Category Archives: IPTV
From Digiday: Second Screen Is Not Social TV
While the terms “social TV” and “second screen” are often used interchangeably, they are, in fact, two different experiences: Social TV is a subset of second screen — and a somewhat minor one at that. As technology and adoption advance, every show will need to come up with its own unique spin on what constitutes valuable second-screen content. For a baseball game, it may be a very graphics-intensive take on statistics; for a reality game show, it may be online voting. Those decisions are up to the networks and the individual show runners, who’ll need to balance their goals (e.g., increase tune-in or cement loyalty) with what their budget allows. READ THE REST AT DIGIDAY.COM
From Beet.tv – KIT Digital Analyst Alan Wolk: The State Of TV Everywhere Is At An Impasse
This is the second of three interviews Alan Wolk did during Beet Retreat 2013 Wolk notes “As an indication of how fast the industry is moving, although we filmed this about 3 weeks ago, in the intervening period, Nielsen announced that they would soon begin counting views on iPads, Xboxes and other non-TV devices. Since that was the crux of the network’s objections to TV Everywhere (the fact that they’d lose ad revenue when people watched remotely on a iPad) it would seem to give a green light for a renewed push. One that may have the full cooperation of the networks, or at least their tacit blessing.” Read the rest at Beet.tv
The Meteor Cometh
So for a long time, we’ve been talking about the mythical meteor that was going to hit the TV industry and wipe out all the dinosaurs. Because there didn’t seem to be a logical out to the situation we were in, where everyone was making money and no one wanted to rock the status quo. Which left prognosticators like me talking about the meteor, the “something” that would happen and cause change in the industry. Only we couldn’t figure out where that meteor would come from or what it would look like. Then suddenly this morning, the meteor appeared. I’m talking about the lawsuit that Cablevision filed, asking the court to void the late 2012 carriage agreement they signed with Viacom because Viacom had “coerced them” by “threatening to impose massive financial penalties” unless they complied with Viacom’s demands.” There’s a wonderful irony in this too, given that it was Viacom who successfully shut down Cablevision’s TV Everywhere play back in … Continue reading
The TV Business: A Primer For The Uninformed
It’s a relentless drumbeat: the TV industry is dead. It’s just like the music industry. 20somethings are avoiding the cord. I want HBO a la carte. YouTube will kill cable. The TV industry is dead. And yet, if there’s a common thread to all these articles and blog posts, it’s that so many of the people writing them have a limited idea of how the television industry actually works, particularly from a business perspective. So here’s a little primer on how the US television industry works (there are significant difference in other countries), just to clear the air. The Players: This is step one – knowing who is who and what their relationships are. We are going to look at the 7 key players, circa 2013: The Networks, The MVPDs, The Premium Networks, The OTT Networks, Smart TVs, Third Party devices and Social TV. PLAYER #1: The Networks: The networks (ABC, CBS, MTV, et al) provide content and right now, … Continue reading
TV Everywhere Just Got Blown Wide Open: New On Digiday
Charlie Ergun sure knows how to keep things interesting. The Dish CEO poked his finger in the eye of the TV networks last year with his ad-skipping Hopper device. He just jabbed them again when he introduced the SlingHopper at CES — and blew TV Everywhere wide open. READ THE REST ON DIGIDAY.COM
10 Questions About The TV Industry 2013
All the upheaval in the TV industry (and we’re just at the beginning) leaves us with lots of questions that can only be answered over time. Here are ten of the big ones we’ll be watching in 2013: 1. Will Anyone Cave? Meaning, will any of the networks give in and start selling content to a third party disruptor like Apple, Google or Intel, opening the door for the complete dismantling of the current economic structure? Right now that seems unlikely: the TV industry is not like the music industry or even the cell phone industry – none of the major players are losing money. But stranger things have happened and it’s worth keeping an eye on, particularly because until someone actually does cave, innovation is pretty much a pipe dream. 2. How Many Hours Until The Other MVPDs Start Pressuring The Networks Over TV Everywhere? As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the Sling Hopper pretty much blows the whole TV Everywhere scenario wide … Continue reading
From Beet.tv: KIT Digital Turns Video Ads Into Retail Experience With Ad Locker
KIT’s Alan Wolk was interviewed at the 2nd Screen Summit at CES by Beet.tv’s Megan O’Neill LAS VEGAS — As second screen technology continues to evolve, consumer desire for the second screen experience is on the rise and video software and services company KIT Digital is at the forefront of this evolution. At the 2nd Screen Summit at CES we had the opportunity to talk with KIT Digital’s Global Lead Analyst, Alan Wolk, to find out what the company has in store for the coming year. In our video interview, Wolk discusses a Windows 8 app, which KIT Digital recently created for 4oD, channel 4 in the UK, and is “already one of the more popular apps on the Windows Store.” Wolk also told us about updates to KIT’s Social Program Guide, a white label solution enabling cable television providers to offer subscribers a second screen experience. Talk explains that KIT is prepared to launch a major update which is … Continue reading
The TV Industry Is Alive and Well: New @ Digiday
I have a new article about the TV industry up at Digiday this week, explaining why the business is currently more analogous to the pre-iPhone mobile phone industry than to the post-Napster music industry. It’s a relentless drumbeat: The TV industry is dead, 20-somethings are cutting the cord. They want HBO; YouTube will kill cable. Not so fast. The pay-TV industry is not that easy to dismantle. That’s largely because the business dynamics make it a pretty tough beast to slay.Let’s start with the giant bundles of channels you’re forced to take as part of your pay-TV package. READ THE REST AT DIGIDAY
IBC Retrospective: KIT’s Double Whammy
KIT digital walked away from IBC with an unbeaten record, winning both the IBC Innovation Award and the CSI (Cable and Satellite International) Award. The XBox app that KIT created for Channel 4’s 4oD video-on-demand service received the prestigious IBC Innovation Award on Sunday night. The app app extends 4oD to the Microsoft Xbox 360 game console and leverages the Xbox Kinect’s Voice andNatural User Interfaces, allowing users to browse and choose video content using intuitive gesture and voice control. On Friday, our white label Social Program Guide product beat out three other finalists to garner the CSI Award for Best Social TV Technology, Service or Application. The Social Program Guide or SPG is a second screen app that is a mash-up of an EPG and a remote control with an overlay of social functionality. Because the product is owned by the network operator, the SPG provides the unique ability to change the channel directly from the app, so that users can … Continue reading
IBC 2012
IBC 2012 is on this weekend in Amsterdam and I will be there representing KIT at two different sessions. On Saturday night, I’ll be delivering the keynote at the 2nd Screen Summit Amsterdam with the first live version of the viral “10 Things You Need To Know About The Future of Television” (I’ll be providing a more Eurocentric spin for the IBC audience.) There are a lot of really big name speakers as 2nd Screen, so if you are in Amsterdam for IBC, please check it out. Then, on Sunday, I will be on stage at the IBC Rising Stars event, along with Naomi Climer from Sony Entertainment and Tony Churnside from the BBC. We’ll be discussing what our paths were into the industry and how it’s changed over the years. I’ve pointed out to my kids (several times) that the program refers to me as an “inspirational industry figure” but they seem rather nonplussed. Check me out on Twitter for updates and other news from the show.
KIT digital’s Social Program Guide Shortlisted for the CSI Awards
We are proud to announce that KIT digital’s Social Program Guide (SPG) has been shortlisted for the CSI Awards in the Best Social TV technology, service or application category. The SPG is a white label, second screen solution for network operators that is essentially a mash-up of the remote control and the electronic program guide, with an overlay of social functionality to aid in the discovery process. This allows viewers to enjoy a full range of social TV functions, as well as change the channel, all through a single intuitive interface. Served through KIT digital’s Cosmos Video Platform, the SPG also boasts support for cloud-based DVR functionality, seamless VOD store integration, and multiple e-commerce models and ad serving for advanced content monetization. The SPG was introduced to critical acclaim at this year’s National Association of Broadcasters show. We are especially pleased to be shortlisted this year as it marks the 10th anniversary of the CSI awards which were first launched … Continue reading
Apple TV Is Going To Be Software, Not Hardware
Back in January, we predicted that an Apple TV would be sold like an iPhone, via a proprietary deal with a select MVPD, who’d offer their subscribers an iPhone-like discount on the beautiful new box for a two-year engagement. So now I’m invoking Clause 34.2.A of the 2007 Addendum to the 2005 International Internet Code* to take that back. Sort of. I still think Apple is still going to offer someone a proprietary deal for its product similar to the one described above. Only the product is not going to be a TV set, but rather software that will put a beautiful new interface on the TV you already own. There’s no need for Apple to build a TV: the ones we already have work really well. They’re dumb terminals. There’s not a whole lot of clamoring for improvement on the size and shape of the screen or the quality of the HD display. (Compare that to the cell phone market … Continue reading
Nothing To See Here
The amount of lazy reporting that goes on in this space continues to amaze me. The latest example is the misinterpretation of a report on a drop in US cable subscriptions to mean that cord cutting is on the rise and viewers are abandoning pay TV in droves. Only the report was about actual cable subscriptions, e.g. the numbers reported by cable companies like Time Warner and Cablevision. It does not take into account the numbers reported by pay-TV services that don’t rely on cable, like Verizon FIOS, AT&T U-Verse, Dish and Direct TV. The telcos in particular reported a net gain in subscribers. Oops. Furthermore, most industry observers assume that since the two numbers are relatively equal, all that’s at play here is that the newer telcos services (FIOS and Uverse) are stealing subscribers from their more entrenched rivals. And, as Peter Kafka points out in the Wall Street Journal, cable subscriptions almost always drop in Q2, a time when … Continue reading
Why #NBCFail Is #Doomed
This article originally ran on Digiday It sure sucks to be NBC this week. The Peacock Network is at the center of yet another Twitter-centric firestorm around a relatively minor First World Problem that’s got the cable-free utopians in yet another uproar. Granted, not showing the opening ceremony in real time online or on Bravo was a bit of a miscalculation. But it’s certainly not the disaster of apocalyptic proportion the Occupy TV types are making it out to be. It was a business decision. And while I get that no one else you graduated from Vassar with has cable, between 80 percent to 90 percent of Americans do, so NBC really isn’t all that worried about the 2 percent to 5 percent that don’t. No matter how much you tweet about it. They (and the rest of the TV industry) actually do get that change is coming. It’s just that right now, it’s not profitable for them to radically … Continue reading
2nd Screen Rising
While Google’s recent announcement of details around their Great Kansas City TV Adventure raised all sorts of questions about both their eventual intentions and the viability of their current ones, one crucial detail got lost in the shuffle. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Google is planning on giving every new subscriber to their pay-TV service an Android-based tablet to use as a remote control. That’s a development we’ve been predicting for a while now, but Google’s announcement moves the timeline up. A tablet as a remote control opens the door for all kinds of 2nd screen apps, particularly one that’s controlled by the MVPD themselves. (Full disclosure: our KIT Social Program Guide app is a white label app that does exactly that: give control of the 2nd screen app and all the resulting data to the MVPD.) By putting a tablet directly into consumers hands and telling them to use it as a remote control, Google is all but ensuring the rapid ascension … Continue reading
10 Things You Need To Know About The Future of Television
10 Things You Need To Know About The Future of Television from Alan Wolk
E-TV in the Age of Personalization
Adland has long dreamed of a world where viewers sat in front of their television sets, buying everything from Anacin to Zest with a single click of the remote. They’ve even named it “Jennifer Aniston’s Sweater” after a hypothetical situation where viewers would be able to click to buy the garment the moment they saw it on the Friends star. Only that’s never going to happen. For the Jennifer Aniston’s Sweater experience to be viable, it needs to truly be one-click, or it becomes too distracting and takes the viewer away from the show, something the actual viewer regards as a negative outcome. And the fact of the matter is that very few products– impulse purchases or otherwise– fall into that category. There are always decisions to be made: what color? what size? where do you want it shipped? do you want it sent overnight? And by the time you’ve made those decisions, Chandler’s already asked Monica to marry him, and … Continue reading
Content Distribution- Where Are We Going? That Is The Question.
I wanted to introduce Laura Frankel, the newest contributor to The Monitor. Laura comes to us via Sezmi and now heads up our Content Strategy and Programming Department. Laura is a respected industry veteran who helped launch Animal Planet and numerous other Discovery Networks properties. She will be providing us with her unique perspective on the content site of the business. — Alan I thought that for my first post with the Monitor that I would just do a little piece on how far we have come with content distribution in the past 35 years totally from my perspective. Nothing fancy… you will find that my style is very conversational and that I don’t take myself seriously at all. I am just grateful to still be in the content space and having a blast as the rules keep changing and the content owners keep trying to grow their margins. I was just reminiscing and remembering my childhood when there were … Continue reading
An End To Bandwidth Caps?
The Wall Street Journal is reporting tonight that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether cable companies are “acting improperly” by using bandwidth caps to “quash nascent competition from online video.” Depending on how this plays out (and it will take several years to play out and likely require a Supreme Court decision) this could significantly change the industry: without some sort of government action there’s no way any virtual MSO could take off: the cable companies and telcos (e.g. Comcast, Time Warner, FIOS et. al.) provide internet service (and the wires that bring the internet) to a huge percentage of the US population – estimates are somewhere between 75 and 90%. As we discussed here last week, the ability to impose bandwidth caps allows cable companies and telcos to effectively shut down any internet-based MSO by making it prohibitively expensive to watch online video from another provider. Especially since subscribers to their double and triple play packages (TV + Broadband … Continue reading
Alan Wolk on The Real Story At Apple’s WWDC
Apple made a number of noteworthy announcements at today’s WWDC, but the one that’s of most interest to the TV industry is the fact that the newest OS, dubbed Mountain Lion, will have AirPlay enabled for laptops and desktops, not just iPhones and iPads. AirPlay is Apple’s software solution for streaming video from your device to your TV set using the $99 Apple TV box. Enabling it on all devices, while not unexpected, is still a huge breakthrough. That’s because most people don’t have iPads. A fact that’s easy to forget if you are in the industry and surrounded by people who do. (We call that “NASCAR Blindness” after the ad industry’s inability to recognize the huge fan base NASCAR had accrued because no one on Madison Avenue actually knew someone who admitted to liking NASCAR.) Most people don’t have iPhones either, and neither iOS device has a whole lot of storage. But laptops and desktops? They are plentiful. And … Continue reading
TV 3.0 Summit at the Paley Center
One of the signs of a really good conference is that you actually walk away with the feeling that you’ve learned something. Which I why I’m glad I went over the Paley Center yesterday for the TV 3.0 Summit sponsored by The Media Council and Broadcasting and Cable. The TV industry is reeling from all the digital changes. Not necessarily in a bad way, but everything is happening pretty fast and furious and, as Discovery CEO David Zaslav noted in his interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick, no one really knows what’s coming next. One of the themes was a recent article by Henry Blodgett proclaiming the death of the television industry. Irwin Gottlieb, Chairman and CEO of WPP’s Group M had the most blunt assessment as he told CNN’s Erin Burnett, “with all due respect to him… he’s totally wrong. One should never do ‘sample-of-one’ research” Gottlieb’s analysis was spot on: Blodgett’s analysis was based on his own NASCAR Blindness. … Continue reading
The Orange Milk Crate: Musings on the Rapid Shift in Power in Retail and TV
A few weeks ago, I set out to buy an orange plastic milk crate to use as a newspaper recycling bin, so, like many consumers these days, I went online to search for one via Google. Looking back, I realized that my decision reflected a real sea change in consumer behavior that involved a couple of unique decisions along the way. Pre-internet, I would have walked into a store like Target or Bed, Bath & Beyond and chosen from among their selection of plastic milk crates. If I was really committed to finding an orange one, I would have continued my search by roaming from store to store. The amount of time and money I spent on my search would be directly correlative to the degree to which I wanted an orange milk crate. Nowadays, that paradigm is reversed. It’s easy enough to find an orange milk crate online. My key decision has now changed to “does the price exceed my … Continue reading
Flies With Honey: How Network Operators Plan To Keep Their Audience
Verizon FIOS announced plans today to upgrade the speeds they offer residential customers (although keeping with tradition, the feature greeted registered users as a splash page which, when clicked on, lead to a dead page. Note to FIOS: you put up the splash page last, after you’ve got the other pages working. Sort of like a door.) Websites missteps aside, what’s really significant about that announcement is that it’s just another step in the network operators plan to stop users from cutting cords. Because Verizon’s pricing makes it more expensive to get high-speed Internet service as a stand-alone product versus as part of a bundle that includes TV and phone service. (FierceCable has the price of a 50/20 service only as $140/month. I pay less than that for 50/20 internet plus the comes-with-HBO-and-Showtime TV package and phone service. I remember when I was signing up that it wound up being cheaper to get a landline phone thrown in.) That’s how … Continue reading
Summer Preview: What’s Next on TV?
To start the summer off, we thought we’d take a look at some TV shows that are currently trending around the world. Whereas Hollywood once relied heavily on recycled Britcoms for hits, they are now reaching out to some previously unexplored territory. Homeland, the hit Showtime series with Claire Danes, is based on an Israeli show of the same name. Ditto HBO’s In Therapy. And Denmark was the origination point for The Killing, the new AMC thriller. Today, in Part 1 of our Summer Previews, we’ll take a look at breaking shows from the US, Israel and Australia. KIT’s Director of Social Media, Farhana Rahman, shines a spotlight on Don’t Trust The B—- in Apt. 23 which has been rapidly gaining a following on the ABC network here in the US. Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 (commonly referred to as Apartment 23) is a half-hour sitcom starring Krysten Ritter as Chloe, and Dreama Walker as June Colburn. … Continue reading
The Convergence Conundrum
Verizon’s FIOS TV service announced a rate hike this week, which coincides with their announcement at The Cable Show that they were going to be rolling out a mobile video app called Viewdini, which searches through content from Netflix, Comcast, Time Warner and others (but not FIOS, interestingly enough. At least not yet.) The app allows you to look for a particular show or movie, find it and then stream it to your mobile device. This comes on the heels of the telco’s recently confirmation that they are done with FIOS build-out for now, and are concentrating instead on fill-in: gaining additional customers in areas where they already have a presence. All of which leads industry insiders to wonder: is Verizon looking to sell FIOS? While the service is widely regarded as the Neiman Marcus of cable service, with new fiber optic cable and truly “blazing fast” internet, it’s been very, very expensive for Verizon to build: it can take … Continue reading
The Assault Continues: Four New Consumer-Centric Video Technologies
It wasn’t too hard to predict that once every permutation of text-based social media had been explored, would-be entrepreneurs would shift their attention to video. And while “social TV” has become an all-purpose buzzword these days, this spring has seen a couple of notable consumer-centric introductions First off are the competing social video services Viddy and SocialCam. Both of which take the cute-puppy-video meme to the next level. While users are encouraged to upload their own video and share it with their Facebook friends, the primary use of both sites seems to be sharing new cute puppy videos on Facebook. That’s because both apps use “frictionless sharing” – updating your Facebook timeline every time you watch a video through the service. Once “Janet Smith just watched “Beaglemania!” on SocialCam” starts populating your news feed, it encourages your friends to sign up so they can watch too. This cycle– both Viddy and Social Cam rate high on Facebook’s SuperSecret Algorithm– has … Continue reading
KIT digital working on 11 Latin American TV Projects
This article, by Phil Anderson, originally ran in Business News Americas Video management software provider KIT digital expects to end 1H13 with 11 commercially active OTT or IPTV projects in Latin America, executives told BNamericas. “We have 10 large infrastructure projects going on now, apart from [already active] Telecom Argentina,” said Charlie Deane, KIT digital’s OTT solutions director for Spanish-speaking markets. “Some are very advanced, already in internal beta-testing today. There are others that are going live in 2-3 months, and others for which we’re discussing terms, with no agreements finalized yet. We can expect them to be happening by year-end or in the first and second quarters next year.” The company established its client footprint in the region during 2011, gaining such names as The Broadcasting Corporation of the Bahamas (ZNS Network), Merville Lynch Productions, Telecom Argentina (NYSE: TEO), Clarín, Hosanna Visión, Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (Universal Church of the Kingdom of God), Victory in Christ Ministry … Continue reading
The Nielsen Myth
This originally ran on Digiday and was picked up by IPTV News. Co-authored with KIT COO Alex Blum TV is a hugely successful $60 billion industry. It’s also built on a jury-rigged measurement system that’s a bit of a joke and needs to be replaced for the potential of the modern media world to be fully realized. Nielsen ratings have admittedly come a long way from handwritten diaries, but they’ve still become antiquated as our viewing experience shifts from broadcast television to over-the-top services like Netflix and Hulu. This sea change of Internet meshing with TV presents a golden opportunity for anyone with the smarts to step up and figure out a better way to mine the resulting avalanche of consumer-engagement data that is now becoming available. Nielsen guesstimates shouldn’t be OK anymore. With IPTV, it’s possible to track exactly how many people are watching any given show and where and when they are watching it, and it can break … Continue reading
The View From QITCOM 2012 – Social TV In The Arab World
I had the pleasure of representing KIT digital at QITCOM, the annual conference held in Doha, Qatar. My panel was on Social TV and my fellow panelists represented 6 different countries. Social TV is a different animal in the Arab world and the entire conference was most definitely an eye-opener. But first a little set-up: Doha is well on its way to becoming the next Dubai. The economy is booming and there are buildings going up everywhere you look. In places, it looks a lot like the suburbs of Dallas or Las Vegas circa 2004, where entire towns seemed to spring up out of the desert overnight, symmetrically designed and carefully landscaped. It’s easy to get lulled into thinking you’ve landed in Princess Jasmine’s Oasis at Disney World, but those people in the traditional dishdashas, kefiyas and veiled burkas are not cast members: they’re the ones in charge. And yet the Al Jazeera network is based here too, in a … Continue reading
Asia Takes the Lead in Growth of IPTV Services
Global IPTV revenue and subscriber numbers will double within five years, with Asia being the driving force. According to Informa Telecoms & Media, the revenues from IPTV services will reach $11.9 billion by the end of 2016. That’s a $5.7 billion increase from the number recorded for 2011. Additionally, the current global subscriber count of 34.3 million will jump to 76.6 by the end of 2016, which accounts for 5% of homes around the world with television sets, with plenty of room for additional growth. From a regional standpoint, Asia will prove to be the leader in the growth of IPTV, accounting for a little over a quarter million of the number of subscribers in 2016. The US will be a close second, drawing nearly 14 million subscribers by the end of 2016. Both Eastern and Western Europe will show an increase of over 10 million subscribers. France is currently the IPTV leader in Europe, and their numbers will continue … Continue reading
The VOD Wars
While social TV seems to be garnering the bulk of the buzz these days, the real action is happening in Video on Demand or VOD. VOD was once treated as the ugly stepsister of the industry, with most operators regarding it as a promotional vehicle (hence the proliferation of 5-minute “Making of X” videos on most On Demand channels.) Purchasing broadcast rights from the studios was costly, VOD technology was very unstable and prone to mid-broadcast meltdowns, and, with the ubiquity of DVD rental services, there was very little demand for On Demand. Until, of course, there was. Reed Hasting and his board seem just as stunned as the rest of the industry by the rapid growth of Netflix streaming video. The fact that consumers, a notoriously technophobic lot, would actually figure out how to hook up a third-party device (laptops, PlayStations, Roku boxes and the like) and use them to stream movies over WiFi to their television sets was … Continue reading
The Social EPG Is The Social TV Of Tomorrow
While social TV apps continue to crop up like proverbial weeds, the future of the social TV app will likely be a proprietary social EPG (electronic program guide) provided by the same company that supplies your pay TV service. It will likely come with a companion tablet device too, one your pay TV provider gives you for a low monthly fee, much in the same way they now provide set top boxes. Multiple tablets will mean multiple fees, but most households will want at least one for every adult or teenage member. This model is the obvious next step for an industry that’s waiting and watching as the current wave of app developers figure out the rules of the game. They’re helping to figure out the ideal user experience and which behaviors (e.g. check-in, chat, recommendations) viewers are most interested in. And they’re doing it all on their VC’s dime as the big industry players just sit back and take … Continue reading
An Apple TV Will Be Just Like An iPhone Because…
It will be sold to you at a heavily subsidized price from a service provider looking to lock you in to a multi-year contract. Because Apple can’t build their own pay TV service. Nor can they launch an internet only service. Just like the iPhone, someone else owns the pipes: in this case it is likely to be the same company that provides pay TV service. And if you own the pipes, you can make using lots of bandwidth to watch someone else’s pay TV service really expensive and inconvenient. If you are Apple, going through a specific pay TV provider allows you to have all the control you had over the iPhone. You can design the interface and do all the branding you want. Because if anything goes wrong, consumers will blame the pay TV provider. Not Apple. It’s a business model that will turn the TV industry on it head. And likely be very good for consumers. Televisions … Continue reading
Changing Behaviors Around TV: What’s Next?
As the convergence of the TV and Interwebs moves ahead, there are still a number of behaviors the industry must figure out how to change, solve for or live with. To wit: TV Is Not A Solitary Activity: whether it’s a group of college roommates or the more traditional family unit, few people have their own personal TVs. That makes recommendation engines a bigger challenge than the kool-aid drinkers let on. Figuring out an easy way for the system to understand who is in the room is going to be one of the biggest UX challenges of our time. Because it’s not just knowing that Dad is in the room and showing him shows he might want to watch. It’s knowing that dad and 8-year old Betty are in the room and figuring out which shows the two of them might want to watch. Or knowing that Betty is the one actually watching TV and Dad is just there keeping … Continue reading
Why A Suggestion Engine Is Different Than A Recommendation Engine
While the terms “Suggestion Engine” and “Recommendation Engine” are used interchangeably, they actually refer to two very different behaviors and desired outcomes.A “suggestion engine” is for those times when we have a fairly specific idea of what we want and are in active search mode. A “recommendation engine” is for those times when we are already doing something (shopping, watching, listening, reading) and basically says “here are some things you might enjoy the next time you decide to shop/watch/listen/read.” That distinction shows that the suggestion engine is far more valuable, because it comes into play in response to an active request on the part of the user. A recommendation engine is far more passive: the user is not actively looking for any additional input: if the engine shows them something that they wind up being interested in, that’s just a lucky strike extra. To put a real world face on these terms, Jinni is a good example of a suggestion engine: … Continue reading
Where 2012′s Virtual MSOs Are Likely To Come From
There’s been a lot of noise this week around an article (registration required) by noted analyst Rich Greenfield claiming that 2012 will see the launch of an internet-based MSO (multi-system operator, e.g. a large pay TV provider like Comcast or Time-Warner.) It’s an interesting argument, one that all but guarantees a lot of buzz since so many would like to see it happen, but I’m just not seeing it, at least from the sources he’s predicting. Greenfield’s argument is that virtual MSOs will be considerably cheaper and more user friendly: (V)irtual MSO pricing to the consumer will be substantially lower, subscribers will receive a significantly better user-interface/navigation across a wide-array of IP-enabled devices in the home and service will be accessible anywhere in the US, rather than being stuck in a certain region. I’ll buy the user interface argument… maybe– existing pay TV operators are putting a lot of time and effort into improving that experience precisely because they know it’s an area they … Continue reading
Why Social TV Will Extend the Reach of Shows
Part 3 of 3 of a series on SocialTV by our strategy director Alan Wolk that originally appeared in DigiDay. Last week, I wrote about how social intermissions are taking the place of commercials in the television viewing experience. Today we’ll look at how social can impact the reach of a TV program. In the first two parts of this series, we reviewed Social TV’s role in the decision to watch shows and how the shows are watched. But what happens after the programming ends? The social experience continues in the third phase, the Reviewing phase. Once a user has watched a show, they’re inclined to share their thoughts. We’ve already seen an explosion of reviews when it comes to restaurants, hotels and other things. TV is ripe for the reviewer in every household. A well-designed social TV app can prompt that behavior, either by asking viewers to rate a show as it’s ending or creating a points and levels … Continue reading
Social Television Isn’t Necessarily Social
The term “social TV” has been thrown around a lot these days to describe any and all second screen experiences created around television shows. But it’s well worth noting that many of these apps and features have nothing inherently “social” about them: they are information sources that viewers may choose to share on social networks, but that is not the primary function. I’m talking about apps that provide statistics during football games or episode guides during dramas and cast bios during reality shows. That type of functionality is going to be more valuable to many viewers than something that allows them to have conversations during the show. It’s well suited for family viewing– only 31% of Americans watch TV alone – where we are more likely to share whatever we’ve learned with the other people in the room (as opposed to say, the entire Twitterverse.) It is also key insofar as creating any kind of buzz: the more content you … Continue reading
The Yin and Yang of the TV/Internet convergence
The industry has been buzzing about this insightful analysis from our own Social Strategy Director Alan Wolk The Ying and Yang of the TV/Internet Convergence View more presentations from Alan Wolk