The Third Age of Television

Yesterday I was at the Roundhouse for The Thinkbox event, ‘The Third Age of Television’ and what a fitting environment it is - vivid, slick and impressive - a venue itself brought back to life after a near death experience. Will the TV and advertising industry come away from the event feeling it has experienced something similar, I thought to myself.

To kick the event off on a positive note, Tess Alps reassured the audience that TV is in good health. We are now watching more TV than ever with a record 2.2 billion TV commercial impacts last year. Even the dreaded (wonderful) PVR (10% of households) brings good news. In fact, PVRs increase our capacity to consume TV advertising as these households watch around 5% more TV advertising than the norm. What is more, 39% of them watch ads even in a time-shifted state (on play back).*

Am I hearing this right? The TV ad industry is in rude health. If times have never been so good then why is TV revenue down? Apparently, the answer is that we are being foolishly distracted and diverting our investment to channels that are less deserving like the Internet.

So what is TV’s case for an increase in investment? Here’s the science bit.

TV is powerful because our brains respond well to it and store the information as associations in the form of neurons. Effectively our responses become hard-wired.

We can even unpick this hard-wiring to help tackle tobacco and alcohol usage (the problem we so masterfully helped to create). Implicitly ad agencies know how the brain works and create ads that drive an emotional response. But we know this. We sing jingles, re-enact the dance moves and plod down to the shops like Pavlovian dogs.

So I listened to all this and just kept thinking one thing. TV is undoubtedly powerful stuff and I can’t dispute that but aren’t we forgetting that great content produced by say HBO can be delivered down a high bandwidth connection skipping the TV channel?

The Internet is certainly not going to change the fact that we love watching programmes like Lost and The West Wing. However, it will affect its delivery and this could bypass much of what is being discussed here today. While Bit Torrent is certainly not a mainstream application it does paint a scary picture for the industry when I can legally download film and TV content to watch when I want. And that’s without mentioning Microsoft, Google or Apple.

But just as I started to wriggle in my seat a fanfare announced ‘The Third Age of Television’. It is essentially TV content delivered across multiple platforms and devices. This we are reassured is going to be the Golden Age of Television. Okay now we’re talking.

We heard how both Sony and Guinness had taken a simple yet powerful TV idea and helped extent their reach through other channels. Encouraging users to take the content and manipulate it for their own purposes. We also heard that whilst the Bravia ad (balls I think) is the most watched TV ad on You Tube at around 3.5 million views this represented only half the total audience for its launch UK spot which ran at half time during Chelsea v Man U last season. It seems TV is not quite dead yet?

There was throughout, what was an excellent day, lots more to see and do but I got most from the discussion between Andy Duncan (Channel 4), Michael Grade (ITV) and Jane Lighting (C5). A lot more realism was displayed not surprisingly by these wise and dynamic leaders of commercial television. Perhaps the most insightful comment was from Michael Grade, in signature pink socks, who said that the Internet would be a very good thing for television. His case was that when TV launched they said it would kill movies. The film industry was so cautious they would not allow movies to air on TV for fear it would kill off cinema audiences. The first film did not air on UK television until 1960.

In fact, TV proved to be a catalyst for the film industry. TV and new technologies, that have emerged since, have all extended the value chain of the film and TV industry. A film now receives more revenue from DVD and computer games sales than box office receipts. The message was clear. TV had to embrace the Internet as a distribution channel to extend the value of its most important asset.

This was a fitting end to a great day but perhaps a little late on. I guess as Andy Duncan said, it is all about scheduling. The big guns were brought on last to keep the bums on the seats although this proved only moderately successful. Those that had left missed the best bit.

Overall I felt there would be winners and losers in this race. The winners would have a clear vision of how the Internet would help transform their business and those that will fail will continue to regard it as a threat. Google and Microsoft have no respect for history. I am sure the battle will be bloody but perhaps one of the most compelling in the history of media.

*Sorry, I didn’t note down the sources for these but I’m sure they’ll be on the web site.