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Putting high speed internet within everyone’s reach, combined with the development of innovative new technologies will translate into new kinds of services being offered and into new business models. What can we expect with respect to television?
It must be said, 2006 will be the year of many upheavals for television. After having tried to seduce televiewers at the office through their personal computers, the battlefield that everyone will be trying to conquer will be the living room.
In its annual predictions at the beginning of 2005, the Montréal consulting firm, VDL2, determined that Internet television (IPTV) was a trend that would mature by the end of the year.
Consumption on Demand
According to the strategic analysts at VDL2, « We will see many plans for the diffusion of television content over the Internet, calling into question the familiar role of broadcasters with a view to changing the limits on today’s television (constraints of choice and time) and creating a gigantic self-serve television world in which Internauts would have free rein to design their own programming. »
VDL2 is not isolated in its analysis. The head of Quebecor Inc., Pierre-Karl Péladeau, also predicted the advent of vast changes in the television landscape. According to Mr. Péladeau, « The digital revolution is changing profoundly the mode of creating and broadcasting programmes. Video on demand is in full expansion, the personal digital recorder (which allows for the elimination of commercials from programmes) is spreading and Internet television is at the gates. The downloading of music turned the music industry upside down, and this is but the prelude to the next major revolution: the downloading of videos and broadcasting over the Internet and through mobile phones. »
Given this reasoning, Quebecor wants to be « a change agent, to play an active role in the opening of these different broadcasting windows to ensure an important role for its productions. The route is through video on demand; ZIK.CA, the legal music download site managed by Archambault; and, soon, video on the Internet and on mobile telephones. »
How Does It Work?
When we speak of Internet television, there is much confusion between streaming - where the most familiar standards are Windows MediaPlayer, Quicktime and Real - and Internet television (IPTV), the protocol for transferring televisual data over an IP network like the Internet. Given that the decoding of these data now requires a personal computer, Internet television will make use of new data compression techniques which will permit the reception of High Definition television. To do this, all that will be required to receive favourite programmes is the connection of a television to a set-top box/decoder that is linked to a network.
To be brief, what is clear is that there is a revolution underway. The arrival of the Internet and the multiplication of the supply of high speed services can only lead to profound change in the way we consume televisual and cultural products. Ongoing major changes will put TV, the cinema and radio on an IP platform serving up podcasting, videoblogging, photostreaming, and, obviously, IP television. Visionaries like the former Vice-President of the United States, Al Gore, have in any case understood the importance of quickly staking out their claims in order to be able to assert their positions.
With the establishment of the Current TV channel, Al Gore and his partners intended to create an avowedly partisan product, hoping to put an end to the dominance in the United States of the conservative media, represented by Fox News.
Current TV’s programming is distinguished by having part of its content generated by the subscribers themselves in the form of clips whose principal characteristic is their limited duration - between a few seconds and 15 minutes. This rather rare approach is closer to the TV habits of the 18 to 34 demographic, Current TV’s primary target. Also, Current TV doesn’t shy from broadcasting news footage taken by amateurs, whether it be of a demonstration in Gaza, a hospital in Iraq or students’ rooms in Iran. It has also sponsored video competitions to encourage individual creativity, with the best later being broadcast on the channel. In this manner, almost a quarter of the programmes on Current TV are produced by its own viewers.
Does Current TV’s experiment leave you wondering about the credibility of these citizen journalists? It should be remembered that the best coverage of the London Underground bomb attacks in 2005 came from amateur journalists using digital cameras and camera cell phones. While Current TV is carried by the major American cable distributors, its broadcasts can be picked up on the Internet. It is clear that Gore and his partners, in positioning Current TV, are targeting Internet television.
Microsoft’s Trojan Horse
And what about the revolution coming to the cinema? At the beginning of 2006, during the Consumer Electronics Shoe, the huge industry trade fair, the actor Morgan Freeman and Intel announced the setting up of ClickStar Inc., whose first priority well be the distribution of films on demand over the Internet. The ClickStar catalogue will give equal place to major productions by the leading studios and to the work of independent producers. Certain studios might even be tempted to distribute their films only through this network. Logically, this move by Freeman and Intel should be just the first of a series of similar announcements in the coming months. In the end, how will ClickStar and others get to teleconsumers? Traditional TV, IP television?
It is more than likely that the coming revolution will play out in the living room. The first salvos on this new battlefield were fired by Microsoft with the release of the Xbox 360 console. While the majority of journalists and columnists saw only a simple, souped up console, a few, the more perceptive, understood that the Xbox was the Trojan House that Microsoft had dreamed up in order to get into the living room. The targeted demographic is the 15 to 24 age group, those who have just left the family home or will do so in the next few years. Apart from its intended mission - to be the best video game console, with its possibility of connection to a high speed network - Microsoft intends to make of the Xbox 360 a tool for convergence and for distribution of digital content. The same will be true for Sony with its new PlayStation 3 console, scheduled for release during the first trimester of 2006. Even though it is always also discreet about its future plans, it is expected that Apple will unveil in 2006 a media computer for the home, a Mac mini Media which will complement marvellously the new iPod video.
In brief, Microsoft is preparing the convergence on a large scale of all Internet transactions. With the introduction of is new operating system, Windows Vista, IPTV, the PC media centre and the Xbox 360 as the means for interacting with content distributed over a network, it could be seen by the market as the company that pulled off this convergence. The same is true for Sony and especially for Apple which has imposed the concept of a digital hub. Introduced in 2001 and given the label "digital hub", Steve Jobs vision is of a computer becoming the necessary intermediary for users to conserve, consume, broadcast and produce digital content (text, photo, music, and video).
What about traditional television in all that? In the opinion of the team at VDL2 charged with keeping an eye on the future, it won’t have the choice to rethink its role as intermediary through the offer of an improved product. The role of traditional channels and the limitations of the traditional programme line-up have both been called into question by the multiplication of different ways in which viewers can choose what to watch and when (TiVo, pay per view, GoogleVideo, iPod video, etc.) and on which screen (TV, computer, cell phone, etc.). Given that they have spent the past years getting rid of their production capacity, they are now in a position where they have no added value to pass along and will have to rethink their roles if they are to continue to exist.
And some say that it’s just TV!
