Television Disrupted?

Nightly Business Report ran a series on the Future of Television in Febuary thsi year. The series was split into four parts:

• 
  
  The Digital Revolution


• 
  
  Producer-Consumer


• 
  
  Broadcaster Strategy


• 
  
  Cutting-Edge Technology

THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION: Scott Gurvey, the NBR correspondent observes how television viewing has moved from 'watching what the networks wanted us to watch' to a much more descriptive term- it's everywhere, online, on our phones, and the networks are jostling for space and losing more often than not. According to the Nielsen Company, average broadcast prime time viewership has fallen from 45 percent of households in 1985 to 28 percent in 2007, in the US. Next year, broadcasters face another challenge. On February 17, 2009, virtually all TV stations in the US are scheduled to turn off their analog transmitters. That will leave broadcast television a digital affair. Shelly Palmer, Author of "TELEVISION DISRUPTED" states that "the transition from analog to digital is going to devastate in a way that I don't think many people appreciate."

PRODUCER-CONSUMER: Anyone heard of the term midday snacking? It's used to refer to mini breaks or lunch time breaks that professionals take during the day, to watch videos online that are of interest to them. A hugely popular website riding high on this trends(or did they bring into fashion?) is http://www.politicallunch.com/ . ROBERT MILLIS, CO-CREATOR, POLITICALLUNCH.COM says, "we like to offer five minutes where people who are interested in politics, but maybe not obsessed the way that we are, can get caught up with the election news and go on with their day. They can have a sandwich during lunch, watch us and move on." To this Gurvey observes, a viewer who catches up at politicallunch or any of the web- casting sites may be less inclined to tune into the news and entertainment on broadcast TV. The availability of low-cost equipment for shooting and editing has made the television production process accessible. Anyone with a $50 web cam can make television and you don't need your own web-casting Internet site. Distributing television is now as simple as burning a DVD or posting the video to a free web-sharing site. Youtube is the best known.

Scott Kessler, Internet Media Analyst, S&P says, "Right now, a lot of the content that youtube has is user-generated content. And frankly, a lot of "Fortune" 500 type companies are not necessarily so comfortable with providing advertising and marketing messages that are going to be embedded or alongside what I would characterize as lower quality or including content that is more questionable type content." However that hasn't deterred some of the big players like Microsoft to dabble in television.

BROADCASTER STRATEGY: Alan Wurtzel of NBC Universal, says that an average consumer will consume video in many different ways. What remains to be seen is how that gets proportinoed.

Other broadcasters as well as cable channels which produce original programming, are experimenting with alternate distribution channels for their content. This has increased tensions between the content providers and distributors. And the content providers and the creators, the writers, actors directors and other creative talent who want a piece of the revenue no matter what distribution channels are used.

Al Lieberman, director of the entertainment, media and technology program at NYU, says broadcast executives he talks to are embattled. He says no one is going to give up their grounds. and walk away from these highly successful albeit declining shares in network television. Analysts say broadcasters will now sell TV-plus-web distribution as a package to advertisers.

CUTTING -EDGE TECHNOLOGY: Details on this will be discussed at lenght in other post.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/features/special/future-of-television_home/