Last weeks NMA carried two items that have given me pause. They are both related to TV and there was considerable heat under the collars of the commentators.
The front cover of the NMA (27 March) carried the headline “Broadcasters seek legal advice on video linking“. The main thrust of the story was that the BBC and ITV are seeking legal advice about whether sites such as tvguide.co.uk have the right to deep link to video content on their sites. Industry expert Nigel Walley suggests “they are picking big fights by competing with Sky, BT Vision and Kangaroo”.
Surely by now we are familiar with market changing entrants in this new media landscape. Didn’t Dell and Amazon take on existing, bigger players and win by doing something better? At the core of what each of these did was they focussed on the customer experience that was missing from the other channels to market. Dell sold direct - dissintermediation - but also a better experience for the consumer. Amazon created a better experience all round and continue to innovate around the customer experience. This is exactly what TVguide is doing although they have a problem - content, and this may mean they fail. I hope not, as the consumer will be the loser.
TVGuide is providing a single place where a user can access all TV channel listings, and also the facilities provided by the content providers - a single EPG. If you click in a BBC programme you are linked through to BBC iplayer to watch it and the same is true for ITV. Their dream is that everyone will one day watch TV online and they are making a play for this market. Their problem of course is that this isn’t going to happen for some time and while they wait they face the challenge that the majority of video content providers also own their own distribution channels which makes them reluctant to let an alternative distribute their content for them. Worse still, is that all, except the BBC rely on ad revenue and this is an area of significant focus. Even worse, is that the BBC’s project Kangaroo is trying to bring together the various providers into a single VOD (Video ON Demand) service. This once again confuses content and distribution.
If BBC and ITV thought of themselves as content providers I suggest that they would have no issue with TVguide. For them as content providers the more channels and the easier they are to use the better. Ironically, the BBC do not provide a TV guide that goes beyond BBC programming. I use the BBC website a great deal, as do millions of other people but for the simple job of finding out what is on tonight, it can’t help me on its own. I can’t understand why they don’t support TVGuide - surely this would be a beneficial strategy? After all aren’t they just an affiliate?
The second story that caught my attention was from Nigel Walley’s column. I promise I don’t have it in for him it is pure coincidence. Nigel talks about the new breed of engineers and students once again falling in to the trap of thinking that just because something is interactive it will be interacted with. He explains how TV is “TV is a video medium. It’s a wonderful medium that plays into a neutral mood state. TV uses video to seduce, entrance, enrage and amuse the viewer without the need for the audience to lift any part of their body apart from their thumb.” I agree with what he says but I can’t help but feel he is talking about today and his view of the immediate future.
Mobile changed the way telephone calls were made and received for ever. They came around a few years ago relatively speaking and have market domination already. Before they arrived and even for a short time afterwards no one could predict how they would change peoples behaviour. I think digital TV is at that stage now. We all broadly have a view that TV will become video on demand but I don’t think enough attention is being paid to how people behaviours are going to change. 3
Video will be accessed in fundamentally different ways by the next generation of users. They may never sit down and put their feet up in front of the TV and may just see video as another information source or entertainment channel to fit in with their lives. People “born multi-channel” may watch the majority of their video on the move through a mobile device. It is in my view the user behaviour that will change as it becomes flexible and meets the needs of their busy lives. I is as Nigel says, “like Ground Hog Day” but the repetition is in willingness to see the future from what has happened in the past.
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