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The only thing that could kill TV? TV itself.

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It’s fun to write about the “death of TV” (or flip flop on it, whatever).  Why it’s so fun, I’m not sure, but I have a hunch it’s because…

  1. It’s a HUGE industry ($500+B/year if not more)
  2. It’s been utterly untouched by the Internet (so far – a thing that really rankles a lot of people, mostly tech bloggers)
  3. The newspaper and music industries both got trashed, so why not TV too?
  4. It’s controlled by a very small number of extremely powerful and wealthy companies
  5. The aforementioned companies have a perception of (a) greedy profiteering, (b) being dinosaurs, and (c) restricting people from doing whatever they want with content, which also tends to rankle said tech bloggers

Arguments for the death of TV are equally fun to read and fantasize about.  They tend to fall into these categories:

  • “Those Kids Today”:
    Theory – Kids today like to watch the YouTubes and the Torrents!  Kids today don’t like to pay for content. Therefore when kids get older, they will continue to watch YouTube and not pay for content.
    Reality – To debunk comically: kids today like Play-Doh, Lego’s, Justin Bieber, and eating Mac & Cheese at every meal – none of which hold true when kids become grownups (well, maybe the mac & cheese bit).  To debunk more seriously: kids have loads and loads of time on their hands and very little money, so they can spend the time and energy hunting and pecking for free content – something most adults (30+, with kids) just don’t have.  Or, it’d be like assuming that because kids like Justin Bieber when they are teenagers they will like equally crappy music in their fifties.  Well, that might just happen I guess.
  • “Cord-Cutting/Shaving/Trimming/Slicing/Thinning/Balding/Receding”:
    Theory – everybody’s quitting cable! EVERYBODY!
    Reality – I’m not even going to bother finding the links, but bottom line is this – for every article that shows XX thousand customers quit Cable, if they don’t ALSO INCLUDE the part where XX thousand customers signed up for IPTV, FIOS, Telco’s, or Satellite, you need to utterly ignore the article.  After that, there’s not much evidence left.  This may change, but that’s just a theory, and one that’s yet to be really substantiated.
  • “The Great Unbundling/A La Carte/Go Direct to Consumers”:
    Theory – In the not-too-distant future, you’ll be able to set exactly the lineup you want, and not pay for channels you don’t watch.  Or you’ll watch *everything* a la carte, paying as you go.  Or channels like HBO will start selling direct to consumers.
    Reality – This is in utter conflict with how the TV industry actually works and makes money. And since they, you know, like making money, and since shows are, you know, expensive to make, they need to keep making the money.  So if channels were to unbundle, they’d instantly get so expensive people wouldn’t be paying for them.  Here’s some of my previous thoughts on this same topic.
  • “Newspapers/Music died!”:
    Theory – Because of the deaths of other industries, TV will die too, as it’s antiquated, etc.
    Reality – This is like arguing that because the coal and steel industries in the US shrank, so will the TV industry. Other than being ad-supported, TV and Newspapers are utterly dissimilar (and BTW, the way the ads work for both are exceptionally different).  Other than being, well, media, TV and Music are utterly dissimilar.  We might as well say the Internet will die soon because it’s just like newspapers.
  • “Startups! Technology!”:
    Theory – Some startup will come along and just utterly kill TV in every way.
    Reality – Yeah, no.

OK, Jeremy, Mr Big Talk Guy, so what could actually happen?  Here’s my theory on what could “kill” the TV industry as we know it – it’s “catch up TV”. For those unfamiliar with the term, “catch up TV” (also called “binge viewing” sometimes) is when you watch a show long after it aired, by days/weeks/months/even years.  Whether it’s via Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Video On Demand, or any other service, it’s the rapidly increasing trend on TV consumption.  And it’s the one thing the TV industry is massively enabling, and could massively come back to haunt them.

In a nutshell, the TV ecosystem is like a big food chain, with advertising dollars acting at the bottom of it all (yes, TV ads are the kelp of the TV world).  Should advertising falter in a notable way (which, by the way, it isn’t at present), it could bring down the whole system.  There are several exceptions to the system, such as HBO, but the numbers there ($1.2B) are literally paltry when compared to TV ads ($90B).  And catch-up TV represents a problem, as it’s not monetized the same way as live TV.  See the Live TV part is where almost all of the $90B of TV ad revenue comes from – hence why ratings declines cause shows to get cancelled, as they don’t generate the cash flow to sustain themselves.

So as we all get further and further accustomed to being able to watch shows whenever we want, we (collectively) are reinforcing the habit of “why bother watch live?”  For example, my friends all tell me to watch Homeland, but I don’t really have the time for a new show right now, so I’ve bookmarked it for later (ahem, NextGuide), and will just start watching it on Netflix.  Along with Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and lots of other shows I know are great, but just haven’t watched – yet.

What, then, happens to highly anticipated shows that launch, combined with audiences who increasingly choose to wait to view them?  They get cancelled (great thoughts on this by Andrew Wallenstein here).   Sure a startup like mine can benefit from this, and even become a fabled Billion Dollar Company (FTW!), but success beyond our wildest dreams will, in no way, replace the lost revenue the entire ecosystem would suffer.  And just as environmentalists are concerned about loss at the bottom of our food chain, if the TV ad system begins to crumble, then so do budgets for new shows, etc.  It ain’t pretty.

Now I’m not predicting the above will all happen – but at the current pace of things, it wouldn’t shock me to see much of it play out.  The TV industry is giving its content away way too cheaply to all the providers to sustain itself without the advertising, and they are effectively disincenting viewers from the live experience (not that it’s not cool to get a sticker or a badge or something, but let’s face it, people are smarter than that – hence the general “meh” of most of the social TV offerings – sorry guys, but #come #on), other than for appointment TV programming.  Further, it has a certain prisoner’s dilemma aspect to it all, as no single network can make the bold move to pull recent content from the variety of catch-up/streaming services – oftentimes their own apps! From the discussions I’ve had with TV execs, there’s a lot of awareness and a growing concern, but no solutions in sight yet.   But, at least it’s the enemy we know…

Redefining TV in a Mobile World

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I had the honor to present on a “disruptive” topic at the Grow2012 conference last month in Vancouver, and, big surprise, I opted to talk about TV.  I decided to take a bit of a departure from many of my typical presentations and focus on the myths and truths (or at least truthiness) about disruption in the TV industry, with a focus on how our mobile lifestyles are changing the way we think about television.  Here’s the video (and slides):

Slides:

Some TV is Created More Equal Than Others

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As one could imagine, I end up in a lot of conversations about second screen TV apps, companion apps, social TV, etc.  Virtually every discussion takes some long varied road to get to a point where all involved agree that the only rule in building next generation TV platforms and products is this: not all TV shows are alike, and experiences must be built with this rule in mind.

Let’s start with #SocialTV – broadly defined in current terms as “people tweeting, checking in, and liking TV shows on social media platforms.”  While I’m pretty jaded in my belief that this is resoundingly uninteresting as a topic, it’s important to think of it on a per-genre basis, and in fact, a per show basis.  One could state that “dramas” for example won’t garner much social TV activity – who really cares about checking in to shows like CSI or House?  Then along comes Game of Thrones, rule broken.  Then you could use Game of Thrones data to claim people don’t tweet while watching live TV.  And along comes sports and reality shows.

When it comes to planning and thinking about how users may/will behave regarding social TV and shows, I recommend thinking about it from two perspectives: (1) live interaction and (2) cultural impact.  The personal drivers for a lot of these activities have to do with the social perspective.  People are interested in “connecting” with others, which drives the interactions (tweeting about your team, someone getting voted off the island, etc).  People are also interested in being part of the cultural zeitgeist – Game of Thrones is “in” and “cool” to tweet about, whereas CSI and House are not.

Next up are companion apps – smartphone and/or iPad apps designed for use during a TV show.  As above, the potential value creation here is entirely about the content.  Do users really want to pull out their phones and read trivia while watching an intense or immersive show like Game of Thrones or The Good Wife?  Doubtful.  Am I going to look away from a visually-rich experience such as Planet Earth? Or how about Family Guy, where half the show is visual gags?  Seems unlikely.  But during any reality show, game show, talk show, or sports? I’d guess there’s a huge opportunity here.

Same moral as above, the right companion apps keep the content in mind.  First, we really don’t need (or want) a dedicated companion experience for every single show that airs – it’s just plain unnecessary.  But regardless of that, the experiences should think about the audience and how they want to interact.  Sports is all about real-time and stats.  Cooking shows, on the other hand, don’t need a real-time experience, but yet offering recipes, how-to, pictures, etc that can be bookmarked, archived, and viewed in the future is quite handy.  Complicated plot-driven shows can offer complementary experiences that supply background or other pertinent information to help audiences keep up with whatever’s going on.

Enhanced content offerings – featurettes, behind-the-scenes, and other options that plunge the user in a further immersive landscape blah blah blah. Now, speaking as the guy who watched all 3 Lord of the Rings movies, extended cut, with director’s commentary on, there’s no question a marketplace exists for extra content.  Blooper reels.  Making-of’s.  Interviews with Cast & Crew.  The key focus again is identifying the right content for the right show and deploying it in the right place.

Do I really need a dedicated app for my iPad just to get extra content for each show I like?  Do I need to subscribe to something?  I think, fundamentally, content creators and technologists need to really spend time crafting the right offering for each individual show.  For example, having the “webisodes” of The Office available openly via Facebook each week is a great solution to enhance that offering.  But if I needed an Office app, with a new Office username and password, would it be worth the investment beyond the “Like”?  Doubtful.

Overall, the time has come for TV technologists, creators, producers, etc to work together to avoid one-size-fits-all approaches to TV experiences.  Every show, every network, every device, and every platform should be regarded as a unique opportunity to engage an audience and tell a story.  Except, of course, for reality shows about celebutantes, which should just go away. Please folks, just do the right thing here.  We can find a cure, we can make it happen.  We can do it!

The Only Two Ways People Watch TV

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Over the past 30 years we’ve evolved the television experience from something where everybody watched the same shows on the same channels on the same devices in the same rooms at the same time to a world where that’s almost never the case.  Today, with the exception of appointment TV, it’s such a fragmented landscape that it’s almost a challenge to find other people watching the same stuff you do.  But with all the variance in content, services, devices, location, price, etc, there’s still really only two ways people choose to watch TV.  This is a subtle, but extremely important concept to anyone in the business of changing television.

Deliberate viewing: you go to the TV with a specific piece of content in mind.  This includes live TV (“let’s watch Idol at 8pm tonight”), your DVR (“I need to watch last night’s 30 Rock”), and any VOD/OTT platform such as Comcast OnDemand, Netflix, Hulu, etc (“I’m going to watch the first season of Breaking Bad”).  We could also include a deliberate type of content in this category (“I’m going to watch a comedy” – not necessarily something you’d say out loud, but if you are in the mood for something funny, that’s a pretty deliberate concept).  I also refer to deliberate viewing as “search mode” for TV, since you will specifically search for the piece of content you want, whether by changing the channel, navigating your OnDemand menu, or going to your DVR library.

Random viewing: you go to the TV with no idea what you want to watch.  This includes simple channel surfing (“nope, next!”) as well as direct channel changing (“I wonder if anything good is on TNT now.  Maybe Shawshank or Blues Brothers??”).  It also includes browsing the OnDemand options (“I wonder if there’s anything new on Netflix?”) and even your DVR (“Maybe we recorded something we haven’t watched yet?”).  I also refer to random viewing as “browse mode” for TV, since you are just perusing lists of stuff until you find something you are content to watch.  Note the last phrasing here, as random viewing is less about the “excitement” factor of watching something deliberately, and more about the “good enough to pass the time” factor, with the potential for excitement.

Now for the cold, hard fact: any “future TV” service or product which doesn’t account for both types of TV viewing, will fail. This includes OTT services, smart TV apps, second screen apps, third screen apps, eighth screen apps, widgets, websites, gadgets, platforms, and everything else under the hood.  Again, if you cannot service both primary needs of a viewing audience, your system is a goner – unless, that is, you are specifically aiming to replace an existing component of those services (in other words – if your live TV service is designed to replace another live TV service, that’s viable, since the consumer’s ecosystem will still include whatever else it had before).

How do I back this up without cold, hard facts?  Because people don’t really change much, and TV, specifically, is not merely “another” activity up there with Angry Birds, Facebook, Pinterest, reading books, etc.  Watching TV is a very specific type of activity, one about entertainment and more importantly, escape.  Life is hard, TV lets you escape for a period of your day – why on earth would Americans spend 4-8 HOURS per day in front of it otherwise?

So if people don’t change, and people need escape (especially as they age – I’m not talking about 13 year olds here, for the most part), they need some version of deliberate and random lean back TV watching.  Could this include YouTube videos? Sure. How about an all-on demand lineup?  Doubtful.  How about a “TV is just an app” concept? Doubtful. It’s why most cord-cutting theories aren’t holding water.  It’s why #SocialTV is still mostly just a fad. It’s why most “second screen” apps are just barely gaining traction. It’s why Google TV is such a mess right now.  It’s why Apple TV is still a hobby.  Sure, these things work absolutely great for some, but absolutely don’t for most.

The future of TV involves a lot of change.  And the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Long live TV.

Can Social TV Survive Without Appointment TV?

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This is the image you get if you do a google image search for "world record".

So the Grammy’s unsurprisingly (I will explain why I say it that way in a moment) set all sorts of records for social TV.  Just like the Superbowl did a few weeks ago.  Just like the ___ did a few weeks before that. I call this a big yawner, but first, some definitions:

  • Appointment TV: a TV show where the majority of the audience is watching live.  The 5 primary examples are Reality Shows (American Idol, Amazing Race, etc), News (CNN, uh… CNN Headline News?  I don’t know, televised news is just propaganda in my opinion anyway – but I digress), Sports (mostly hockey, particularly the Canadiens), Events (Oscars, Royal Weddings, etc), and “big episodes” of scripted television (Lost Series Finale, Game Of Thrones Season 2 Premiere, etc).
  • Catch-up TV: everything that doesn’t fit into Appointment TV above.  Literally.  Every “typical” episode of every “typical” show is in the catch-up category, which means there is no particular driver for someone to watch it anywhere near to real-time.  This is why I’m still on Weeds season 5, Entourage season 6, etc, and will catch up on things like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and others whenever I find the desire.
  • Social TV: let’s do this SAT-style.  Social TV : TV :: Social Media : Web.  In other words, it’s a nebulous mess of “stuff you use things like Facebook and Twitter to do while watching TV”.  It includes hashtags, check-ins, second screen, likes, and is a big jumbly undefined thing.  And I have no problem with that.

So why do I say things like “unsurprisingly” and “yawner”?  Because this is a burgeoning activity.  We are at the very earliest stage of people using second screens whilst (yup, whilst) watching TV.  I myself tweeted a couple of times during the Superbowl (really during the ads):

This is an infinite increase over last year’s SuperBowl.  I didn’t watch the Grammy’s, but had I, I likely would’ve tweeted.  And this isn’t just about me, it’s a pretty universal trend.  Why?  Because Twitter, the platform we are using to measure Social TV as a concept, is still growing.  So anything measuring a growing service with growing use and calling the outcome “record-setting” is really just fulfilling an exercise in redundancy.  Every new instance of appointment TV tweeting will outpace all previous instances, until Twitter stops growing.

But really, that’s all just a sidepoint.  My issue, concern, and question, is whether or not there’s any value whatsoever in any of this for catch-up TV.  Do I care about tweets someone sent during an episode of House from last year?  Or last week?  Or even 10 minutes ago?  I don’t, and I don’t understand why someone else would either.  Nor do I care about what someone is watching right now unless I too can (and should) watch the same thing, at the same time.  Heck, I hate seeing the promos to text in my vote (to Top Chef, my guilty pleasure show) when I’m seeing an episode 4 months after it aired.

I don’t see a solution to this conundrum.  To be clear, I’m not questioning will social media impact TV behaviors – that will certainly happen. Further, as evidence is mounting that catch-up TV is growing steadily and will inevitably outpace real-time/appointment TV, I see the window somewhat shrinking for what’s currently called “Social TV.”  But that shouldn’t really surprise anyone, as it’s such an early stage in the evolution of TV.  And if you think about it in evolutionary terms, TV is just learning about making fire now, and the wheel is probably a few years away…

Data Confirms: Apps + TV = :(

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Research firm Xyologic released a bunch of statistics about Google TV today.  And those statistics point squarely at the amazing lack of app installs on the platform.  Granted, these aren’t official numbers from Google or anything, but they seem quite believable (except for the whole Napster as #1 app thing, which is just bizarre, but then again, so are apps on your TV).  Here’s the top 10 chart:

Source: RWW

So, people don’t want to download apps on their TVs eh?  I guess I’m going to go with the whole “I told you so” as my commentary (and I wrote that piece well over a year ago).

TV isn’t about apps.  It isn’t about technology.  It isn’t about “interacting.”  And most tech startups seem to want to make it a lot more about apps, technology and interaction.  Which is probably the leading indicator of why most TV-related ventures crash and burn – unfortunately too many of the folks involved are far removed from the typical TV audience.

I’d go so far as to say “TV isn’t about entertainment” when push comes to shove.  I think the best word to use to think about TV is “escape.”

There’s a reason channel surfing still beats out DVR usage, and why cord cutting is still not really a mainstream behavior.  Using your DVR or browsing content lineups is not about “escape”.  It’s about “work”.

The more the industry tries to get people to “work” for simple, enjoyable TV viewing, the more the industry will be littered with failures.  The same is true in the Smart TV space, the Social TV space, the Connected TV space, etc etc etc.  Keep in mind, as it is so very relevant, the concept of the paradox of choice: the more options and “power” you give a consumer, the more you will probably just be frustrating them.  It’s pretty hard to beat the experience of good ol’ TV today, period.

So if you are building a platform, an app, an experience, a gadget, a whatever to “improve” TV, think about the concept: “are you helping people escape?”  If not, it might be time for a “pivot.”

Why 2nd Screen Superbowl Ad and Social TV Experiences Suffered

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According to Lost Remote, social media was en fuego during the Super Bowl this year.  Bluefin Labs contributed to these stats, and found over 12 million “social media comments” during the game.  Another element Lost Remote tracked were the plurality of Social TV Second Screen Apps in play:

The best second-screen experience: To start things off, we checked into the game on GetGlue, Miso,IntoNow, Shazam, ConnecTV, Umami, Foursquare and Viggle. Ok, that’s overkill, but we wanted to give them a spin on the biggest social TV event of the year. For starters, GetGlue sailed passed its all-time check-in, counting over 100,000 before halftime and 150,000 total for the game, 3X its all-time record (the company doubled its servers for the Super Bowl.) We’re let you know of other second-screen stats when we get them.

Now that doesn’t include the “official” Super Bowl app, NBC Sports, or a few other options.  But overall, I’m see a glass is half empty scenario myself.

The problem was in the experiences.  I tweeted a couple of times during the game, by using the Twitter app, which was native and easy to do.  The thought of launching another app, just to get something that would enable be to tweet never even crossed my mind.  In reality, most of these apps actually got in the way of the experience.  And yes, while there was tons of tweeting and updates occurring, I’d lay down a strong bet most of this was about people posting, not reading what others were posting.

I also found the Super Bowl ads highlighted two major flaws in the ad experience.  Shazam got a lot of pre-game buzz for all their ad partners.  Sounds cool in theory, but the experience is just plain lousy.  First, the commerical starts airing.  Then, at some point in the middle of the ad a little Shazam logo appears somewhere on the screen (I only noticed it a handful of times personally).  At this moment, the viewer must grab their phone, turn it on, unlock it, switch to the Shazam app, and then – and this is important – get everyone in the room to be quiet for 7-10 seconds.  Great in theory, but this is not a good experience for any user.

The second was a QR code which displayed on screen.  This in my eyes was even worse than Shazam, since QR codes require the user to have a QR app, which is just too obtuse for the average viewer.

worst. crossword. ever.

Compare either the Shazam or QR experience to having a simple URL onscreen.  Is it really easier to go through all the hassle and end up on the Honda website, or just tell the user to go to honda.com?  Plus, by obfuscating the simple methods, advertisers lose brand reinforcement AND are busy handing over the experience to a third party.  Similarly, when it comes to social experiences, is it to a consumers’ advantage to launch an app just to get an update into Twitter or Facebook, or to just use the native ones?

These experiences have come a long way, and are offering exciting potential for the future of TV and second screens.  But so far, we’re clearly at the infancy of what the consumer can use to really “enhance” a TV offering.  I hope some or many of these offerings will improve over the years, and really create a better experience, not one that makes us work harder just to watch TV.

Why Smart TV User Interfaces Suck

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Please don’t look at the following images on a full stomach:


Ok, sorry I had to do that, but it’s important.  And to my friends on the TV manufacturing side of the world – it’s not your fault!  It’s not your fault! Most “Smart TV” user interfaces, suck, and you’re doing your best.  But fundamentally they violate so many rules of user experience design. But why are they so bad?  In a nutshell, its for the same reason you don’t expect loggers to sell fancy high-end furniture (think about that one for a second).  The products are being built from the wrong end of the production team.

For the dining room table, what do you think, arrow foot or ball foot?

Let’s agree that user experience design is a challenge to begin with.  Apple does it great, everyone else, not so much – and even Apple products have flaws.  Further, virtually everything about a “ten foot” user interface (the terminology we use to describe what happens on-screen on your TV) is a broken interaction model, so this is going to be crippled no matter what.  I’ll write about this more in the future, but I believe there’s a fundamental breakdown on the limitations of what you can do with any 10′ UI and a remote control, regardless of gestures, speech, etc.

Next, per my logger analogy, effectively the teams building these products have absolutely no experience nor expertise at this kind of design.  The world of consumer electronics has (barely) evolved from dials, knobs, and switches to doing highly complicated interfaces on screens.  Not only that, every year the requirements are changing!

And since this is a new field (despite almost 20 years worth of ten-foot UIs), there are very very few folks out there who have dived deeply into this problem (the Wikipedia page on the topic barely even requires a scrollbar to read everything).  So the same people who are used to just getting the TV to work right, are now also in charge of creating “an experience”.  I think this is a guaranteed to fail situation, and it’s unfortunate for everyone involved.

The last "easy" TV user interface.

I do have some tips and thoughts for these UIs, since I can’t effectively get everyone to just up and stop making them (pretty please?).  First, you can read my comments a while back on designing better Boxee and Google TV apps.  Now, here’s three more things to think about:

  • Stop making things look like Commodore 64 graphics.  Seriously, I understand the graphics processors inside the TV platforms are low powered inexpensive solutions, but people have a natural (bad) reaction to seeing such low quality graphics on their beautiful HD sets.  If you can’t match them up, find ways to cut down on the overall interface and use the scarce resources to make things prettier.  See Boxee, Google TV, and Apple TV for the “prettier” 10-foot experiences.

Now in beautiful Full 1080p HD

  • Understand a 2D “grid” of options.  Many of these UIs create multiple planes of interfaces, yet fail to recognize the user has to navigate with a simple UDLR remote control (or wand or whatever).  This creates unpredictable experiences, and makes your user less naturally comfortable with the interface.  You should be able to look at the screen and always know “what happens if I push the Up arrow button”.
  • Reduce button clicks.  At no point should the user have to click more than 3 times to get from one part of the screen to another, and you should never create an internal scrollable region.  For example, my VUDU service (which I love) has me scroll through long lists of movies when browsing a category (such as Comedy/Drama, which, let’s face it, really means depressing movie with some funny moments).  But, as a result, if I want to change the category,I need to scroll all the way up to the top of the screen again to choose a new option.  This is too much work!

Ultimately, this again reinforces my belief that anything new coming from Apple will be highly based on AirPlay concepts, and the 10-foot UI will one day be a thing of the past.  And what will replace it?  This.

List of SmartTV Events for Fall 2011

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Budapest Parliament Hall. This would be an awesome place for a smart TV conference!

Just like my Future of TV Newsletter (thanks to all the subscribers – wow!), I thought it would be helpful for all my peers to create a list of all the events I’m tracking this Fall that have anything to do with Smart, Social, or Connected TV.  That said, I’m sure I’m missing some (please email, tweet, or comment if you know of any!).  The list below also includes some of the speakers that are presenting, though is incomplete (I only had so much room on the page, sorry to anyone I cut – it wasn’t personal.  Well, mostly.).

The Future of #SocialTV – Sept 14 – New York City

Speakers include:

  • Brian Stelter, TV & Digital Media Reporter at The New York Times ( @BrianStelter)
  • Mark Ghuneim, CEO of Wiredset/Trendrr, @MarkGhuneim
  • Valerie Streit, Strategist at YouTube/NextNew, @ValStreit
  • Ryan Osborn, Director of Social Media at NBC News, @Rozzy
  • Alex Iskold, Founder & CEO of Get Glue, @AlexIskold

Lean Back – Sept 14 – San Francisco

Demos by:

Digital Home Summit – Sept 27/28 – Orlando

Speakers include:

2Screen – Sept 29 – London

Speakers include:

TV Next 2011 – Oct 4-5 – San Jose

Speakers include:

  • Sherry Brennan, FOX Networks
  • Steven Reynolds, Comcast
  • Eric Bruno, Verizon
  • Jim Louderback, Revision3
  • Larry Robinson, Motorola Mobility
  • David Mcintosh, Redux
  • Jeremy Toeman, Dijit
  • Kurt Hoppe, LG Electronics
  • Colin Dixon, The Diffusion Group
  • Stephen White, Gracenote
  • Richard Bullwinkle, Rovi
  • Ryan Massie, CBS Interactive

The Connected TV Experience – Oct 11/12 – Chiswick/London

Speakers include:

  • Anna Bateson, marketing director, EMEA at YouTube;
  • Lesley MacKenzie, group digital officer, at LOVEFiLM;
  • Anthony Rose, co-founder and CTO of Zeebox;
  • Dan Saunders, head of content services at Samsung;
  • Bjarne Thelin, chief executive, BARB;
  • Nigel Walley, managing director of Decipher;
  • Tom Wolfe, senior director, advanced advertising at Rovi.

Digital Hollywood Fall & the Variety Entertainment & Technology Summit – Oct 17-20 – Los Angeles

Speakers include:

  • Quincy Jones (yes, Quincy Jones!)
  • Harshul Sanghi, Motorola Mobility Ventures
  • Kerry Trainor, AOL
  • Jeremy Toeman, Dijit
  • Dan Cohen, Disney-ABC Domestic Television
  • Stephan Shelanski, Starz Entertainment
  • Leslie Wood, The Nielsen Company
  • Gregg Spiridellis, JibJab Media
  • Bill Gannon, Entertainment Weekly
  • John Griffin, Dolby Laboratories
  • Curt Marvis, Lionsgate
  • Lance Koenders, Intel Corporation
  • Kurt Hoppe, LG Electronics

Smart TV Europe – Nov 1/2 – London

Speakers include:

  • Karla Gecki, Facebook
  • Dan Saunders, Samsung
  • Stacey Seltzer, LG Electronics
  • Jordy Egging, Philips
  • Eric Elia, Brightcove
  • John Denton, BBC
  • Yosi Glick, Jinni
  • Anthony Rose, tBone TV

Streaming Media West 2011 – Nov 8/9 – Los Angeles

Speakers include:

  • Chris Knowlton, Microsoft
  • Michael Aragon, Sony Network Entertainment
  • Fred Santarpia, VEVO
  • John Civiletto, Cox Communications
  • Donagh O’Malley, Google TV
  • Paul Wehrley, Clicker.com
  • Ran Harnevo, AOL Video
  • Rob Roskin, MTV Networks
  • Gilles BianRosa, Fanhattan
  • Andrew Wallerstein, Variety
  • Greg Sandoval, CNET
  • Jim Funk, Roku
  • Evan Young, TiVo
  • Derrick, Oien, Chumby

TV of Tomorrow NYC Intensive 2011 – Dec 5 – New York City

Speaker list not yet finalized

Digital Living Room – Dec 7/8 – San Francisco

Speakers include:

  • Ashish Arora, GM, Digital Home, Logitech International
  • Ian Geller, VP, Business Development, Pandora
  • Joe Greenstein, Co-Founder and CEO, Flixster
  • Neal Hansch, Partner, Rustic Canyon Venture Partners
  • Evan Krauss, EVP, Advertising, Shazam Entertainment
  • Scott Levine, VP and Managing Director, Time Warner Investments
  • David Schlacht, Sr. Director, Multimedia, DirecTV
  • Jeremy Toeman, Chief Product Officer, Dijit
  • Charles Seiber, VP, Marketing, Roku
  • Paul Wehrley, General Manager, Clicker.com and TV.com, CBS Interactive

Introducing the Future of TV newsletter and Twitter list

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Now that I’m “back in the game” so to speak, I’ve spent the past few months creating a few tools to help me find industry relevant content.  A few of my peers have asked to take a glance “at my tools”, which I found shocking at first, but soon realized what they were talking about.  As such, here they are:

1 – the Future of TV newsletter

Inspired by my colleague Jason Hirschhorn‘s excellent “MediaReDEFined” newsletter, I’ve set up a newsletter that’s just me curating news in the “Future of TV” space.  Topics include Social TV, Connected TV, SmartTV, Second Screen, Four Screens, OTT (Over-the-Top), Cord Cutting and just about anything else that comes along that way.  It’s a fully manually curated production, so you should expect anywhere from 2-20 or so article per day (substantially less on the weekend).

Sample excerpt:

The Difference Between Connected TV, Social TV and Expanded TV (TribecaFilm) | Talk NYC

Posted: 19 Aug 2011 01:39 PM PDT

With television moving onto different platforms, it seems like nowadays we can watch TV everywhere. What is the ultimate future for television in a world that expects more from their
The Cable Customer’s Bill of Rights

Posted: 19 Aug 2011 01:39 PM PDT

Over the past few days, we’ve received more than 1,000 horror stories about bad cable experiences: tales of bad techs, terrible service, and troubling billing practices. We used those to build a cable customer’s bill of rights.

Hope you find this useful, click here to subscribe.  And don’t forget to tell all your friends!

2 – the Future of TV Twitter list

The best way to really *use* Twitter (other than pure self-promotion, narcissism, and stalking purposes that is), is to organize people into “lists” that tend to tweet about a given topic.  Even then, it’s an easy bet that said list will still contain it’s fair share of lunch-related discussion and reality TV show spoilers, but it’s still better than the pure noise of your regular Twitter stream.  I’ve culled a list of people who tend to be more likely than not to tweet about something having to do with the future of TV.  It’s not perfect, and it’s probably still missing some folks.  Here’s a sample:

Note that this is *not* a list of all companies or people in the Future of TV industry, and Twitter accounts from companies such as Miso and GetGlue are conspicuously absent – but this is because they aren’t really tweeting about TV, and are tweeting about TV shows themselves (not to pick on either company – and if there are Twitter accounts from them, or others, that are more germaine to this topic, I’d be happy to include them here).

I’ve also embedded this list into the sidebar of the blog, so you can follow along from here if that’s easier.   Or click here to see the whole list in action.

Hope either of these are useful tools to anyone in this very fun, very fast-moving industry.  Happy to take any feedback or suggestions as well!

12 by 2012: SXSW panels on the Future of TV

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I’ve been in “Future of TV” startups directly and indirectly since 1999, yet haven’t once made it to SXSW Interactive (I was even supposed to speak this year, but my third child arrived way too close to the conference for me to make it unfortunately).  For 2012 I’ve proposed a talk entitled “Why the Future of TV has Four Screens” and hopefully the conference organizers will find it interesting to include.  This is obviously a space I have a lot of passion about, so I decided to go peek around at what other interesting and related presentations and panels are in the “PanelPicker”.

Here’s the ones I’ve found, in no particular order:

Title: Why the Future of TV has Four Screens

Speaker: Jeremy Toeman, Dijit Media

Studies have shown that over 70% of TV watching happens with a second screen in hand, whether it’s a phone, tablet or laptop, people are no longer just watching TV. They are tweeting, checking-in, Facebooking, searching the web for information and more. The rise of this social TV trend is causing companies across the entire TV industry, including content providers, TV manufacturers and startups in the convergence space to take notice. They are now trying to blend content, social and additional screen interaction in a variety of ways, from social networking on your TV screen to controlling your TV with your phone. However this is causing more confusion, not more entertainment. In this panel, we will explore: How are consumers using the second (or third or fourth) screens? Why are the additional screens important? How do those additional screens affect the way consumers interact with TV? And how are the additional screens are changing the entertainment landscape for the next decade?

Title: Why Digital May Forever Alter TV As We Know It

Speakers: Michael Aragon (Sony Network Entertainment), Jason Spivak (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)

With 24/7 internet access on our mobile phones, Blu-ray players, HDTVs, laptops and gaming consoles, the ability to easily stream movies, TV shows, and other digital content has forever changed the way we consume film and video. People older than 50 are more likely to tune into TV broadcasts, while people younger than 25 are actively watching online video. The revolution in business models and digital distribution that disrupted the music industry has turned the TV and film industry on its head. As a result we are seeing a paradigm shift where producers, TV execs, gaming publishers, and print authors are paving new roads to build business models around on-demand video that is accessible across multiple devices. This presentation will discuss where the present round of convergence is leading, what the opportunity is for monetizing content beyond ad-based revenue, and what forms of new interactive media we can expect to see on network-enabled devices

Title: The Future of TV: Bigger, Brighter and Greener

Speaker: Amit Jain, Prysm

The way we interact with our television is changing. Submissive TV watching is a thing of the past. What does the demand for larger, interactive video displays mean for the future of in-home entertainment? The days of passive television viewing are gone. Today’s audiences are savvier and more engaged in the technology around them and expect more from their television screen than simple 2-D moving pictures. Television screens continue to get bigger and deliver a more immersive viewing experience accompanied by high-def picture quality and 3-D capabilities. As these technologies continue to improve, in-home entertainment is getting more and more life-like. Unfortunately, the current television market cannot keep up with the consumer demand for a bigger, better viewing experience at home. While 55” plasma screens seem like the next best thing, they offer a logistical nightmare. From the transportation between store to home, to the installation and additional infrastructure needed to support them, to the mass quantities of power they consume, it seems the larger the screen the bigger the headache. In this session, Prysm CEO, Amit Jain, will explore the future of television and discuss the changes in technology needed to make this a reality.

Title: Brave New World of Smart TV: Myths & Misperception

Speaker: Mario Queiroz, Google TV

The age of convergence is finally here, but the landscape remains complex and confusing. In this session, Mario Queiroz will work to address the common myths and misperceptions around smart TVs and the promise the category holds for consumer electronics manufacturers, content owners, and consumers. Like the smart phone before it, the smart TV will bring a new layer of functionality to your existing home entertainment experiences. Mario will explore the value the web will bring to your living room experience. This platform will be targeted, personal, and discoverable with a touch of the button, and it will be integrated across multiple screens, from mobile phones to tablets to TVs. The developer transformed the world of smart phones and is doing the same for tablets. Mario will also address why smart TV is the next frontier for application development and why the prospects for killer apps that will fundamentally change the way we view and engage with television look promising.

Title: Second Screen and Social TV: Which way from here?

Speakers: Carlton Cuse (Carlton Cuse Productions), Brad Pelo (i.TV), Lisa Hsia (Bravo Digital Media), Alex Iskold (GetGlue)

For years we’ve debated the promise of interactive TV. Until now, the promise has not been realized but with the advent of real-time social services like Twitter and TV-specific social apps, we seem to be on the cusp of a sea change when it comes to how people watch and engage with television. This session will discuss the state of the second screen, why it’s important and what it will take to finally make interactive TV a reality.

Title: Can a Social Web of Things keep TV cords connected

Speaker: Alison Moore, HBO

It’s 2015 and over half of the devices in your home are connected to the Internet. On the drive home you consider taking a longer route, but when you ask for directions the GPS system reminds you that you need to get home soon – you have a viewing party. The television recognizes you when you walk in the door and suggests that you pour a glass of wine since everyone else is online and waiting for you to join the Game of Thrones premier party. In response, the wine cooler switches on, illuminating the last bottle of red – a 2007 Scarecrow. You cringe but open it anyway. Your HBO app automatically loads a summary of last season’s characters since you still seem to have them confused, and then asks if you’d like to join the group video chat. “Go ahead”, you say, “I will catch up as we go.” Join Rhonda and Allison as they think aloud about the future of media immersed in a world where everything is connected, and television becomes something that you live instead of just watch.

Title: Power Shift: Gadgets Rock Entertainment Ecosystem

Speaker: Richard Bullwinkle (Rovi Corporation)

We love our gadgets — all three, four, or even five of them. Daily, we constantly use our iPad, smart phone, laptop, iTouch, and devices that interact with our TV. Research confirms that we love to multi-task with our media — while watching TV, we surf the web, text and instant message. Generation Y may not have grown up with electronic gadgets but they face it full on as corporate America is grappling with how to use the iPad as a business tool while for many Generation Z ankle-biters, the iPad is their Fisher-Price busy-box. Today, technologists and content owners struggle to make content flow freely from one device to another, but we all know that day will come. This session will take a look at our fascination with being connected anytime, anywhere as it weaves itself into the very fabric of society, forever changing how we live, work and play. It will address how touch screen, connected, and high-resolution technologies are shaping consumer and social behavior, and defining what consumers expect their gadgets to do for them tomorrow.

Title: #futureoftv: Breaking through the noise

Speaker: Maureen Costello (Little Cannonballs)

New TV technologies are being launched at a breakneck pace, yet, right now it is all noise until some standards are set. Our industry is poised for a future of innovation, but the landscape still looks like a jumble of wires. Who are the current players breaking through the noise? What intellectual capital have we netted from the world’s investment in the Internet and its standards? What have we learned from the mistakes of the music industry? How can industry players—new and old—work together to define standards for success? Can we predict who will be left standing in the greatest reality competition ever—for TV’s digital future? Let’s break through the noise and get with the program folks!

Title: Enriching TV experience with companion apps

Speaker: Perry Cooper, NHL

As TV audiences age, marketers are challenged to appeal to their prime demographic of 18-to-49-year-olds. The younger demographic is definitely watching TV, but they now require a second screen to enhance their viewing and steer away from the traditional TV experience. The second screen of choice, being the mobile device, is now accessed by 86% of mobile Internet users simultaneously while watching TV to browse the web, social network, and text, according to a recent Yahoo! study. To appeal to this younger, more tech-savvy demographic, the NHL will be offering an in-game experience for the mobile users that will stimulate behavior and keep fans engaged throughout the entirety of every game. What will be referred to as “predictive gaming” will combine the attraction of fantasy sports to live games where users can compete with friends to predict what their favorite player or team will do next in real-time, adding a new layer of excitement to the game. The proposed presentation will examine how the second screen will become the virtual requirement for future TV programming.

Title: Convergent iTV Apps: Factors for Great Products

Speaker: Wes Williams, Scripps Networks

Many factors distinguish great apps from coulda-been-a-contender apps. We’ll do a deep dive into questions you should ask when producing convergent apps for connected TVs, smartphones and tablets. The framework will be an unbiased review of apps in the real world, balancing user-oriented thinking with business needs. This will reveal factors to consider when building interactive apps related to TV viewing. Learn how to determine which features you need to reach marketing, advertising and audience goals, whether on just the TV screen or multiple platforms.

Title: Tablets & TV – Building Second Screens Experiences

Speaker: Klemens Wengert, Turner Broadcasting

Creating phone and tablet companion applications for television shows presents a unique opportunity for content providers. By linking the two screens together we have a new way to engage and deliver content to the users, integrate advertising and enhance the experience of watching television. This presentation is going to focus on how to create a second screen experience that makes sense for your audience, for your brand and your advertisers through case studies from Turner Broadcasting as well as some best practises and lessons learned.

Title: 3 Screen Minimum: Convergence of TV & Social Media

Speakers: Fred Harner (SportsNet New York (SNY)), Stephanie Agresta (Weber Shandwick.com), Eric Bruno (Verizon), Soraya Darabi (Foodspotting)

A full 70 percent of US tablet owners say they use their devices while watching TV. Companies like Verizon are baking social into their products and enabling users to tweet, watch online videos and update Facebook directly from their TVs. Channels like Bravo capitalize on this by weaving emerging tech like Foursquare, Foodspotting and Shazam into their TV output, as well as having personalities engage actively with fans and critics on Twitter and other social media. Google Hangouts allows people to watch web video together online. Join as forward thinkers from Verizon, Foodspotting, SportsNet NY (SNY) discuss what’s next for the convergence of social media and TV.

Speculating On Motorola + Google TV

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Googorola!

Googorola!

Google is planning to acquire Motorola Mobility, which is a deal about patents and Android, but also one to raise questions on quite a few existing product lines.  What will happen with Moto Droids and the Google Nexus line?  Where do Android tablets go from here?  Is MOTOBlur dead?   (my answers: bye bye Nexus, tbd, and yes).  The other interesting area is Google TV, particularly interesting because the Motorola Mobility dept is the one that makes the set-top boxes (which are, next to refrigerators, one of the least likely products to be mobile in my house, but maybe that’s just me).

I’ve seen tons of speculation this week about what the deal means, as it pertains to Google TV, and have batched together some of the perspectives that are floating around.  Most common theme: now that Google owns the STB business, they can just sprinkle Android into all the next-gen cable boxes…

That gives Google an attractive footprint to leverage on a number of different fronts within the digital home, perhaps with a Trojan Horse strategy of pushing Android-based middleware out to shore up its lacklustre connected TV strategy.

Source: With Motorola, Google gains a big TV strategy | News | Rapid TV News http://www.rapidtvnews.com/index.php/2011081514335/with-motorola-google-gains-a-big-tv-strategy.html#ixzz1VEtbiUZe

Also surmised by Apple Insider, Robert Scoble, CNET, Business Insider, NewTeeVee, and Lost Remote (and others).  Here’s the thing, this isn’t even a topic/issue/option in play, at all.  It’s not exactly like Motorola’s been unable to acquire operating systems to power their set tops, and could easily have chosen Google TV prior to now.  Further, there’s simply no such thing as “sneaking” technology into the cable infrastructure, not even a tiny bit.  We’ve seen (and I’ve worked for) many companies try to accomplish some set of these tasks, and not one shred of success.  Why?  Because the cable industry commissions the hardware and features they want, and not the other way around.

Burger King creepy guy

You Can Have it Your Way. aka 7' tall and creepy.

Another widely spread philosophy is that the only reason Google TV hasn’t caught on yet is due to not having had the right chance/opportunity:

“Google TV has not caught on yet,” wrote AOL journalist Saul Hansell on his personal blog. “This could be the wedge to get it in millions of living rooms.”

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20092451-261/motorola-could-help-cure-ailing-google-tv/#ixzz1VExC7Dqg

Shared feelings from Zatz Not Funny, Lost Remote, NewTeeVee, and more, but not by myself (nor my friend Dan Frommer, though he’s much nicer about it than I would’ve been).  Google TV hasn’t caught on with consumers because it’s the wrong value proposition for consumers, period.  In my ten-plus years of building “connected TV” products, the thing I’ve learned is that the more interaction you throw on the screen, the less you engage and benefit your users.  While there are moments for “lean-forward” activities, they are fleeting.  Google TV is built on the opposite premise.

Maxell dude + Venom

This isn't exactly the lean-back experience I was expecting.

One last comment that I’ve seen making the rounds was that Google just gained a bunch of knowhow regarding building boxes.  This doesn’t much pass the sniff test either, as other than Apple, everybody builds boxes the same, and there’s very little secret sauce here.  If anything, they should consider offloading all hardware production that still gets done internally or dive in deep in fully integrated software/hardware solutions.  More on that in a bit.

So that’s enough about everybody else’s theories, time for a few of my own.

  1. The acquisition was entirely about the patent portfolio, the synergy (or not) between Google TV (G-TV) and Motorola’s STB division (M-STB) is positive, but was coincidental.
  2. Google must demonstrate to current M-STB customers that they will not disband nor change the status quo there in the short term (let’s call it 2-5 years).  If this doesn’t happen quickly, we could see an exodus to the numerous viable competitors.
  3. Google would be better off moving G-TV inside M-STB than vice versa.  M-STB has the requisite business practices savvy for dealing with the cable industry, which is significantly more vital to longevity than any software platform.  In fact, gaining this type of business experience is quite a boon for Google, as its an industry they have historically (dating back pre-YouTube days) not well-understood.
  4. The other massive obstacle that seems underreported is the complete lack of fit between M-STB hardware platforms and G-TV software architecture needs.  One of them will need a rewrite, and that’s costly.
  5. Without a major improvement to the platform itself, this acquisition does not change G-TV’s fate.  No cable company on the planet is simply going to allow technology into their boxes (yes, they buy em, they rent em to customers) without a) control and b) a clear path to revenue/profits.  Granted, there are indications those profits could come, but not with the current platform.

Ultimately, I think this is a fascinating topic.  The nuance of industries involved, the hugeness of capital in play, and the clearly disruptive horizon for the TV business is more exciting than virtually anything I can think of.

Chile Volcano Lightning

Well, almost anything.