The Future of TV

Who’d have thought that the appearance on BBC TV’s Question Time of odious Nazi nutter Nick Griffin would have given so many middle aged, middle class technophobes a vision of the future? No I don’t mean that Griffin and his theatre of hate are going to seize power (God forbid), more that it saw usually passive TV viewers reaching for their mobile phones and Twittering and Facebooking away like crazy while the show was on air.

If you are under 30 you will probably think so what, but to me – as I approach middle age – I was astounded by how many people I know who never update their Facebook profiles suddenly appeared and started ranting about Griffin. Then others joined in. Pretty soon – about 10 minutes into the broadcast – there was a huge heated debate between people I know, people I don’t know but who know people I do, and people none of us know about  the programme. All on mobile.

And this is what really made me feel good inside. Suddenly a bunch of people who usually poo-poo the idea that we are all going to be interacting while watching TV were doing it. I have, because of the business I am in, long been a user of my mobile while watching TV. I tweet, I Facebook, I email, I Google stuff, I Shazam tunes that are playing. But most of my non-telemedia friends don’t.

But now they might. Presented with something that they were interested in got the older crowd going and what a riot it was: we were all broadly in agreement over the content of the show, but people raised new and interesting points and even some great jokes. It was a real experience.

But this is the future of what we do. It starts, as Question Time showed, with some social networking banter, but it won’t be long before the augmented reality services we see on mobiles are linked to TV programmes and we suddenly become two screen viewers.

This has huge ramifications for how the media and telemedia industries develop. The services that can be created using what we have today and this buy in from viewers could be huge. The question is how can this be monetised?

Well in the most obvious first instance is to start to look at what can be done around advertising on TV and the device; what can then be done with augmented reality for TV advertising; and then looking at how to perhaps keep those engaged on the second device on the air and spending through value-added services.

As Telemedia360 in Liverpool showed on 21 October, the real key is relevance. Question Time also showed this. The social interaction that that particular show spawned was a result of it being something that engaged a particular demographic with a topic that compelled them to communicate with their peers. And this is the lesson that we all need to learn to drive media interaction forward: make it relevant, make it good and make it cheap – and people will pay.