2. IPTV or internet protocol TV which uses a range of proprietary internet operating systems. This is called closed source because access is restricted to closed communities of subscribers.

IPTV can either come to your TV screen like Virgin, tiscali and BT vision or can come direct to your PC like Joost. With the IPTV services you can access the open source technology of World Wide Web so if you have Virgin, tiscali or BT vision you can get 4OD onto you TV screen for example but not the other way around.
Web TV comes to your PC screen via the open source world wide web. You can then stream the content you want or download the content either as progressive downloads or "Click and watch" as it's known which you will all have experienced on Youtube for example. Or, as with the examples on the right hand side of the web TV chart there are those services which are pre-download: i.e. you download the content you want in full and then watch it. Kangaroo will initially sit on the web but will eventually be downloadable via IPTV services

TV + online media

We regard broadcast TV and online as hugely complementary in all sorts of ways and we are not alone in thinking this.

"You may not believe this but last week I stood in front of a major media agency and 50 or so of their clients and sold TV. I told them that TV and search are highly compatible and that money should be taken from below the line and pushed back into TV alongside (obviously) massive growth in search. This is a common theme of mine as we see huge spikes in query volume following TV exposure both editorial and ads."

Mark Howe, MD Google Media Sales

What Mark's acknowledging is the ability of TV to start a process, create the interest or desire that other media can then exploit. All media, not just TV and online, have an important role to play. However, we do believe that they will all perform better with TV as the lead medium, and that won't change in the future. The phrase 'lead medium' does not convey any sort of arrogance, but simply TV's role as a campaign foundation and catalyst. It's not that a brand can't live without TV – just why would you want to do this? And increasing numbers of online brands are discovering the magic of TV + online; e.g. Confused.com, Travelsupermarket.com. So in a bizarre way search and other online response media are giving TV some of the immediate 'countability' it lacked.
You can catch up with the Thinkbox/IAB joint research on this subject here.
Here's a brand example to demonstrate this fact.


Prior to the TV campaign being on air searches for Corsa were 20 per cent below the category average. During the TV they were 11 per cent above the category average. 30 per cent improvement delivered by TV.

Who is best placed to capitalize on convergence?

So, the internet is a brilliant new platform for TV but who is in the best position to capitalise on all this convergence?
Courtesy of Microsoft we have this chart which shows that in the US, out of nowhere ABC is now second only to YouTube in terms of the numbers of pieces of content it is providing.


And in terms of absolute time spent viewing AV content it far exceeds it, because what people are watching is high quality proper programming rather than home-made mash-ups. This gives us the confidence to say that it is likely that the most respected, established TV brands are the ones who will do very well here as they are the ones with the best content.
And on that subject, the internet is also giving us a great window into the effect that broadcast TV creates; the comments, the pastiches. There are two important things to remember. Firstly don't confuse cause and effect. When commenting on theCadbury Gorilla journalists only ever seem to write about the 12 million YouTube viewings and completely forget to mention the 520 million broadcast viewings that helped generate them. Secondly, the online activities are only the tip of the iceberg. Conversations about TV ads happen in home, offices and pubs, not just online.

Summary

So that is what we mean by the liberation of TV. We believe that broadcast TV is being liberated by new technologies, that all media is becoming televisual with everyone from newspapers to beauty brands getting in on the act, but that big broadcast TV will continue to play just as central a role in lighting the blue touch paper for advertising campaigns.
All in all it's an extremely exciting time!

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