TV is changing, in more ways than most of us can keep up with. From what we watch, to how we watch, to how networks measure what did well, the future of TV is arriving as we speak. And local ad agency Hill Holliday is giving that transformation a boost.
The agency will be co-hosting the TVnext Hack, a future of TV hackathon, with API platform Mashery in Boston on April 27-28. Teams at the event will compete for prizes in categories ranging from “Guides” to “Connected TV” to “Analytics & Data Visualization,” to name only a few.
In preparation for the event, I asked Hill Holliday’s resident TV expert Mike Proulx to talk me through the many trends at the intersection of television and tech. Below is a lightly edited transcript of our chat. You can register for TVnextHack here.
From the outside, and based on reports in the news, it seems like TV is totally changing. On the other hand, my experience with TV isn’t all that different than it was a few years ago. What are a couple of the biggest trends in TV right now?
Companies like Nielsen report that 40% of smartphone and tablet owners use their devices daily while watching TV. That percent goes up to 70% on a month basis. And it’s this insight that’s led to an explosion of “second screen” companion apps like GetGlue, Zeebox, Viggle, etc. all vying for the attention of TV viewers on their mobile devices.
At the same time, we see the impact that Twitter is having on television. Hashtags are everywhere on the TV screen including in many TV spots (over half of this year’s Super Bowl ads included a hashtag).
It serves as a reminder that a conversation is happening TV’s “backchannel” and the hope from television networks is that they can spawn trending topics on Twitter to help drive real-time tune-in. Hashtags have not only become just a lower-third indicator but are being used as instant feedback for programming. Hawaii Five-0 and Psych both enabled its viewers to vote for the ending of a particular episode in real-time. And you may have seen how American Idol is displaying the results of real-time hashtag polls on-screen.
Another big trend is TV everywhere. Being able to watch television content at will, regardless of your physical location. The rise of smartphones and tablets have made television portable. And most major broadcast and cable networks now have full episode players for the iPad.
Last is the trend of Internet-connected TVs. Devices like Roku, Boxee, Apple TV, once connected, bring streaming content to the “big screen” of your house. And most new TVs now are already “smart TVs” bypassing the need for another device.
Companies that stream content to devices like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon are getting into the original “TV” series business — streaming Hollywood grade content directly to consumers and, essentially, bypassing the TV networks.
Lots there. Let’s start with content. There’s the instant feedback aspect, and there’s the longer term feedback – the kind of insight Bluefin or Nielsen can sell based on social media. How are these things changing TV programming? Off the top of my head I’d guess it offers the potential to make things more interactive, and also to optimize the content to what viewers want (as we saw with House of Cards).
There are a few players in the “social TV” measurement space: Trendrr, SocialGuide, and Bluefin Labs. Bluefin got acquired by Twitter and Nielsen aquired SocialGuide. The kind of data that these companies provide help compliment the Nielsen rating by overlaying the amount of lean forward “engagement” a particular receives which helps add color and dimension for advertisers and can also help TV networks program. It’s not to say that a show that has low real-time Twitter activity is a bad show — quite the contrary as we’ve found the more dramatic the show, the less “in the moment” Tweeting is actually happening. A TV show’s genre must be taken into account when looking at social TV insights.
What about the so-called cord-cutting movement. Hype? The future? What does my cable bill look like in 5 years?
There’s been so many contradictory reports as to how pervasive true “cord cutting” actually is but it’s still a sliver of the population. One of the things that this behavior surfaces is the idea of buying/subscribing/consuming only the content that you want watch – and re-ignites the cable “unbundling” debate. At the end of the day, the masses are going to flock to where the great content lies — after all, we watch TV for its content – TV is about awesome storytelling. Until the business model of television changes (which will take time), mass audiences will continue to consume TV content through a “corded” pay TV model (cable, satellite, etc.)
What do you make of Netflix’s foray into producing shows? Its internal stats on House of Cards seemed positive.
Netflix is making a big play (and investment) in original “TV” programming. Is it a threat to the TV networks? Not really. If you think about – and forget how the content gets delivered – Netflix is kind of moving in the direction of 1 more premium cable channel that just happens to be delivered “over the top.”
What about going back to the idea of portable TV. How does that change how we watch. Does it change what we watch?
It simply changes how we watch. We want to watch the shows we love — that’s what we’ll continue to watch. With “TV everywhere” our favorite shows are simply becoming that much more accessible. Ultimately we’re going to watch on the best screen that’s available to us at the time when we want to watch. And that may mean on a tiny smartphone if that’s all that’s around.
Tell me about TVnext Hack, and how it fits with everything you’ve just mentioned.
We’re excited to host close to 100 developers who are all eager to to build the next big TV app and we’re thrilled to feature APIs from a dozen leading television tech companies including ESPN, Viggle, WatchWith, GetGlue, and Klout. By connecting this to our TVnext Summit (which takes place the following day), it’s a great way to bring together developers and television industry execs.
***
Click here to learn more about the hackathon and let us know your thoughts on these trends in the comments.
