Rapid TV News

Broadcasters must keep all viewers engaged

Chris Forrester ©RapidTVNews | 11-03-2010

To claim that broadcasters must keep viewers engaged is an obvious truism, but a recent Rapid TV News Round Table on IPTV suggested that this obvious aim is being missed by many broadcasters.

The dilemma is that the broadcasting ‘model’ has changed so dramatically, said Bob Gentry of Marquis Consulting. Some broadcasters are embracing new technologies, he said. “Some of them are simply making the content available through a website where they have the rights control because it’s the rights that is the key, so some of them will make an entire programme available or snippets of the programme to guide you to the broadcast or the rebroadcast or to encourage you to record it on your PVR so that you can watch it later.”

“Others are taking a much different approach to it, which is to say this is a whole new way of getting an audience to engage. So they are producing content specifically for the IPTV world, the computer-based viewing experience, and it’s interesting this lean forward/lean back discussion, because that’s changed completely. Lean back used to mean sit around the room and watch the TV. Lean back now may mean, certainly in my house, four or five people on laptops leaning back watching something different.”

“And what’s beginning to happen with the broadcasters is that they’re beginning to see that you’ve got to keep the audience engaged across a number of platforms,” added Gentry.

Mark Goodburn, Director/Marketing & Communication at EchoStar Europe, said it was truly fascinating how television was evolving: “It’s becoming more multiplatform, not just in terms of the TV but delivering that content and services to other devices like smart phones, laptops, et cetera, and use it from a point of convergence which is at this point in time more people argue is probably the set top box so the information comes in and then is distributed to other devices. I think it’s something that at EchoStar we certainly take very, very seriously through investment in assets such as Sling Media, which is a solution for delivering TV everywhere, our ubiquitous entertainment solution.”

Goodburn added that there were degrees of ‘lean forward’ and ‘lean back’. “I think if we go back, say 10 years ago, in the industry when people looked and examined a web TV-type device where people would literally sit there and use the television to surf the internet in a very dominant sort of lean forward experience. I think that’s changed over the last 10 years. I think now that when we say “lean forward” we mostly mean just interactive television and accessing different channels of television through the remote control which really isn’t lean forward as it was first envisaged but is just a development of a rationalisation of the technology today.”

Luke Kennedy, product and sales director at Vision IPTV, a specialist play-out operation that was already tapping right into the supply of broadcast entertainment into non-conventional outlets, said: “I think this is the really interesting space between the consumer experience of broadcast television, the lean back and absorb, or the lean forward interactive activity and that’s where the play is now, between those two experiences really, and to see how those two experiences are really going to play out and define the products ultimately that we try to deliver to people.”

Read or watch more on this Round Table by clicking [here]

© Rapid TV News 2010