The spider and the fly
Raymond Snoddy: Could it be that welcoming the embrace of social networks could be the best thing that ever happened to television rather than, as generally assumed until now, a slow march to oblivion?
Let’s not waste too much time on the crazy people who still think television is as good as dead – despite all the accumulating evidence to the contrary. You just have to accept there will always be some who believe that it was the Americans who blew up the Twin Towers or that the earth is flat.
It’s nice to be reassured, however, that what you have always believed intuitively about television remains so and that you are not missing something.
There was buckets loads of such reassurance at the IBC conference in Amsterdam at the weekend, as an incredible consensus emerged all over the place – a consensus that even swept up those sitting on their nouveau billions from the social networks.
Lest you forget, Deloitte research from across the developed world demonstrates that everywhere television viewing is rising and in most cases, including the UK, is pushing through the remarkable four hours a day barrier.
Yes but what about the young people, the generation problem? “After they get bored with CBeebies, my children hardly watch television”, a chorus of alarmed television executives intone. “Will the good days last long enough for me to pick up my pension?”
Here too there was good news.
The research shows that, yes indeed, for every three-year cohort of children television viewing declines remorselessly, three-year period after three-year period. It is almost like a law of nature.
But then something unusual happens, which we could have guessed at on a good day.
When the young TV avoiders get to 25, the TV viewing curve starts to rise – and it does so much more rapidly and sharply than the previous years of decline.
As you might have suspected the young are interested, after all, in joining the human race. It’s good though to have the numbers to prove it.
WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell, in an interview for IBC, also had good news for the television industry.
As Sir Martin surveys the entire world media scene from the neutrality of his WPP umpire’s chair he sees two large positive spikes – one is for television and the other the social media.
Unsurprisingly, the WPP executive finds newspapers the most challenged media, followed by radio. Outdoor is doing fine and the outlook for magazines is promising, mainly because of the loyalty of women readers.
Sir Martin the economist also had a macro-economic explanation for why television advertising has been doing so well – at least until recently.
Profits of many companies have been improving through cost-cutting but the economic outlook is too fragile to invest in expansion or building a new plant. Better by far to invest in advertising and marketing to strengthen the brand and perhaps increase market share from existing resources.
So far so good but there is even a possibility that things could get even better in the medium term for good old-fashioned telly – better indeed than anyone could have imagined. The time has come to put forward the dramatic proposition, however fraught with danger.
Could it be that welcoming the embrace of the social networks could be the best thing that ever happened to television rather than, as generally assumed until now, a slow march to oblivion: the relationship between the spider and the fly.
You would expect the spider to be particularly welcoming and, Dear God, Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google in Edinburgh and Joannna Shields, Facebook vice-president and managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at IBC could not have been more welcoming.
The dilemma is clear. Are the social networks and all the Apps and Twitters offering the best marketing devices and potential new streams of revenue for television that have ever been? Or are they “parasites”? An accusation famously put by Lord Grade the former ITV chairman and repeated at IBC by former Channel 4 chairman Luke Johnson.
The parasite proponents sound as if they are believers in a zero sum game, whereas the very essence of the world of social networks is that it expands ever-outwards, creating constellations that could not previously have been imagined.
But are they just biding their time – waiting to use their billions to pounce on television rights acquisition and to fund the production of original content and ultimately displace broadcasters?
The cynics could be right, yet the protestations of Schmidt that a bunch of Google engineers wouldn’t be very good at television has the ring of truth about it.
When she ran Bebo – remember Bebo – Shields won a television award for creativity for the online soap KateModern.
Surely it can be only a matter of time before Facebook moves into content. The Facebook executive was adamant that the company has no such plans.
You can see the logic of her position. Facebook’s 750 million regular users around the world already provide their “content” for free. Why would the company want to start paying for content for goodness sake.
According to some informed estimates revealed at IBC, Facebook has annual revenues of between $3billion and $4 billion, with profit margins of between 50% and 60%.
Why would you want to mess with such a business model?
As Shields put it: “Facebook represents the biggest opportunity the television industry has ever faced – the potential to tap into a global audience that is waiting to discover, share and amplify your stories.”
Indeed, in future, she believes all TV will be social. Already media organisations such as Miramax, Universal, Warner, TF1 and the BBC are bringing video-on-demand to Facebook.
While not claiming to know all the answers about the future, John Smith, chief executive of BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the corporation, is a great believer in the new opportunities the internet and social networks make available for distributing and expanding the impact of quality content.
Smith is a great fan of YouTube – 800 million views of BBC clips. Apps are equally interesting with more than nine million apps for everything from BBC News and Lonely Planet and Good Food. And as for Facebook, Smith is salivating.
Top Gear pages on Facebook were attracting around 500,000 followers. The BBC took over the curation of the pages, added more content and now has 14 million Top Gear followers with another 13,000 joining every day. Many then link into the BBC’s topgear.com, from which money is made.
“If we are smart, if we are willing to experiment, we can find astonishing new ways to get our material to fans – and still make money out of it,” Smith told IBC.
The relationship between spiders and flies will always be problematic but in the case of the television industry and the social media giants there really may be a way to co-exist, co-operate and prosper.