Content remains king but content delivery is the new frontier
Alex Hole, VP, Samsung Ads Europe looks at the importance and staying power of the watercooler moment in television programming formats
The watercooler moment: defined as an opportunity to reflect on something big that unfolded on our screens the previous night.
These moments, once commonplace in our offices, have been temporarily resigned to history as we stick to work chat on our Zooms, Teams and WebEx conferences.
Discussing the previous night’s Love Island or our collective disappointment in the Game of Thrones finale was once a cultural mainstay, and a way of building team unity that is hard to replicate online. As Euro 2020 begins, the absence of this is even more noticeable.
The closest we got to this in recent times was perhaps Mare of East Town and the latest season of BBC’s Line of Duty, which both released episodes in weekly instalments.
The latter managed to pull in 12.8 million Brits to tune into the finale – a new record for the series.
The success of these shows demonstrates that there’s still merit in the weekly episode format. While binge-viewing has revolutionised how TV can bring a story to life, allowing a more close-knit episode structure, it’s clear there’s a place for both types of viewing.
Audiences today want to be kept on their toes – waiting for the next episode for one show, and also to be able to steamroll through another.
As we as an industry consider what the future of TV will look like post-pandemic, it’s interesting to see more traditional features of television coming from the very players who have moved the conversation on from this being the ‘staple’ TV diet.
Netflix is trialling a linear-style channel in France, and Disney+ has found huge success with its weekly-episode approach for its new Star Wars and Marvel series.
Audiences clearly want choice and differentiation when it comes to content and content delivery.
As TV audiences continue to fragment across linear, OTT, and even within the VOD landscape itself, success will come from understanding those audiences and how their habits evolve, and using these insights in new and interesting ways to deliver a varied and best-in-class TV experience.
What you want, when you want
Watching what you want, when you want isn’t a new concept.
When technologies like VHS or TiVo came along, audiences began to embrace the ability to record and watch key shows on their own time. I vividly remember the dismay of finding my VHS recording of Miami Vice overwritten by my mum’s recording of The Bill.
Smart TVs have offered a more user friendly and seamless solution to this – alongside streaming platforms from BVoD to SVoD.
However, ‘what you want, when you want’ also can encompass the choice to watch scheduled programming along with your peers. As competition for viewers among streaming platforms heats up, many are recognising the power of the watercooler moment, and responding with content that can create them.
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We’ve recognised that scheduled programming is still in demand with our own AVOD service Samsung TV Plus, which offers both scheduled and on-demand content.
One of our partners and channels, Insight TV, has seen a continuous growth of viewership for its scheduled content, particularly among the 20-35 year-old demographic.
It’s these sorts of behaviours and insights that give us important clues as to what content appeals to viewers and ensure that they have access to the range they desire.
Monitoring changing audience behaviours
In the UK last year, time spent streaming on Samsung Smart TVs increased hugely across OTT and linear. We know that these audiences aren’t exclusive to one format. 70% of our UK Samsung TVs navigate between OTT and linear broadcast content in a behaviour we describe as ‘platform surfing’.
While choice is great for audiences, as an industry it does make it more difficult to know how to reach them.
This is why audience insights and data is crucial in decision making – for advertisers looking where to allocate spend, and for content producers and platforms, deciding whether to ‘series dump’ or opt for slow release instalments.
Some of the stand-out shows of the past 12 months were released in the latter format; Disney’s Wandavision, and BBC Three’s I May Destroy You.
Others, like BBC’s The Serpent and Channel 4’s It’s a Sin opted for a ‘hybrid’ approach, with all episodes released online at once but also aired on TV in weekly instalments.
Amazon Prime’s The Wilds released all of its first season on the same day, allowing for that fantastic binge-viewing experience that left viewers agog for the next season.
All these shows created a flurry of social media conversations, with fans coming together to discuss thoughts, theories and memes.
It’s been clear for a long time that content is key for platforms and broadcasters seeking audiences: the next frontier of this may well be in content delivery.
As audiences pick and choose between ways of consuming TV, the format needs to match the content in order to entice audiences as much as possible.
This may look like a binge-watch, or it may look like a hybrid offering. Following the data around viewers and how they like to consume content will be key to gaining that much envied metric – the watercooler moment.