On-demand Media

A tip-off

A quick tip-off: if you are interested in what is happening around on-demand TV in the UK, this link will take you to a treasure trove of fresh facts, numbers and insights – straight from the various horses' mouths. It's rare for such detailed and comprehensive stuff to be made public. Get it while you can.

Future of TV: evolution or revolution?

Over the past week I have attended two conferences at which Patrick Barwise, professor emeritus at my school and a bit of a legend in UK media marketing, has been presenting some recent findings about on-demand TV viewing. Key among these are that:

• Even in households that have PVRs and access to video-on-demand, some 70% of the time is spent viewing live TV, and this figure appears to be stable.
• The main reason for viewing on-demand TV is having missed a program on live TV. The practice of going to an on-demand platform without a specific programme in mind is relatively rare.

From this and much else, Barwise concludes (if I understand him correctly) something like this:

Talk of a revolution in television is wildly exaggerated. Television addresses certain key consumer needs that on-demand viewing cannot meet, and the incremental benefits that on-demand can offer over this are small. Therefore, good old linear television is here to stay; the coming change is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Given this, the emphasis on broadband infrastructure in the Government's Digital Britain report is misplaced. Public funds should be directed at content, not pipes.

According to Barwise and others, some of the key consumer needs that TV addresses are:

• The need not to think about something one should be doing – i.e. procrastination (for radio, the need is to be distracted away from something one is doing).
• The need to find a compromise between what different family members want to watch – i.e. a social need. On-demand is mainly about what I want to watch, but that is irrelevant in the living room.

The thinking, if I understand it, is that

• Good old linear TV, plus time-shifted TV via DVRs, go a long way towards addressing these needs; and
• The choosing and navigating involved in on-demand TV may be counterproductive to addressing these needs

All of these observations ring true. But I don't see how the conclusion follows.

Until now, on-demand viewing on the TV set has been constrained by what cable operators care to offer, which is mainly catch-up TV and movies. And web video happens on the PC and is mainly short-form, neither of which works for a passive and shared experience.

But nothing says that internet-delivered TV can't overcome these obstacles. It is perfectly possible to think of a future in which you turn on the TV and, without needing to choose anything, you receive a continuous stream that is tailored to your family. You can interrupt this programming if you want to make a choice, or you can just let it play.

There's no reason to think that something like this won't be developed (with the necessary content rights) for the TV set. This is exactly what last.fm does today, except that as yet it is generally constrained to the PC. It is also what TiVo does, but restricted to off-air content.

If this has not yet been fully developed even for music, it is not surprising that for TV it may be several years away. So, granted, internet TV is a speculative proposition. But to write it off in the context of long-term public policy (e.g. the Digital Britain report) feels wrong.

I agree with Barwise's attack on the notion that any technology that gives people the content they want is bound to succeed. "What people want" is not a given, but is influenced (if not determined) by marketers and programmers. I don't think that will ever change. However, marketers and programmers are themselves slowly moving to on-demand platforms. With enough eyeballs, "what people want" will be determined within these platforms.

If that happens, everything changes. New content formats become possible, freed from the constraints of linear TV. New players may rise to the fore. Thousands of new voices may appear on TV. The long tail may become fat. It is by no means a given, but if this happens it is not evolution, it is revolution.

 

Content as packaged consumer goods

At the (excellent) Media Futures conference yesterday, I heard John Giles comment that until now media firms have been stuck with a view of their products (content) as "packaged consumer goods". As an example, he mentioned the case of games publishers moving to an online, hosted model so that games are now becoming "places that people go to", like websites, rather than things they can download and own (or steal).

This resonates with an earlier post of mine on newspapers and rings true on so many levels. In the internet era, consumer-facing media firms should not see themselves as purveyors of content but as service providers. Content is only a prop, a tool that plays a crucial but incomplete role in delivering the services that people need. Companies that succeed will be those that can deliver better services. The key is to understand what services people need.

The service the iPod offers is not to store your entire music collection in a portable way. What it offers is to let you play any song from your collection with minimal fuss, wherever you have your iPod with you. And with iTunes, it also lets you play any song you want at all (after paying £0.79).

Today I found myself reading Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Solution. Christensen sees products as things that consumers 'hire' to do specific 'jobs' (i.e. services), and he argues that successful disruptive products are those offer to do 'jobs' that are not being done well enough by existing competitors. To understand what these jobs are, says Christensen, you need to look at the broader practical context in which the job is relevant.

Consider again the iPod. It excels at the job of letting you play whatever song you want. But that's not the only music-related job you may want. Sometimes, what you really want is to entertain your guests with music of a certain style, or to have background music while you work that is to your liking but not always the same.

The iPod is rubbish at these services. Having to think about what song to play next is the last thing you want when you are in the middle of a conversation or writing something. To get a background music experience, you need to compile a playlist on your computer, sync your iPod, plug it to your stereo, and only then you are good to go. And even then, once you've listened to the same playlist a few times it becomes boring. It's no wonder that old-fashioned radio has proven so resilient. Last.fm does a better job in a sense, but because (for most people) it is PC-bound, most social contexts are ruled out.

This suggests that in the future piracy may be less of a problem than the media industry fears today. People consume content-related services, not content. They are interested in content only when nobody offers to do the job at hand for them and they are forced to do provide their own services (e.g. building a playlist). As innovative companies begin to address these needs, content will be less of a consumer product. It will be the concern only of the companies that provide the final services, and these companies have to play by the rules and pay content owners.