MRG Evening Meeting – The Future of Television
Last night’s Media Research Group Evening Meeting heard David Brennan, vice president of research at Flextech, speak about the use of Electronic Programme Guides (EPGs) and how they will affect viewers’ TV habits in the future.
Brennan believes that one of the main factors holding back the growth of cable and satellite channels is the difficulty of navigation and planning of viewing. He said it was becoming increasingly difficult to put non-terrestrial channels in people’s minds because of the overcrowded nature of the medium: in fact, many still plan their viewing around key programmes on terrestrial TV. The upshot of this is that most people do not see the increase in channels as a positive. Brennan believes that this is why penetration rates are remaining static and churn has not gone down as expected.
Brennan says that the way to solve this is to introduce EPGs. He believes that EPGs have not performed well in user groups because they have not been explained properly – if they were given a demonstration first then acceptance levels would be much higher.
Experience of EPGs in the US has shown that their use can increase viewing among cable and satellite channels, especially themed offerings like the Sci-Fi and History channels. It was even discovered that EPGs were one of the main reasons why subscribers chose a particular channel package.
Brennan believes that this discovery could affect the marketing of digital TV in the UK since complex marketing in the US was found to be largely ineffective. In the end viewers based their decisions on content and pricing and the use of EPGs helped greatly in bringing out the best of the content.
Research from Flextech into EPGs, which is part of the Futura.com project, has shown that the tool was generally seen as a useful and interesting development. Respondents did say, however, that EPGs would have to prove themselves against established data sources in terms of speed, reliability and ease of use. In particular, the competition it would create for published listings guides and Teletext would be great.
To round off, Brennan made predictions about the effect of EPGs on the multi-channel TV medium. He said that cable and satellite churn rates would fall to around 15%, share of viewing to cable and satellite channels in multi-channel homes would rise from around 40% to around 50% and channel branding would become more important than ever.
Susan Read, deputy marketing director of Laser Sales and Hugh Johnson, head of research at Channel 4, then spoke about how BARB was developing its system to cope with the expansion of channels in the digital TV age. Both of the speakers acknowledged that BARB would have to change and said that a number of problems existed with the current survey – there are problems with measuring guest viewing for example and the handset used for registering group viewing needed to change. Both of these problems are now being tackled by BARB.
Methods being looked at to measure digital TV include set-top box middleware, a video coding system, picture matching and audio signals. Questions such as sample size and factoring are still under discussion, but ideas currently being mooted include coverage and frequency guides for small channels, the supplementation of larger panels with smaller people meters and the abolishment of time shift factoring.
When questions were taken from the floor it was rumoured that channels would be charged for appearing on an EPG and also that channels would be able to pay extra for preferential positions on the system. Both the Flextech and Cable & Wireless representatives in the room denied that this rumour was true and Brennan emphasised that it is crucial that EPGs be neutral and impartial.
Scepticism was also expressed about the ability of BARB to change its methods to suit the new environment. Harold Lynds said that a number of changes were mooted to cope with the introduction of cable TV yet nothing had appeared. Mocking BARB’s reference to the year 2001 he wondered if the current “transitional” phase would be finished by 3001.