Saturday, March 19, 2011

TV - A shift has begun

A few months ago I felt that TV is dead. But this is not true, it is a shift. The biggest win against TV had Netflix this week by securing "house of cards" (starting 2012) the first show only aired at Netflix which makes Netflix a serious competition to HBO.
Facebook is now number 4 in video streaming and is offering some movies for streaming. Apple is growing with their video offer and hulu is now number 2 behind Netflix.

However I believe TV will survive if the the TV channels will rethink their concepts. Companies like Apple actually helping TV channels to survive by offering light mobile tablets.

The reality is that still most of the shows and news are first on TV before you can see it I'm the Internet. The truth is that most of us are lazy and clicking through channels is easier than going through websites.

But the big winner for TV channels could be the ability to offer shows and materials on multiple devices. Especially in America, consumers are not really good in concentrating on one thing.

I can see a big growth in watching TV when at the same time some content is available through an app on the iPad. Imagine watching football on the big screen and see at the same time extra info on the iPad for the same game.

A really good example was the Oscar event, we could watch it live on TV and at the same time we could get some background info through the iPad.

20 years ago we all thought that TV will be interactive, see products, click on them and then order them through TV. This really never came, because we don't like to miss the show and don't like big remotes with thousands of buttons like a computer.

But with big screen mobile devices everything changes. We could watch "24 hours" on the TV and at the same time run the 24 hours app on the iPad. As soon commercials are coming we can use the iPad to order items we saw in the show. Or even during the episode we use or mobile device to tweet about the show, buy a purse etc without the need to leave the show because it still runs on the big screen.

I believe the combining of TV and mobile devices will be the future of TV channels. The TV might be at the end like radio. It runs for the sake of sound but we might do at the same time something else on our mobile device, but as soon the sound on TV seems very interesting, we put our mobile device away and watch TV.

The channels who understand this concept will win.
The easiest transition to this is for sport channels like ESPN. Instead of showing static statistics on the big Screen and covering half of the game, the statistic could be dynamic on the mobile device and everybody could decide which statistics to see or which scene should be a replay on the mobile device. During commercial break the mobile device could have a buy now button to allow the consumer to buy the just featured product or to see more info to the aired product.

Combing TV, mobile app, QR code and augmented reality with a touch of social will be the killer solution for TV channels.

The companies need to understand that we right now live in a multiple device word. And consumers like to multitasking, which is easier if it is distributed through multiple devices than just one screen.

Watch out, TV will experience will extremely change in the next 2 years.

- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

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