Two unrelated developments this week both suggest that the long predicted disruptional change for network television may be reaching critical temperature, writes Raymond Snoddy.
We all know the analogy beloved of management consultants that if you put a frog in water and ever so gradually increase the temperature the poor frog apparently does not notice and does nothing to escape.
Few of us have actually boiled a frog to see whether this is actually true. As it’s only an analogy applied indiscriminately to almost all forms of gradual change which suddenly turn catastrophic once a key metric has been reached, it probably doesn’t matter.
You could say that the newspaper industry behaved like frogs for many years before most, but not all, finally noticed the danger and hopped off, at least in the right direction.
But television? Surely traditional television has been the media sector that has been absorb and cope with the heat of ever-growing competition – and not just survive but prosper?
The challenge of the arrival of thousands of new channels, the rise of new online television players such as Google, Facebook and Apple, and the proliferation of on-demand video have not just been absorbed but amounted to little more than gnat-bites – until now.
The death of channels and of network television has been predicted so often and been so regularly wrong that it is possible to become complacent. Ignoring the burglar alarm, even though the source is a Hatton Garden security deposit, is unwise.
The optimistic view of traditional television has always carried the proviso that the numbers are true for now but could alter. It could be gradual and generational, or there could come a tipping point and suddenly dramatic change is with us.
Two unrelated developments that came on the same day this week – one from an individual and the other from the enormous international consultancy group, Accenture – suggests that the long predicted disruptional change for network television may be reaching critical temperature.
First the individual: Eric Scherer, director of future media at France Televisions.
Eric warned an audience at the MIPFormats conference in Cannes that the TV industry would have to start working on a mobile-first strategy because mobile was now the first screen and was taking viewing time away from traditional TV.
“This disruption has been expected for years now. We knew it was coming but were short of concrete evidence on this disruption. And guess what? In the last few weeks, the last few months boom. Everything is coming almost at once,” said Scherer.
He even had a cute analogy for the process – a tomato ketchup moment. You bang the bottle for ages and nothing happens and then splat.
Maybe. You have to treat the words of all directors of future media with caution. There is not exactly an incentive to say ‘well actually I think things are going to change much less slowly than predicted’.
Then there is the conference factor – MIP, Edinburgh, any conference you name. You are invited to speak and few can resist the temptation to say something dramatic, new or potentially alarming.
We have to see the splats of tomato ketchup happening all over the place, not just at France Television – and not only replicate but accurately measure the phenomenon.
If it was just Eric then he would be entitled to polite applause for an interesting presentation and a nice analogy.
By chance, at roughly the same time in New York, Accenture was releasing a rather more substantial study on “Digital Video and the Connected Consumer” which suggests something similar is happening, albeit it on a broader front.
Accenture, according to Gavin Mann, who heads the consultancy’s global television practice was seeing “a definitive pendulum shift away from traditional TV viewing.”
Indeed television was showing uniform “double-digit declines in TV viewing globally with most age-groups apart from the over 55s.”
In particular TV shows and movies were now a viewing staple on mobile devices of all shapes and sizes because of better streaming and longer battery life.
Accenture found in a survey of 24,000 people in 24 countries including the UK that among 14-17 year-olds there was a 33 per cent year-on-year decline in accessing TV shows and movies from TV screens on a daily and weekly basis. Among 18-34 year-olds there was a 14 per cent fall though the decline eased off among 35-54 year-olds and was 6 per cent in the older age groups.
“We found that TV is the only category of device experiencing, double-digit usage declines, across different types of media worldwide, among viewers of nearly all ages,” says Accenture.
“Profound changes are taking place in how all of us consume video content – and they are happening right in front of our eyes,” the consultancy added.
This is pretty dramatic stuff that goes beyond the free-wheeling views of a French director of future media.
But there are caveats. The research was conducted online which could throw up bias in some countries. And there are some oddities in what people say. Half of those watching online video complained of poor internet service, and almost as many complained of too much advertising and placement. Significant numbers disliked delays in starting videos and loss of sound or distortions during play.
Yet according to the Accenture analysis they will persist and continue to avoid to watch near perfect quality reproduction on the current superb quality TV sets. Bizarre.
There is also the small matter that even this generation of 14-17 year-olds will, if they are lucky, reach 55 and more, however revolutionary that idea might seem to them. They might then behave differently.
Even if these viewing patterns were to persist across the years, it is almost certain that the vast bulk of what is being watched on the move will turn out to be professionally produced content by television and movie studios in either live or catch-up form. Luckily there is a self-limiting aspect to almost all crap.
However, broadcaster Eric Scherer is almost certainly right that there will be more mobile viewing in future and broadcasters should not be left behind. It will still, however, be a while before the economics of bespoke mobile programmes stack up.
Broadcasters should therefore continue to take the temperature of the surrounding water. It would be a shame if they were to be boiled alive through carelessness.
