Tag: television

Television’s argument for relevance

The TV industry warns the fight for advertisers’ dollars is far from over

One of the notable things about the media’s collapsing business model is how television has suffered nowhere near the same downturn in advertising revenues as the other channels.

This has been baffling for many of us pundits so a series of interviews I’m doing with media executives on digital disruption was a good opportunity to discuss why television is holding the line where print has dismally failed.

While the executive has to remain anonymous at the moment, the series is for a private client, their view on why television has so far avoided the advertising abyss is simple – accountability.

We have something, as do my friends at other media companies, that YouTube and Facebook don’t have which is we create quality content. What will differentiate us is we have premium, locally produced content that is one hundred percent brand safe and one hundred percent viewable and, most importantly, is independently measured by third parties.

My view is that advertisers in that environment is a much more powerful experience than advertising in Facebook or YouTube

While many of us may laugh at Australian commercial TV being described as ‘quality’, it does appeal to audiences far bigger than the typical YouTube channel or Facebook Live stream.

The advertising industry’s established systems also, unsurprisingly, work for the television industry in giving the sector accountability that the online services lack in a world where ‘click fraud’ – software tricks to report false web impressions – is rampant.

Even more importantly for the new media giants is the ‘brand safe’ message being pushed by the incumbents. The advertising crisis for Google is real and the established players intend to exploit it.

While the TV executive is pushing their own product, it’s clear the fight for advertising and marketing dollars is far from over.

On the cusp of great change

Just as the late 1950s saw a shift in the western world’s society and economy, we’re now seeing a similar change.

Thought of the day. We’re in at point of change in social and consumer behaviour similar to that of the late 1950s.

Sixty years ago the drivers were; the first baby boomers entering their teenage years, the rise of television, an era of accessible and cheap energy, along with rising incomes from the post World War II reconstruction.

Today the drivers are; the baby boomers entering retirement, the rise of the internet, an era of abundant and easily accessible data, the rise of the internet along with stagnant living standards following the late 20th Century credit orgy.

Your thoughts on where this goes?

Social media and the changing media landscape

A Reuters report looks at the changing media landscape and how the older news industries’ decline has some way to go yet.

“We seek news on Twitter but bump into it on Facebook” points out the Reuters’ 2015 Digital News Report in its analysis of global media consumption.

The broad trends from surveying over 20,000 online news consumers in the US, UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Finland, Brazil, Japan and Australia are clear – social media is becoming the main way people are finding their news while television is slowly declining.

Probably most concerning for the television networks how younger viewers have turned away from TV with only a quarter of those aged between 18 and 25 tuning in as opposed to two thirds of those aged over 65.

Given the aging of television network audiences it’s not surprising that last week Australia’s Network Ten, part owned by Lachlan Murdoch, found a lifeline from the country’s main cable network as the broadcaster is finding revenues declining.

The question is how long advertisers are going to stick with television as audiences increasingly move online creating a revenue gap estimated by analyst Mary Meeker to be worth around thirty billion dollars a year.

For the moment, the great hope for the online world is Facebook with Reuters finding the service is dominating users’ time. In that light it’s not surprising the company has such a huge market valuation.

The competing social media services are still facing challenges, particularly with Twitter showing a far lower level of penetration with the general public, leading Harvard professor Bill George to speculate the company risked becoming the new BlackBerry.

While the online services struggle for supremacy and television slowly declines, the real pain continues to felt by the newspapers who continue to find their relevance erode and few of their readers prepared to pay for their content.

The Reuters report confirms the trends we already know while giving insights into the unique peculiarities of each market.

Netflix and the global entertainment network

Netflix’s move into China is part of a global shift in broadcast televison

Streaming video service Netflix is looking to launch in China reports Bloomberg Business.

The Chinese joint venture to be run with Wasu, a company backed by Alibaba founder Jack Ma, looks to increase Netflix’s global footprint.

Netflix plans “to be nearly global by the end of 2016,” the article quotes a company spokesperson answering questions about a possible China partnership.

The Netflix model is a major departure from the established broadcast television and movie business where studios and producers would enter distribution agreements with local TV stations and theatre chains.

With Netflix and the streaming model, the licensing of rights to local outlets becomes largely irrelevant with the producers – which increasingly includes Netflix itself – able to cut out the local licensees.

A similar thing is happening in sports, one of the mainstays of broadcast television, where the professional leagues are taking control of their own content and leaving the networks, at best, minor players.

Neflix’s move is part of a shift that’s affecting many industries, including those like broadcast television that thought they were untouchable.

Software eats the sports cameraman

Are sports TV camera operators the next occupation to be eliminated?

Since the beginning of industry technology has changed occupations in unexpected ways the demise of the sports TV cameraman is a good modern example of a highly skilled, specialised trade that may soon be redundant.

Years ago television studios largely replaced cameramen with remote controlled cameras but sports grounds needed skilled operators with excellent attention spans to video action at sports grounds.

At a lunch today in Sydney Michael Tomkins, Chief Technology Office of Fox Sports Australia, explained how a combination of high definition cameras and advanced software is changing the way sports are broadcast and recorded.

“Last year we put two 4k cameras in to cover the length of the ground,” Tomkins said. “Two 4k cameras can see the length of the whole ground so I get rid of four cameramen and replace them with one joystick bunny.”

“He moves a box around the screen and those become a virtual camera. The resolution of a 4k camera is four times that of our HD broadcasts. It’s quite cost effective and I don’t have to roll a crew out.”

A demonstration of how the technology works is in a YouTube clip of an Australian Rules football match from last year. While the ‘joystick bunny’ and the software is somewhat clumsy in the segment, the clip shows the power of the technology.

With abolishing most of the camera, the opportunity to rationalise the production suite also becomes possible; at present most sports events have a producer instructing a group of assistants to cut between cameras, prepare replays and all the other effects expected by viewers. With a software based system most of that labor and its skills become redundant.

Over time as higher resolution cameras become available this application is going to become common, in fact most junior and amateur sports will be able to afford static hi-res cameras for their ground that allows them to record their games.

While the demise of the sports cameraman and producers is a shame in the same way loom weavers and hansom cab drivers disappeared, it is a reflection of  changing technologies creating then destroying occupations.

TV camera image through wikipedia

The tension between creative and business

One of the ongoing tensions in the new media landscape is that between the demands of advertisers and content creators.

This isn’t a new thing as a 1959 interview between Mike Wallace and TV pioneer Rod Stering shows.

Sterling describes how pressures from networks and advertisers created often weird compromises along with a fair degree of self censorship among TV writers and producers.

Little that Sterling describes would surprise today’s online journalists, bloggers and social media influencers who find themselves subject to identical pressures today.

TVs unchanging face

Apple’s CEO considers how long the TV industry can go without disruption

In the wake of Apple’s big announcements this week, CEO Tim Cook has an interview with US talk show host Charlie Rose about the company and its strategy.

One of the notable views in the clips that have been released so far is how Cook sees television being stuck in the 1970s.

Apple has been trying to reinvent TV for nearly a decade and, despite consumers watching more content on their computers, the television industry’s revenues continue to stand up.

Cook’s almost certainly right that television is moribund, but it’s a medium that for the moment seems resistant to disruption.

How long television can stave off change might be one of the defining questions of the entertainment industry.

 

Television in an age of context and the mobile internet

Ericsson’s head of broadcast, Thosten Sauer, sees context as key to using mobile video as telcos struggle with exploding internet traffic

One of the great changes to the telecommunications industry is the rise of video. As part of the Decoding the New Economy video series we had an opportunity to grab a quick chat with Torsten Sauer, Ericsson’s Vice President of Broadcast services.

Video is the great challenge for telecommunications company, broadcasters and consumers with Cisco Systems predicting by 2018 over 50% of internet traffic will be videos.

As designer Gadi Amit told this website a few weeks ago, the problem is compounded as the broadcast world evolves from a three or four screen environment to an almost infinite range of screen sizes and devices.

With most of that traffic being over mobile devices, Sweden’s Ericsson has been adapting to the the industry’s change to mobile video with a series of acquisitions in the broadcast production space. Sauer explained some of the motivations and strategies behind Ericsson’s moves in the industry.

Red Bee Media

Ericsson’s acquisition of British content house Red Bee Media earlier this year is one of the areas where the company is looking at growing its services.

“Consumer behaviour is changing and that represents a huge transformation for the industry,” Sauer says. “We want to be a catalyst for that transformation through providing the right services.”

Along with more traditional fields like basic production services, Sauer sees the company’s opportunity in building the metadata into videos making them more accessible over the very crowded internet.

A multitude of screens

The other key opportunity Sauer sees is that by creating richer content, it becomes easier for creators, broadcasters and advertisers to serve appropriate content to viewers depending upon both their interests and the devices they are using.

“It’s a great opportunity for broadcasters to address new opportunities and revenue streams on different devices and in different locations.”

Sauer’s view ties in with Gadi Amit’s in that the proliferation of ways to watch videos is going to create great opportunities for broadcasters to find different ways to show their work.

The innovation race

With the proliferation of channels, the field isn’t just left to the incumbents with Suaer seeing the entry of new broadcasters as one of the great opportunities.

“There will be a lot of opportunities for a lot of new players, that will create a healthy innovation base. It’s a very exciting time to be in this industry.”

With video marketing exploding, Sauer sees it’s important for non-broadcast businesses to experiment with video; “It’s now the time, business models are not all set and technology models are not all set.”

Just as businesses have to deal with a more mobile marketplace and workforce, we’re also seeing video becoming more important. It’s a great opportunity for businesses to develop new channels.

 

57 million websites and nothing on

TV stations can get away with showing irrelevant, empty rubbish. Websites can’t.

Twenty years ago, Bruce Springsteen sang about TV having 57 channels and nothing on.

While little has changed on TV, today the web has 57 million websites* offering little beyond click bait and a quick rewrite of someone else’s work.

At the moment that model works for the kings and queens of the digital manor who pocket a few pennies for each of the ten stories their overworked interns pump out in a day but it’s hard to see how that form of publishing adds value to the audience.

The 1990s television stations and cable networks got away with no adding value – and still do today – because they are in industries that are tough for new entrants to enter.

But on the web there are far fewer barriers to new entrants which means offering 57 channels with nothing on, or 57 million websites with no real content, isn’t a long term path to success.

*a wild guess

Heroes of Capitalism

When did it become acceptable for airlines to humiliate passengers and customers on national television?

The few times I watch television these days is either when the footy’s on or the rare occasions that I surface from my interweb connected man cave and stumble into a room where someone has a TV running.

And so it was tonight when I happened to wander out to witness a terrible airport “reality” show – this one being an unoriginal, third rate Australian effort where Tiger Airlines shows how it stuffs around and humiliates its passengers. In Australia, Channel Seven considers this to be prime-time TV “entertainment”.

What was striking about the show was how Tiger Airlines’ check in staff humiliated a pensioner and her young son who hadn’t printed out their boarding passes.

The “fee” for not carrying out a basic task which reasonable people would expect would be part of an airline’s service is $25 a head at Tiger Airlines – one could ask what the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s position is on excessive fees being used to pad airlines’, or banks’, profits but that would be asking too much of Canberra’s worlds best practice doughnut munchers.

As result the poor lady was expected to front up with another $50 – money she didn’t have. So Tiger Airlines’ check in staff wouldn’t let her board and Channel Seven’s camera crew gleefully filmed her desperate tears and shocked son.

Eventually a bystander took pity on her and gave her $60. At least someone in the terminal had some decency and compassion, qualities neither the Tiger Airlines staff or Channel Seven camera crew have in the tiniest way.

No doubt somewhere in an anonymous glass tower some arsehole has a job as a manager at Tiger Airlines and has a KPI that includes how many poor mothers they can reduce to tears.

When the arsehole Tiger Airlines manager gets its annual bonus for making the required number of victims passengers weep, it no doubt goes to lunch with the Channel Seven executives – another bunch of arseholes – to slap each others’ backs and tell themselves what great heroes of capitalism they are.

The question that bugs me is when did it become acceptable to humiliate your customers? No doubt Tiger Airlines think it’s good publicity and Channel Seven think it is good entertainment.

We live in interesting times when our business leaders think it isn’t good enough just to take customers’ money but that it’s also necessary to humiliate them as the managements of both Channel Seven and Tiger Airlines seem to be rewarded for doing.

Fortunately in these corporatist days we still can vote with our wallets and turn off the muck we find offensive – that’s why decent people shouldn’t choose to fly Tiger Airlines or watch Channel Seven.

Television rights and clouds

The challenge technology brings to information hoarders.

The Australian Federal Court today handed down their appeal decision in the latest twist in the Optus TV Now copyright case where the National Rugby League claimed the telco’s online recording service breaches the sporting body’s copyright.

Reversing their colleagues earlier decision, the judges found the TV Now service does breach the League’s copyright.

The Court’s reasoning is because the service plays a part in creating a recording the copies cannot be considered an individual’s personal copy to be watched at a later time – therefore they aren’t protected under the personal use provisions of the Copyright Act.

It’s going to be interesting to see where the line is drawn that a computer program or cloud service is infringing copyright.

Could be that copying a video of a football game to Dropbox, Google Drive or Evernote is a copyright breach by those services?

Perhaps online back up services like Carbonite or iCloud could infringe copyright as they automate the copying process?

Even if Optus doesn’t appeal the case to the Australian High Court, the decision will almost eventually tested there by someone else.

Many of the spokespeople – along with and their apologists in the sports and business media – have argued this is about the law falling behind technology.

The court covered this in paragraphs 18 to 25 of the judgement linked above and the judges are quite clear the law was written to be technology neutral.

Calls now to “reform” copyright law in light of the TV Now and AFACT – iiNet cases to “bring the law up to technology” are disingenuous.

While there’s no doubt legislation could be tweaked, there’s the real threat any “reforms” driven by the pleading of the copyright industries and their tame journalist friends will result in more restrictions and damage the take up of modern technologies.

One can’t blame the rights holders for trying to maximise their income, they have to feed the remorseless hungry beast that is modern professional sport – although one wishes they didn’t keep bleating “think of the children” to justify their actions.

We’ve previously seen how sports organisations have felt threatened by every new technology and the profits these new tools have delivered them.

The latest wave of change is no different, although the glory days of sports rights may be another symptom of a changing economy and 1980s thinking.

Hopefully the sports organisations and rights holders won’t be allowed to kill the potential of the these technologies before new business models are allowed to evolve.