With
all of this talk about second screens and multi-platforms and all the
opportunities and challenges ahead, it is a good time to reflect on where the
television marketplace headed. Robert Tercek of Creative Visions did just that
at the recent 2nd Screen Summit in NYC. His Cassandra-like assessment
of the state of television called “Ten Things That Should Be Obvious But
Apparently Are Not” could stir fear in the hearts of some media executives.
Tercek
is bullish on the media disruption that is only now just beginning to
manifest. He says that providers who do
not embrace the future with all of its business uncertainties will soon be
steamrolled by it. Are you someone who is afraid of disrupting the current
business model for an unknown monetization future? Well please stand back and
get out of the way.
According
to Tercek, all this fragmentation is causing gridlock, whether it is in content
roll-out, devices or in measurement and TV is fast becoming a bubble economy
that could soon pop. But rather than
ignore the inevitable can we as an industry put aside the status quo and start
to think like disruptors?
The
old TV model does not serve us well in this brave new world and needs to be
changed. For one thing, we need to stop serving advertisers at the expense of
the audience. We tend to think, “How can we best monetize this new business
paradigm?” But the viewers are really in charge and now has the tools and
wherewithal to consume content when, where and how they want it, whether the
media industry can monetize it or not.
In
the three major generations of TV viewers, Boomers celebrated the invention of
the remote control which enabled easier navigation. Generation X welcomed the
DVR which further pushed personal viewing opportunities. Now, Millennials have Youtube
and mobile video at their disposal which not only takes television off
platform, it further enhances viewer control over their entertainment. Sense a
trend here?
Among
some of the more provocative conclusions:
1. TV Everywhere is a failed
experiment, a defensive play by providers, confusing and cumbersome to viewers and
is ultimately unsustainable.
2. Video innovation is coming from
beyond TV, rendering the TV platform as an “also-ran”.
3. The Smart Home trumps Smart TV.
And it all comes down to mobile applications both in and out of the home.
4. TV is essentially an app now.
5. However, large prestigious
networks lose leverage when they release apps because they are suddenly
competing with small interlopers. This humbles great brands since anyone with a
personal brand can launch their own channel.
6. There are no barriers to entry.
You can launch a potentially major entertainment company on a shoestring,
receive free collaboration and use a cloud service for scale.
7. Franchises are cluttered because
we are now all B2C and some of us are better than others. An example here is
Netflix’s House of Cards which has been nominated for a slew of Emmys.
8. There is a re-invigoration of
print (something I have long believed) which can now transcend its format by offering video
and audio.
9. The Internet is Big – Really,
Really Big. Sites that you might never have heard of before are huge and
growing quickly.
10. TV is fast becoming a subset of
digital media causing a shift in the power pyramid. Film used to be on top
followed by broadcast, cable and internet. Now it is Internet and Mobile on top
followed by cable, broadcast and film.
There
is no turning back the media model to a simpler, more economically predictive
time where viewers were more beholden to the offerings of the major entertainment
outlets. It is a time of disruption that can be as exciting as it can be
upsetting. Complacency is not an option. Let’s start disrupting.
What they are discovering is that not only are consumers more
receptive to ad messages in a certain platform sequence—mobile first and
then TV being the most impactful—the format of the ad will also impact
neurological response. Ads designed more for the digital
environment—shorter and with branding introduced earlier in the
message—are more effective to viewers on a digital platform than an ad
designed for TV and repurposed for digital.
