Television is changing. Personal Video Recorder technology combined with the Internet is letting people watch what they want when they want it. I believe ultimately this will lead to major positive changes in the content.
For most of its lifetime, the economics of the system worked like this.
There are a lot of issues in this system, there is no reliable way to determine actual audience size or demographic, but even without rock solid audience data, advertisers can still see the effects of their ads in the bottom line. Despite the advent of the remote control, VCR, etc, television advertising still works and pays the bills.
And so everything went for the first 75 years or so. Over time, the number of channels has increased and the adjusted cost of production has decreased. Leading to more specialized content for smaller audiences; a trend called atomization in the cultural studies racket. The television business lost some of its glamour and star power, but the industry grew and generally flourished, building their house of cards on control of a broadcast channel.
Enter Internet
Through a combination of high compression lossy algorithms for video, fast computer networking and clever peer to peer technologies, TV has taken its first steps at going online in a major way. The last year has marked a major transition in how I watch TV and I don’t see how I can go back.
Rather then cope with the erratic airing schedules of the original broadcasters, now I subscribe to RSS feeds to be informed a new episode has been released and then use BitTorrent to download it. That way I can watch it at my leisure, no VCR programming or awareness of official scheduling required. Some kid somewhere has taken care of encoding it from the original broadcast and as further icing on the cake edited the ads out too.
But the ads pay the bills. If I never see them, I can’t be influenced by them, advertisers will stop buying them, and the show will die.
But downloading TV is great. It has decidedly increased the amount of programming I watch because I don’t give up on a program because I missed it a few times and I don’t get annoyed by repeats. On demand TV just provides a really nice experience for the viewer.
It provides some nice advantages for the broadcaster as well. Unlike regular broadcast TV, when you offer content digitally you can specifically track the number of downloads, plus you don’t have to worry about ‘counter-programming’ or any of the other scheduling headaches.
But you can’t get people to sit through those 8 minutes of ads you had been sticking in every 22 minutes of television, and that was providing the financial grease that was keeping the whole endeavor sliding along.
How is this going to be resolved? Two developments.
Interstitial advertising in TV
Remember when stations all added those little semi-transparent logos to their broadcasts? How much would some advertiser pay to have their logo there instead? Or a polar bear dancing with a pop star dressed like a certain cola? Instead of stopping the program to show ads, you show ads on top of the program all the time.
Okay, yes, this will be annoying. The game will be to make the interstitials interesting enough to get attention without driving viewers away in annoyance. I think it’s possible.
As well as ensuring the ads are now included in my downloaded version, which will also increase the value of official DVD releases of a program. You might have already horded all the episodes of your program from pirated broadcasts, but you could still get me to pay for clean overlay free versions.
There is nothing to stop broadcasters doing this tomorrow. The second they decided pirated TV is a real issue, it’s on.
On Demand Pay-per-view/Subscription
Direct to the audience. This is tricky because you need to collect the money. But to my surprise, at least where I live the infrastructure is already in place. Right now, I can turn on my digital cable box and order up, on-demand, any of the last four episodes of recent HBO programs. I press buttons on my remote, the video is streamed from a server owned by the cable company someplace. I pay for the ability to do this by subscribing to the cable providers movie channel package.
Effectively, I’m already subscribing to TV shows; and the same box will allow me to buy an on-demand PPV movie too.
It’s strictly an administration issues stopping my cable company from offering the same on-demand service I currently get from RSS+Bittorrent+Punk Kids. A new episode of a program becomes available, I pay and watch it. Or I subscribe to the specific program and watch it all season.
Media Effects
How the money is made has a major influence on the content. Under the current model television programs are created for narrow demographics that spend a lot on something. This is why we see so may programs designed to sell ad time to cosmetics companies, car companies, movie studios, and the food and beverage industries. Those are the industries buying ads because that’s where people spend their discretionary income.
Not to mention, the creators of the programming today have to make their work compatible with being stopped every 10 minutes or so to show 2 minutes of unrelated 30 second propaganda films. Cliff hangers leading into commercial breaks are not the natural state of writing; they’re just the reality if you want to get people to come back in 2 minutes.
Getting the 30 second spot out of the picture removes several massive constraints of traditional television programming.
A direct connection to the audience means your target demographic is the people who enjoy your program rather then people who spend a lot on mascara.
It’s going to be rocky, but I really believe the quality of television is going to go way up in the next 5 years.