The Future of Television
By Jonathan Halls
January 2009
A lot of people are talking about the digital switchover for TV. In the US, the major networks switch off their analogue transmitters in February and start broadcasting exclusively in digital. In the UK, analogue TV is being phased out between 2008 and 2012.
As television broadcasters go digital, what does it mean for the future of television and indeed the media in general? The media industry has experienced over the past decade some of the most radical changes since the Gutenberg printing press was invented back in the late 1430s.
Production
The most obvious development for consumers is high definition television with that crystal clear video. At the other end of the spectrum, web video offers poor quality but amazing opportunities for interactivity and user generated content that take it beyond television’s traditional arena of news and entertainment.
Behind the scenes, broadcasters are changing the way they make programs. End-to-end digital production will make video tapes a thing of the past.
The cost and size of equipment such as video cameras, is dropping fast while the quality of picture acquisition constantly improves. Video crews are getting smaller as more and more we find one person directing, shooting and editing their own video project.
IPTV and traditional TV
Probably the biggest threat to traditional TV as we know it is IPTV and Mobile TV. IPTV simply refers to TV over the Internet. Websites such as Youtube have shown us what traditional TV should worry about.
First, they have poached audiences from television, especially teens. This is likely to continue as teens grow older and more teens go to the Web.
Second, video websites have enabled anyone from anywhere to become a TV producer and distributor for virtually no cost.
Third, amateurs now make films – some of them very good. Communication and learning professionals, as well as small businesses, are using Web video to convey visual messages to customers and provide learning more effectively that reduces the time and cost of travel.
Fourth, video is no longer a standalone medium. It is one method of communication that sits among other methods such as radio and text that were traditionally standalone mediums.
The fifth and probably most significant challenge is that networks are no longer the only broadcasters or publishers. Social networks like Bebo now commission web video. Advertising agencies now commission video productions and stream them directly on client websites.
Distribution
So it’s probably right to ask what television will look like in the future. Will networks exist as they have in the past? Will TV be IPTV or mobile?
Mobile TV was a buzzword at the International Broadcast Convention in Amsterdam last year. While technology is still not robust enough to support reliably good video broadcasts, watch this space.
Fiber optic cable still hasn’t been laid out but watch this space too. The good news is that television quality video on the Internet is on its way.
Change is not just going to happen in the TV industry. The newspaper industry may face one of its toughest years in 2009.
Over the past few years, circulation has dropped steadily in the West by between 3 and 5 percent each year.
Newspapers
The result is a drop in advertising sales although some are moving online. But the online advertising market is not yet mature enough to support a newspaper operation going fully online. So it puts newspaper in a tricky “in between” period.
Many newspapers are questioning their future. Those that refused to acknowledge the power of the Internet five years ago are becoming late converts but struggling because they do not have structures in their organization to support a converged newsroom.
A converged newsroom allows them to provide both print and online editions efficiently. You don’t just wake up one morning and say, “We’re doing the Internet.”
Proper changes take months and sometimes years. And while there are principles for convergence, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Every company needs to formulate its strategy based on its market, staff and resources.
The next few months will be critical for the newspapers that haven’t started on multimedia. Getting themselves organized with so little time left may lead to mistakes.
Some doomsday prophets predict newspapers will become extinct, but that’s unlikely. Yes, they will evolve, possibly dramatically.
But the survivors will be the publishers who embraced the media evolution, planned a strategic response and are carefully putting it into action.
Media in the Crystal Ball
The media will no longer belong to elite publishers or privileged few who get jobs as journalists. Anyone can become a journalist, film maker or commentator.
The issue for consumers will be navigating through lots of content—much of it poor—to find quality. For producers, it will be learning new professional skills to create content that draws audiences.
The Internet ushers in an era of multimedia which frees us from one medium to use audio, text or video to tell our stories or convey messages more powerfully than ever before.
And media production will no longer be exclusively for mainstream publishers or broadcasters. Production equipment makes it possible for anyone to create content. It could be for e-learning and marketing messages. The possibilities are limitless.