New Dimensions And Separate Realities In TV Land

Michael Hedges April 15, 2010 (Follow on Twitter)

Buzz, buzz, buzz; it’s MIPTV. With so much buzzing and twittering how can there be enough time or energy for the PR parties. Television luminaries are buzzing about adapting to converging realities.

Digital dividend is the first reality. With more channels available to viewer’s eyes television operators need that content and lots of it. With ad revenues dropping 9.2% last year and total TV revenues dropping 1.2% over 2008 those offering television, from traditional channels to new media, continue seeking more affordable fare. The production market is adapting.

“It’s becoming increasingly global,” said Reed Midem’s Laurine Garaude to AFP (April 10). “It allows countries emerging from the crisis to share costs.” Reed Midem produces the annual MIPTV show in Cannes, south of France, nice weather. The company estimates the global TV format market at €2.2 billion.

The big money, still, is format development, particularly with an eye to global distribution. “What buyers want in an uncertain market is certainty,” said ITV Studio executive Tobi de Graaff to AFP (April 14). “They're looking for programmes that are tried and tested. You take what's successful about the show without ignoring you're dealing with different cultures. You make the right twists to make it feel home-grown and natural."

With all this globalization, connecting with the new and trendy courses through the veins of TV people. Not a television show alive is without some dimension of social media. Characters and plotlines have Facebook pages and endless Tweets.

A role playing game on Facebook has been adapted from the animated comedy adventure series Totally Spies. Games players move from saving the world to decorating their virtual apartment by acquiring merchandise – enabled by a micro-payment system – and becoming a “Fashion Agent.” Totally Spies is produced by Marathon Media. McDonalds is a world-wide branding partner.

“Connected television is a fundamental change,” said Marathon Media CEO David Michel, quoted by 20minutes.fr (April 13). “Our business is changing. We must ensure a strong and direct relationship between the program and its audience. A program can change channels so fans can stay in contact with it via social networks.”

Spain’s Veo7 is offering another TV-social media hybrid. Twision displays, you guessed it, that wealth of information generated through Twitter. The show debuted March 18 only, so far, in Spain.

It’s more than web and TV technologies converging, though IPTV is still considered the killer development once mobile broadband, WiMax or LTE, rolls out. “Facebook could very well be the next BBC,” announced ‘media futurist’ Gerd Leonhard (April 14) to the assembled buyers and sellers.

No gathering of television people is complete, it seems, without a visit from the dark-side. Mr. Murdoch being unavailable, BSkyB CEO Jeremy Darroch was the designated pinch-hitter for the News Corporation talking points. In his “dark shadows” speech, Darroch groused about online pirates (“thieves”) and regulators (“unprecedented and unwarranted”). And he’s not happy with those new media people.

New media players, he said (April 14), ”are happy to retail content at the lowest possible cost or even give it away in order to earn profits elsewhere…undermining the future or quality content altogether.”

Regulators, he continued, are in cahoots with those new media people. Darroch (and Mr. Murdoch) have been engaged in trench warfare with UK media regulator OFCOM as well as anti-trust authorities over BSkyB’s wholesale pricing. A recent decision by OFCOM is forcing the pay-TV company, principally owned by News Corporation, to reduce the prices it charges other platform operators.

“What the regulator is seeking to do here is, in essence, to promote investment in new delivery platforms. Those platforms will be operated by businesses with little interest in investing in content themselves.” 

Other News Corporation executives on hand kept to the company talking points. Make them pay, said News Corp’s CEO for Digital Media Jonathan Miller. “This is the year the terms of trade will be determined. That is going to relate to everyone’s business models. There isn’t enough advertising money to support what we all want to see.”

Seeing is believing and the MIPTV crowd sees opportunity in 3D TV. Never mind the fact that consumers need to buy a new expensive television receiving device in addition to those funny glasses. The 3D movie Avatar’s box office success has the TV people and consumer electronics people salivating. 20th Century Fox, division of News Corporation, distributed the film. 3D coming to television is just made for pay-TV.

While broadcasters and other television distributors fill their endless hours with the least expensive productions and co-productions, 3D or the promise thereof is a shot of conventional wisdom. Putting viewers by the millions on their couches in front of the medium-sized (but growing) screen requires spectacular.

The FIFA football World Cup, coming up in less than two months, will trial 3D TV broadcasts. In January American sports channel ESPN announced, naturally at the Consumer Electronics show, it would broadcast 25 matches starting with Mexico v. South Africa to launch a dedicated 3D channel. Sony is the principal sponsor and will offer 3D viewing at affiliates retailers. Only Spain’s Sogecable will carry the 3D feed in Europe.

Sports – for premium channels – are a presumed natural fit for 3D home viewing. Orange France is launching a dedicated 3D channel for the Roland Garros tennis tournament. “3D is emotion,” said Orange 3D project manager Ghislaine Le Rhun Gautier to BroadbandTVNews (April 14). “It is about immersion.”

It’s also about consumers stumping up €2,000 for the equipment (plus those famous glasses).  “That is up to the consumer,” said BSkyB product design director Brian Lenz, also to BroadbandTV News. “We are a broadcaster and as with flat screens, it is up to the viewer to buy a plasma or an LCD screen. We broadcast the same thing to active and passive glasses. All we have to do is have two cameras that provide two signals and get those in sync.”

Blockbusters feature movies are also predicted to firmly attach viewers to their couches wearing those 3D glasses. The animated classic Peter Pan is being re-done in 3D by a studio in India. Too, a not inconsiderable market for 3D TV is pubs, bars and all sorts of out of home venues. Outdoor advertising people – never forget the outdoor advertising people – are firmly fixated on delivering, literally and figuratively, immersive messages. After that, naturally, the mobile TV people will have 3D images jumping from your pocket. 

After all the 3D TV sports and blockbuster features coming soon the big 3D news is from Norway. Public television broadcaster NRK will have the Eurovision Song Contest in new dimensions.  Optimism is contagious.