Where TV goes, so goes the nation.
This is not a report to be used as presented. This is a summary of my findings on Internet TV that I plan to use to inform my design. I provide links to the sources so you can read it in full and come to your own conclusions. For me, its a reference with most important findings and my thoughts.
Quantitative data (numbers)
Streaming Overtakes Live TV Among Consumer Viewing Preferences: Study (2015) Source
Video-streaming services such as Netflix, which are now used by more than 42% of American households, have overtaken live programming as the viewing method of choice. About 56% of those surveyed now stream movies and 53% stream TV shows on a monthly basis, as compared with 45% of those who prefer to watch TV programs live.
And Internet-video services are valued more highly than cable or satellite TV among consumers aged 14-25, a group called “Trailing Millennials”. For that age group, 72% cited streaming video as one of the most valuable services versus 58% who said the same for pay TV.
Older age groups still value pay-TV more highly. For Generation X (32-48), 80% picked pay TV and 47% selected streaming among the most valuable services, while among Baby Boomers 89% cited pay TV and 43% cited streaming.
According to the survey, 25% of Trailing Millennials either cancelled their pay-TV services in the last 12 months or haven’t had one for more than a year, compared with 16% of overall respondents.
Moreover, younger viewers now more commonly watch TV shows on mobile devices or PCs — rather than on a TV set. Among Trailing Millennials, 57% of time spent watching TV programs occurs on computers, tablets and smartphones. Other age groups still mostly watch on traditional TVs (57% of time spent viewing for Leading Millennials, 70% of Gen X, 81% of Baby Boomers and 90% of those 68-plus).
Binge-watching — watching three or more episodes in one sitting — is prevalent, with about 68% of consumers engaging in marathon viewing. Of those, 31% binge-watch at least once a week (and 42% of those aged 14-25 binge at least weekly).
Meanwhile, the vast majority of consumers — 90% of Americans — multitask while watching TV, which includes activities such as browsing the Internet, reading email and text messaging. Both millennials and Generation X (age 32-48) engage in an average of three additional activities while watching television (versus two for Baby Boomers and one for those 68 and older).
Less than one-fourth of multitasking activities are actually related to the TV program being watched. And nearly 75% of those surveyed said they tend to multitask more during TV ads than during digital ads.
What kind of TV do we prefer?
After a decade of speculating on changing consumer appetites on content, we simply haven’t changed that much.
We’ve spent a long time trying to defend the idea that consumer preferences are changing to short-form content like the clips we view on YouTube. But the fact is, they are radically the same as they were nearly a century ago when motion pictures first became popular. And while consumers clearly have an appetite for short bursts of entertainment, they also continue to gravitate to long-form content that lets them kick back, rest up, and disconnect from real life.The Journal article gives a powerful example of this consumption habit. “The Hangover,” which has been shown 72 times on HBO and Cinemax, 46 times on TBS, and two times on TNT, attracted almost one million viewers when Comedy Central aired and promoted it last month. That’s strong flypaper.
Main players
Netflix
If you’re the kind of person who on a weekend would rather munch through an entire box set of a TV series, rather than embark on a movie marathon, then Netflix may be your weapon of choice. Netflix has a good selection of their unique shows. Works on a monthly subscription.
Amazon Instant Video
Amazon has a good selection, similar to Netflix but offers weekly episodes viewings for the currently running shows. Many of the items are included as part of Amazon Prime Subscription, but the most recent films and shows are available for a one-off payment.
NowTV
Mostly used for live sports events. Included for Sky customers and offers a day or a month pass for everyone else.
BBC iPlayer
It is free, it is good TV that has great content.
Apple web TV service announced 2015 -25 channels
Sling TV
Roku streaming stick – basically a hardware that offers a simple way to stream TV from a number of providers. You have to pay/subscribe to each of the providers.
Includes its own remote control. (you can plug your headphones to the remote control and can play games as in Wii)
Chromecast – similar to Roku offers hardware for easy streaming but allows you to use your own device as a remote control.
Blinkbox – a mix of hardware and content offerings.
Behavior patterns
The real story should be about what that control means for the future of television — for storytelling, monetization and the relationships among viewers and the various entities in the media supply chain.
1. Storytelling will evolve to make better use of an omniplatform environment.
Viewers increasingly want to be part of the experience. This is, in part, why celebrity Twitter feeds are so popular — the most popular celebrities actively communicate directly with loyal fans, making the experience even more personal, which leads to deeper connections. Story is everything, but a story with a personal connection is unbeatable.
2. Ubiquitous screens will demand greater content mobility.
As screens appear in new places — some are predicting that a screen will replace standard bathroom mirrors in new home construction, not to mention the pending surge of glasses and smartwatches — programmers will have to use data and personalization to deliver a meaningful experience.
3. Social dynamics and synergistic experiences will drive more event-based viewing.
While many viewers have no interest in football or awards shows, they want to be part of the collective social experience of these events. As the viewing landscape grows more and more fractured, a well-cultivated, data-driven social experience can drive more consumption back to the “event” window so that people can feel included in something larger than their living room.
4. Innovation in program discovery and television controls will drive new techniques to cut through the clutter.
Content providers will have to engage in “content discovery optimization,” similar to today’s search engine optimization practices where content is continuously tuned so that it can be discovered by the broadest possible audience at the right time. This will need to go far beyond the descriptive show metadata and into parameters, such as sentiment of show, optimum watching circumstances (screen size, etc.) and shared creative heritage.
5. Bingeing will drive more innovation in measurement and personalization.
With the rise of video on demand platforms and content providers liberating more and more content from studio vaults, the amount of content consumed by “bingeing” (where a viewer consumes several hours of the same back-to-back content in a single sitting) will continue to grow.
6. New entrants demanding unique content will drive innovation beyond the traditional studio system.
In a world of limitless choice where almost anyone can acquire, create, and distribute interesting content, the winners will be those that utilize data to respond to audience demands most nimbly and drive an experience that feels personalized, yet taps into the collective need we all share to be entertained and informed.
Quotes
Even though many TV packages offer more than 200 channels, the typical person watches fewer than 20 channels, according to Daniel Ernst, a principal at Hudson Square Research, a technology and media research firm.
“What people really want is the major broadcasters — ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox — plus a handful of cable and Internet networks like ESPN, HBO and Netflix,” Ernst said. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/17/apple-tv-service_n_6887956.html
When Apple previewed the new Apple TV, CEO Tim Cook declared,
We believe the future of television is apps.” He went on to extoll how “when you experience TV through an app, you realize how much better [TV] can be. You can search for what you want and watch it when and where you want. And you can interact with it in powerful new ways.
Apple just announced that all tvOS apps must support Siri remote in their “core functionality” in order to be accepted in the forthcoming Apple TV App Store.
Want to watch the latest NFL game? The NFL-dedicated app will let you tune in live and watch the action in high definition. Would you rather watch The Big Bang Theory? Just navigate over to the CBS app, where you’ll find the latest episode streaming in real-time. How about Grey’s Anatomy? ABC’s dedicated app has that. Online video streaming is the future of TV, according to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings in a talk he gave at the Media Convention in Berlin last week (seen below), and he thinks this app-based streaming TV ecosystem is coming in our lifetime.
Netflix CEO: 4K’s future is on the Internet, linear TV faces extinction http://recode.net/2015/10/26/apps-are-the-future-of-tv-not-so-fast/
Advertisement and other ways of making money
So, what does all of this mean to those of us in the advertising world? I expect a future advertising model around streamed content will look a lot like advertising did at the outset of the television era: complete programs brought to viewers by a single sponsor with some embedded product placements. Additionally, there will be a continuation of traditional 15-second spots as program intros and outros.
However, it’s incumbent on advertisers to force this model because networks like HBO and streamers like Netflix (which I argue are the dominant future properties and will coalesce as custom content providers) are going to continue with subscription-only revenue models. Advertisers have to point out that increasing content costs and the ability of pipe owners, like Comcast, to affect the economic model will result in the need for new revenue streams. And sponsored and embedded advertising will be keys to the kingdom. Because, at the end of the day, whether it’s streamed or customer delivered, what we’re learning is that the post-TV era looks a lot like the golden age of television.
Netflix has already proven that it’s possible to build a big business in television without advertisers. Subscription fees, it turns out, do the trick. That means that the proliferation of internet TV may be the final nail in the traditional commercial’s coffin. That would change the entire economics of the advertising industry over the next decade, Hunt explained. “The ad-free model seems to be very popular with consumers,” he said. “We have to imagine that the Geicos and the Wendys and the Chevys will have to find a different place to advertise their wares in 2025.”
But there’s another possibility. According to Hunt, the same technology that delivers personalized content to viewers could also help internet TV service providers select more targeted ads to show their users. “Maybe you only see that Chevy ad if you’re ready to buy the car today,” Hunt said. That means viewers would see fewer ads, and advertisers would get to reach a more relevant audience.
Traditional subscription models are not the only ones at risk from the new media model. Advertising will also have to accommodate the steady shift to digital content and the inexorable move to OTT content, together with the fact that more and more content is being viewed holistically, with digital entertainment experiences encompassing TV, film, web video, gaming and apps.
Thus far, the managed migration of rights to new platforms has preserved traditional TV advertising and pay-TV subscriptions as the greatest drivers of revenue. But the industry may be about to change too fast for that to remain true. Possible signs of things to come: Subscriptions could well shift away from bloated bundles to à la carte options that allow consumers to pick and pay for exactly the content they want and no more, from a range of different providers—new Internet-based players among them.
Already, chief marketing officers everywhere are scrambling to reallocate and optimize marketing budgets across platforms. They are getting some help from increasingly sophisticated customer data collection and analytics tools, which are beginning to enable new forms of cross-screen targeting and measurement. To a large extent, digital removes the guesswork from traditional advertising models—digital data is more accurate and more granular than its analog predecessor.
But there is still much to do before the typical marketing department is able to effectively use sophisticated analytics to deliver premium, personalized, interactive advertising, and create a richer, more detailed understanding of specific consumer groups—or fan bases—that will respond to new offers.
So what does the new face of TV mean for today’s established media businesses? The ascent of the consumer requires business models that are built around consumer needs rather than those of a particular channel, platform or advertiser. A single shared view of the customer—often across different channels—is a prerequisite for a successful, consumer-focused multiplatform strategy.
The businesses that adapt successfully will need to try different approaches concurrently. They’ll need to create and run with hybrid business models and constantly reevaluate their place in the media value “ecosystem”—perhaps taking on new roles—so they can spot and capture new revenue opportunities. In short, players all across the media value chain now have to plan for a new and fundamentally different media delivery architecture.
Terminology
Ultraviolet Locker
4K televisions
Wide colour
For a long time broadcast cameras have been capturing far more colour than could ever be sent over the air. TVs too have, for years, been able to display much more colour detail than they were ever asked to.
Internet TV box
Internet TV boxes connect to the internet and allow you to stream live TV shows, browse popular websites and access catch-up TV services, such as BBC iPlayer. Effectively, they turn your standard TV into a smart TV.
HFR – High FrameRate
Used for sports and reality tv. Documentaries
Wideband reception
Being able to stream a lot of data from one device to another that are located near each other.
If you owned one of those TVs that was “wireless” and allowed you to mount it on a wall with nothing but a power socket then you’ve seen this in action. Basically, it’s like any wireless tech but operates in the very high gigahertz range of frequencies. It works over very short distances, but allows you to send 1080p or even 4K video from your phone to your TV. This means your phone can become even more of an entertainment hub than ever before.
It would work well with TVs that are actually very simple and have few inputs. Just send a signal from any device in your lounge to the TV without the need to plug it in with HDMI.
OLED
One of the things that OLEDs can do quite simply is transparency. OLED panels are transparent anyway, just because of how they are produced with an organic compound is sandwiched between two electrode layers. One of these is transparent – so you can see a picture – while the other isn’t in a normal TV, but making both transparent isn’t a problem.
Practically speaking, having a transparent OLED means you can put them on things that need to be seen through. Perhaps this is a window, a mirror in your bathroom or just a TV that’s able to become part of the furniture when you switch it off, making for a much less obvious piece of technology.
A TV you stick to the wall
This is another triumph for OLED, and LG has already shown off a demo of an TV that’s so thin you can just stick it to a wall. The panel itself is less than 1mm thick, and weighs a bit less than 2kg. To stick it to the wall you just use a magnetic mat, and Bob’s your uncle, a TV that looks like a poster.
Ref. http://www.techradar.com/news/television/the-future-tv-tech-you-need-to-know-about-1297089
Quantum LED and Crystal LED
Let’s just say that TVs which use self-emitting pixels (ones which produce their own light) are the way forward.
LCD should die out, hopefully, and QLED, CLED and OLED should be the panels which lead the charge into the next decade.
Although with all that said, LCDs have remains incredibly adaptable, so perhaps we shouldn’t write them off just yet…
http://www.techradar.com/news/television/the-future-of-tvs-may-not-be-oled-after-all-but-something-quite-different-1296520
UX notes
Contextual suggestions/predictions
Design for main stream and small audiences (Spotify discovery)
Setting up on TV is hard look at better experiences
There are too many options – look at how to narrow it down
Content consumption of TV might have similar patterns with other media, look at other media consumption patterns
Social networking is one of the “filters” of content prioritisation – learn from social media
Download some good studies
ericsson-consumerlab-tv-media-2015
TV Viewing Habits – UK – October 2015_Brochure
EY-6-trends-that-will-change-the-TV-industry