The next decade will see the continuing transformation of television, with video becoming more personal and democratic as new networks subvert and transcend the broadcast model. Dr William Cooper of the convergent communications consultancy informitv offers 20 practical predictions for the next 10 years.

1. Television will be less dominant. Free to air television networks will become a secondary medium, like radio, increasingly reliant upon relaying live events that can attract a national audience, as other modes of digital distribution displace the broadcast provision of pre-recorded programming.

2. Fewer television channels will survive. Mass media ownership will continue to consolidate and the number of broadcast television channels will decline as the interruptive advertising model will fail to support them all, but the range of brands using video communications for marketing will increase exponentially.

3. Global communities will dominate media. Global social networking applications will continue to proliferate into the video realm, providing communal interaction and real-time ratings and recommendations, creating shared experiences around asynchronous viewing across geographic boundaries.

4. Audiovisual communication will become personal. Audio and video will be used as routinely for personal communication as text or images, requiring audiovisual production to become part of the school curriculum and a standard skill in the workplace.

5. Most viewing will be on personal screens. Tablets and touch screens will proliferate and more audio and video will be consumed on personal devices than on the traditional shared living room display, which will become more multifunctional and less defined by the television viewing experience.

6. Mobile video will be delivered over data networks. Most mobile television and video services will be delivered over data networks rather than using extensions of current digital broadcasting standards.

7. Displays will be network connected. Hybrid broadcast and broadband devices and displays will become mainstream and most video screens will have some form of data connection, while the resolution of consumer electronics products will typically exceed that of conventional broadcast networks.

8. Displays will become resolution independent. Powerful media processors will provide real-time transcoding between different formats and resolutions on the fly, decoupling displays from specific broadcast standards.

9. High definition will be standard. High definition will become the new standard and progressive scanning will eventually replace interlaced display and its attendant artifacts, while frame rates will double, offering smoother motion.

10. Fidelity of reproduction will improve. Ultra high definition formats will be commercially available and will be routinely used for acquisition and post production, providing print resolution reproduction, while increased bit depths will offer improved dynamic range and colour representation, resulting in much richer images.

11. 3D will be a limited success. Stereoscopic 3D will be popular for movies and major live events but will remain a niche product while it requires viewers to wear special glasses, although stereo eyewear will become increasingly fashionable and will allow immersive gaming and photorealistic virtual reality and role-playing experiences.

12. Network distribution will become more efficient. Multicast distribution will allow live programming to be delivered cost-effectively to millions of users simultaneously over fixed and wireless data networks on a global basis.

13. Fibre-optic networks will reach the home. Cable television operators will migrate to internet protocols and extend their fibre-optic networks to the premises, forcing other telecommunications companies to compete, offering access to a virtually unlimited range of audiovisual media, delivered in real-time or faster, without delays or interruptions.

14. Broadband will become a utility. Broadband data access will become an essential utility, like water, gas and electricity, providing connections of 1Gbps or more in urban areas, charged by terabytes transferred, at peak and off peak rates, with no further restrictions on usage.

15. Home networks will become ubiquitous. Wired and wireless data networks will replace dedicated wiring within the home for audio visual distribution, communication and automation, while universal low voltage connections will reduce the need for multiple power adapters.

16. Massive data storage will be cheap as chips. Solid state devices will largely replace spinning disks and massive local storage will provide instant access to thousands of hours of audiovisual information and entertainment, allowing an entire collection of movies and videos to be stored on a portable device.

17. Physical media distribution will decline. Streams and downloads will displace but not entirely replace the distribution of physical discs for audio and video, while licensed media will be ubiquitously accessible from network storage in the cloud.

18. Global releases will reduce piracy. Major movies and premium programmes will be distributed simultaneously worldwide to reduce piracy and regionally localised global events will be funded by sponsorship and subscription.

19. Copyright protection will be invisible. Digital rights management restrictions will be transparent to legitimate users who will be able to access media freely on any device within the terms of their licence, while forensic fingerprinting and legal measures will be used to combat unauthorised distribution.

20. People will pay to avoid adverts. While increasingly sophisticated targeting of commercial messages will make them more relevant and more acceptable, people will pay a premium for subscription services that are uninterrupted by intrusive adverts.

From inform TV

TV the culture hearth of the family home?

If found this post over at Russell Davies’s gaff online. Russell has such a lovely turn of phrase dontchya think? Although as someone also said to me. ‘sometimes Alan being right is not necessarily the right thing to be’.

Russell writes

If / when telly people complain that their industry was blind-sided by the internet/interactivity I think it might be fair to point out that this was made in 1990. And that it was shown – ON THE TELLY. Or would that be mean?

Did someone cough the word, ‘hubris’?

We say: Why use your TV to watch repetitive drivel when you can plug your PlayStation into it instead? Whilst you confide in your friend that your TiVo thinks your gay. And someone has to go down the hall to the ‘Grand Fromage’ to tell him that TV advertising is the equivalent of the silent movies of the 21st Century.

In the future of television, we get a vision of well, the future,

To begin, the trend toward larger and larger televisions will continue as screens double in size every 18 months. Televisions will eventually grow so large that families will be forced to watch TV from outside their homes, peering in through the window. Random wolf attacks will make viewing more dangerous. And, just as televisions grow larger and more complicated, so will remote controls. In fact, changing channels will soon require people to literally jump from button to button. Trying to change the channel while simultaneously lowering the volume will require two people and will frequently lead to kinky sex.

SMLXL archives on Television

SB: Right now there seems to be a lot of confusion between social media and the definition of community. The idea of community is right now as fairly elusive one and is being bandied about like it’s some sacrosanct term. Community built around consumption is, for me fairly transitory. It reminds of an unruly mob during the time of the Paris Commune. We’re  not going to get a whole lot of sense out of this right now.

Then there’s these dire warnings coming from people like Forrester, that brands will be excluded from consumer choice because somehow they are now being defined by communities and no longer by the brand owners themselves. I think this is both disingenuous and untrue. Forcing brands out of their hands via social media created communities is only part of the story. While even as early as 2005 Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore warned marketers, in their prescient work ‘Communities Dominate Brands‘, that if they didn’t cut loose the shackles of the traditional advertising agency and TV network model they would lose their brands. I’m seeing many of the same warnings again this year, particularly in the wake of the great financial crisis. But what real, if any, changes have we seen to this paradigm? No brands have fallen by the wayside because they didn’t have a social media strategy or because they continued advertising in traditional media.

JB: Brands may not fall by the wayside as such, but brands will become stronger because of their consumer engagement strategies. For example, the well known Dell Hell scenario certainly impacted on that organisation negatively, but by engaging with the community they came back stronger and more relevant to their client base. If they hadn’t done that who knows where that organisation would have been.

Some brands come to social media like Dell in a ‘reactive’ fashion knowing they now need to engage with consumers due to a negative event/issue. Other brands initiate the online engagement strategy ‘proactively’, understanding it will add value to their knowledge base, understanding the client better, product development and customer service.

SB: Ahonen and Moore predicted the consumer and their connected communities, would select the products and brands that are engaged in the most relevant dialogue with them. Somehow this would become the centre of a new modern and sustainable marketing model. While I think there are some massive shifts occurring,  I don’t think we’re quite there yet with this because I’m not sure anyone understands these kinds of ROIs yet.

Metrics, metrics, metrics. I can’t count so I am unable to help, but the fact is one can see where commerce is to be made, if one digs around a bit. And the big question is what is advertising and marketing in the 21st Century? When we live in a search economy, a participatory culture, where 25% of al media is made by us and there are 3.5 billion mobile phones of the planet. Networked economics?

Some called Tomi and I polemicists – I like to think we highlighted something critically important for brands, business and organisations. Remember our subtitle was, “business and marketing challenges for the 21st Century”. This went way beyond in my view the social media paradigm that so many are so now engaged in.

Thompson described “the plan” as “potentially the holy grail of future public service broadcasting provision in the UK”

The plan Stan is this

The BBC said its proposals to share its online and digital technology would provide help with the production, distribution and exploitation of content across the television industry. The corporation said the plans would generate more than £120m a year for UK public service broadcasting by 2014.

And the BBC is planning to share some of its content with the Telegraph Media Group in a deal that could see the iPlayer embedded onto the Daily Telegraph’s website. The BBC refused to confirm the identity of the newspaper group, but confirmed that it was in talks about a “non-exclusive pilot scheme” which could eventually be rolled out to other newspaper groups.

More on the BBC PSB (Stephen Fry Lecture) Much to the reported consternation of Channel 4, and I would imagine many other players as well.

Photograph: Jeff Overs/BBC/PA

But then they (other media players) could have gone there first. The idea that news – as in newspapers is Print and that news as in Broadcast is Audio-Visual, and never the twain shall meet is complete bunkum.

It was always the “settled” technology that decided: formats, business models, distribution and job descriptions.

As technology evolves so does the job description.

I thought, back in 2005, when we published Communities Dominate Brands that we were seeing some significant markers in what was to come. I think that we have really only just begun. My observation was then, and still is, that we are in the process of building the necessary infrastructure for the Networked Society. Look at it this way…

The full deployment of the enormous wealth-creating potential brought forth by each technological revolution requires, each time, the establishment of an adequate socio-institutional framework. The existing framework, created to handle growth based on the previous set of technologies, is unsuited to the new one. Thus, in the first decades of installation of the new industries and infrastructures, there is am increasing mis-match between techno-economic and soci-institutional spheres, as well as an internal decoupling of the economic system, between the old and new technologies. The process of re-establishing a good match and creating conditions both for recoupling and full deployment of the new potential is complex, protracted and socially painful

And many are feeling the pain right now. I mean who in their right mind is going to stand up in front of the board and shareholders and say,

You know what, having looked at our road map and having looked out the window, to sum up – we are fucked. My best observation is lets cut our losses and build for the future.

It is not going to happen is it. Which is why the BBC medicine, or the principal, is all the more painful to digest. But I think policy wonks, and others interested in communication, and enabling the flows of communication (because any constraint placed upon those flows of information, harm the economy, and harm society), need to think beyond short term to the long term.

Lord Currie of OfCom at a Royal Television Society dinner famously said

The rapid growth of first multi-channel, then digital, then PVRs and soon higher-speed broadband are simply the pre-tremors of the real volcanic eruption that technology is about to unleash. At the risk of being over-dramatic I would say that most traditional television broadcasters are today standing about the equivalent of one mile from Mount St Helens. When it blows, frankly, that will be too close and it will be too late to run.

Talking of fatal eruptions, the fall of the Roman empire was helped on its way by paper becoming in short supply and therefore, information could not be successfully transmitted throughout the Empire. And 1000 years later the newspaper owners in the UK, paid for the laying of hard roads for the postal service, paid by tolls, so that newspapers could be more widely distributed at greater quantity and greater speed. Does that commercial desire ring any bells?

The holy grail for public service broadcasting, I suggest the issue is rather bigger and broader than that. My fear is that we destroy all that is good about our broadcast culture, all of it, for the sake of a few short term vested interests, that’s the tragedy of the commons. And that really would be a fucking shame.

Oh and don’t forget the word Trust, Trust in media brands will be one of the biggest deals going. I know the Beeb has suffered, But if you were to say who were the most trusted media brand sin the UK I reckon its the BBC and the Guardian.

The rest are the grocers.

So – here’s another road-sign for you – that data, and the extraction and refining of that data to support commercial communications is about to become mainstream – this new currency will becme the black gold of the 21st Century – in the future we will fight over oil, food, water and data. If we are living in a world that is increasingly networked, if we are living in a world where social intraction is a primary function online and on the mobile and on converged platforms, then you need data analytics that can understand these social data flows. This is beyond the traditonal fare

A piece in strategy and business was worth mentioning that examines Media Old world vs. Media New World

As unsophisticated and unreliable as traditional media measurement approaches may have been in the past, they did provide standards and currencies that enabled marketers, buying agencies, and media companies to transact business. Today, however, this equilibrium has become unstable. Marketers demand more effectiveness and efficiency from their media buys. Digital media are reaching critical mass with consumers. And the promise of more granular (or even real-time) data capture of consumer response to advertising is tantalizingly close to realization.

And we also had a point of view that we extrapolated upon here And IBM recently produced a report on the End of Advertising as we know it This was supported by PwC on How Consumer Conversations will Transform Business

What gets measured gets made

But the media metrics for the new digital media environment are still of uneven quality. They lack the standardization that would enable the simple comparison of advertising effectiveness both within the online environment and across other media channels. Marketers, agencies, and media companies all agree that improvements in these metrics are going to be essential; without them, it will be difficult to profit in an advertising market increasingly characterized by more choices among more media. In other words, there will need to be a wholesale shift to metrics that are both outcome based and comparable across many channels.

With refined data we can ask this rather pressing question: Do we want 6 feet of junk mail or a 29% response rate?

So we will go on a journey to socialise e-commerce – There is going to be energies focused on the design and analytics of social collaborative filtering and social systems

There is going to be work on Algorithms and system design connected to social tagging

The Media infrastructure will be rebuilt to understand and measure to collaborative social media eco-system – it will migrate from being the dumb machine – to a very smart machine as the audience has become not a dumb and passive audience, but an interactive and Participatory audience and a Participatory culture

The Swiss Role Dilemma
How do you separate data that is about seeking information vs. data that is about transaction? We build intelligent directories built around behaviour classification.

Dynamic data flows
Then these systems are integrated into self-learning systems that can process data flows that make petabytes look like kilobytes

The chart shows 90,000 communities of roughly 290 people, making around 25 million nodes.

Manuel Castells says that the linear process of our familiar analogue world has been inverted. Time is condensed and stretched. Past, present and future and altered and reconfigured. We need to take external and social structures into account when deciding how to provide better and improved communications and services.

Material existence becomes less relevant in a world of networked and information based social networks. And of course that asks questions as to how we map and measure that social networks. This is a world that is as mind bending as Quantum mechanics – why then should media not go through the same transformation? We witnessed the ripples on the seashore of the dotcom bubble that became the surging tsunami to our recent history, more powerful, more destructive, and more paradigm busting.

Revolutions, Paradigms and Great Surges of Development

A great surge is defined as as the process by which a technological revolution and its paradigm propagate across the economy, leading to structural changes in production, distribution, communication and consumption as well as t profound and qualitative changes in society. The process evolves from small beginnings, in restricted sectors and geographic regions and ends up encompassing the bulk of activities in the core country or countries and diffusing out towards further and further peripheries.

Further
Until the 1980′s, the prevalent organisations was the one that serves as the optimal framework for deploying the mass-production revolution: the centralised, heirarchical pyramid with functional compartments.

This logic no longer applies – so what happens next?

These difficult long term processes of transformation are in the nature of the capitalist system and involve intense interactions between the economy and social institutions as well as profound changes in both, Each technological revolution is received as a shock, and its diffusion encounters powerful resistance both in the established institutions and in people themselves. Hence, the full unfolding of its wealth-creating potential as first has rather chaotic and contradictory social effects, it later will demand a significant institutional recomposition. This will include changes in the regulatory framework affecting all markets and economic activities as well as a redesign as a whole range of institutions.

And that is what we in right here – right now. The transformation of governance, of society and culture. Today we stand centre square in the gales of creative destruction

Its focus was and still is – how do businesses and organisations meaningfully engage in a commercial or social agenda with their audiences.  We were some say before our time and the result of our early work was the book entitled Communities Dominate Brands – published in 2005. Today – you can't open a page to read about another industry facing serious challenges in this period of epochal evolution, or how mobile and digital are transforming communications before our very eyes.

Today – we are increasingly asked to use our knowledge and insight to help companies and organisations navigate the divide between a mass media analogue world with its own rules, logic and business models to the new universe of the digital one.

The new evolution of our site we hope will provide greater value for all those that are interested in what SMLXL does, what it thinks and what it has to say.

Opening paragraph of summary

The pace of change is so rapid that solutions to some of the problems that we sought to address have already begun to emerge. However, at the same time, new challenges are being posed by technological developments that are now coming to market. The ease with which consumers can now access content, copy it and keep it, makes the protection of intellectual property and enforcement of copyright law of far greater importance to the health, and indeed the survival, of our creative industries than ever before. Some have argued that the rights of intellectual property owners should be limited in order to promote the spread of knowledge and creativity. However, we take the view that this is a matter of choice for the creators and that rights owners who wish to retain control over the use and exploitation of their material should be able to do so. We also believe that the level and period of remuneration as well as the future direction of the development of technology are generally best left to the market to determine.

I am not convinced entirely that it is best left to the market. If you look at Korea, the investment in a digital infrastructure as catapulted an economy from being a backwater to a real global player.

I understand that this paper deals with the commercial context – but I think one needs a more joined up approach to infrastructure.

This paper also outlines the pressure being applied to commercial and copyright legislation which will become even more pressing for a variety of reasons.

In a knowledge economy our creative industries become a key component of employment and wealth generation, to this end ensuring the creative industries are well invsted in and financed makes a great deal of sense

The creative industries already make a major contribution to the UK economy and this is likely to continue to grow. The rapid take-up of new media offers enormous opportunities for both consumers and businesses and we welcome the increasing recognition of this. We look forward to the publication of the Government?s own Green Paper and hope that this will include many of the measures that we have recommended.

There are some 27 recommendations at the end of the report dealing with a host of commercial and legal issues created by living in a digital socio-economic eco-system.

The introduction quotes a BBC report from 2004

Digital radio and TV audiences will soon have the same flexibility as Internet users to control when and where they watch and listen to programmes. We expect seven in ten homes to be able to schedule their viewing and listening at a time that suits them best by 2016. Many will use personal video recorders (PVRs), which will be able to hold as much as 4,000 hours of content (equivalent to six months of output of a 24-hour television channel), compared to just 40 hours today. At the same time, downloading and file sharing of video and audio from the Internet will become commonplace for many people.

The current report states

Less than three years later, much of that vision has already come to pass, and the
predictions for 2016 seem, if anything, conservative. A revolution is underway not just in the way in which we watch television programmes and film but in the way we listen to music, gather news information, and use all forms of creative content: it could be said that the reproduction and dissemination of creative content has come to new life thanks to recent technological developments.2 This revolution challenges all elements of the delivery chain, from creators themselves through to distributors, broadcasters and consumers. These challenges are largely ones for the market to address and resolve, by adapting, by
exploring ways in which it can draw upon what technology can offer and by judging how to meet the public?s appetite. There are, nonetheless, roles for regulators and the Government in ensuring an open and fair marketplace, and in preserving a balance between public access to knowledge and ideas on the one hand and the right and ability of creators and rights holders to exploit full commercial value from creative products on the other. This report is about those challenges, roles and balances.

Of course Tomi and I have been charting these developments since 2003 and independently since 1999. But its good to see the government applying their thinking to such important issues.

One small point of interest to me was this

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising described a ?seismic shift? in the relationship between consumers and the media, with consumers now dictating how they used it.

When we asked the IPA to endorse our findings in 2005, we were told they could not because it was a “polemic”. So I find their current perspective – interesting.

My question is and I understand that there does need to be different perspectives applied – but should there not be an holistic overview of what a digital universe means to us all in all our walks of life.

We see Education, Media, Commerce, Society, Organisation, Democracy all challenged by the same issues.

I wonder if anyone is looking at this universe from an holistic perspective? What benefits could that bring us?

Watching full-length TV program online is increasingly popular, say some studies. Nielsen notes that ABC.com (50 percent), NBC.com (41), CBS.com (37), and Fox.com (24) were the most watched, with other Internet-based alternatives YouTube (17) and iTunes (15) used less often.

However, old television is still the preferred delivery platform, with 70 percent of Internet user saying they watch TV online because they missed an episode on television. Some watch a show on TV, then watched it again on the Internet.

Via ILBNews

I was deeply flattered that John felt that I could make a contribution. So we worked together in defining a group of people that could help the commercial Nordic Broadcasters develop their thinking over what the near future might look like.

So coming to the event are; MTV3 Finland, TV4 Sweden, TV2 Denmark and TV2 Norway, plus CBS-Paramount, 20th Century Fox and MGM .

I think its great to be involved in such a round table event where no-one is pitching their company but genuinely exploring the shape of our digital universe. The context ? What is content? Distribution? What do these new business models look like? and what does advertsing look like in the 21st Century? The internet and the mobile has exploded the model of the mass media. But the fact is you don’t replicate the same processes and models in a new business-media ecology. If you do, you’re just dumb.

In our book, the changing nature of the media and its impact on businesses was something we looked closely at and, thought about, and continue to do so.

From our side, I am in the very good company of Ben McOwen Wilson, Head of Strategy at ITV, John Nolan, North One Television. John will be talking abut The Broadcast Casino: Rule Number One The House Always Wins? Dan Applequist, Senior Technology Strategist at Vodafone. Dan will be talking abut Evolve or Die. And, Steve Perkins, Head of Public Service Broadcasting Content at Ofcom. Steve will be looking at Public Service Delivery.

If you want to explore our thinking about broadcast Media and convergence click here or Media click here

In fact out Tag Cloud has a ton of stuff in it that relate to all these issues.

In TV Schedule, what TV Schedule we wrote

Questions: How as a commercial broadcaster do I survive? How as a brand do I communicate, advertise to my audience? Whilst OfCom chairman Lord Currie speaking at a RTS event said

“The rapid growth of first multi-channel, then digital, then PVRs and soon higher-speed broadband are simply the pre-tremors of the real volcanic eruption that technology is about to unleash. At the risk of being over-dramatic I would say that most traditional television broadcasters are today standing about the equivalent of one mile from Mount St Helens. When it blows, frankly, that will be too close and it will be too late to run.

I can’t wait.

Because it echoed with the theory that people embrace what they create. This is the world of We Media and the Pro-Am, the Professional Amateur., the world of Connectivity, Social Networks and, the Community Generation – Gen “C”

Citizen-produced cable TV programs offering local information have been attracting attention as a way of revitalizing community ties, while also giving talented individuals a breakthrough they might otherwise never have had.

One day earlier this month, about 10 members of a broadcasting station in Chofu, Tokyo, sat around a large screen and busily checked programming schedules for the month.

“Let’s cut some of the narration,” one member of the civic broadcasting station Community Access Television Chofu (CATC) said, while another suggested, “How about changing the order of the scenes?”

Being screened was a five minute program about a local university that was teaching children how to assemble a radio. The program will be broadcast on a regional information cable channel.

“We pick up minor topics that terrestrial TV stations and newspapers don’t cover, but which are important to local areas. In fact, there’s usually a good response from citizens because they’re featured in the programs,” station representative Mikiko Ono said.

CATC programs are planned and produced by Chofu residents who offer their services voluntarily.

“We want to show off the good things about Chofu ourselves,” one member said.

The scheme was launched in April 2006, and the team now broadcasts Chofu-related programs several times a month. Among the topics covered have been the traditional bamboo work undertaken by local craftsman and the history of Chofu Airport.

“We’re sticking closely to local issues,” CATC’s director Mariko Nagatomo said.

In other parts of the country, cable TV companies are actively encouraging locals to help produce TV programs. Chukai Cable Television System Operator in Yonago, Tottori Prefecture, is one such company. The company is providing one of its channels to citizens and broadcasting their videos for free, as long as the videos do not violate copyright or public decency standards.

In the recent research I have been doing, I have reflected on what makes strong communities? Part of the answer is accountability and collective sense of responsibility.

The channel is now playing a part in bringing people together who didn’t know each other before. In one case, citizens who were producing programs began to take a greater interest in community issues and eventually got involved in cleaning up a local lake.

Being part of something, being part of its creation, is also the process of engagement. And interestingly

In May, Chuo University Prof. Ryoichi Matsuno, who specializes in media studies, and Eriko Hirota, a graduate student at the university, surveyed 408 cable TV companies across the country.

Among the companies that responded to the survey, 36 percent said they were broadcasting citizen-produced programs. Among those that do not currently do so, 21 percent said they are considering airing such programs.

With the growing popularity of the Internet, many viewers are said to be unhappy with the standard programming of the big media companies, which is creating a growing interest in locally produced material. TV companies themselves also have a vested interest in encouraging such programs as it allows them to broadcast more varied material targeted at specific communities.

A sense of personal ownership is vital and a key component in todays world. And perhaps a lesson many media companies should heed?

and in 2004 I wrote Life is Local

There is never enough real local news to fill a channel but there is enough local news to drive a regular bulletin. And the technology is there for local and national newspapers to deliver news and content via audiio-visual technology.

When one considers the point that, if Caxton and Gutenberg had had the facility of digital and audio-visual delivery platforms they would have used that instead of moveable type. As much as I love the smell of ink on paper.

Downloading and broadband makes this even more practical.

So it makes little sense for the nationals and local print organisations to fiddle about with digital and audio-visual technology. They need to embrace it and pole vault themselves into the 21st Century. Putting these capabilites at the heart of what they do rather than at the periphery. The new digital economics changes everything.

Its good to see that the SMLXL archives still stand the test of time.