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June 25th, 2013

Roger Darlington’s Vision for TV’s Future

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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Blog Administrator

June 25th, 2013

Roger Darlington’s Vision for TV’s Future

0 comments

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

roger darlington Communications industry expert, current Chair of DCMS’s Consumer Expert Group, and Acting Chair of the Policy Stakeholder Committee of Nominet Roger Darlington shares his vision for the future of television in the UK. He sees PSB holding position, but on ever larger and flatter screens and on multiple devices, with recommendations playing a larger role in what people watch.

Last Autumn, Britain completed the nationwide switchover to digital television but, if you thought that augured a period of calm in the television marketplace, think again. What we used to call simply ‘the box’ is set to continue transforming how we consumer audio-visual content in an age of increasing convergence.

The Digital TV Group (DTG) – which represents all the UK’s major broadcasters – has launched a project with the snappy title of the Future of Innovation in Television Technology (FITT) Taskforce. The Taskforce has been split into five work streams and I am a member of the Advisory Group on Consumer Trends In The Next 10 Years, so I have been thinking recently about the future of television.

First, a few facts:

  • Following digital switchover, some 98.5% of homes in the UK now have digital television: most take Freeview (10.9 M) or Freesat (1.1 M), while the remainder subscribe to Sky (10.2 M) or Virgin (4.2 M) [all figures Q1 2013].
  • On average, viewers watch four hours of television a day – a figure that has been stable for some years.
  • The five main public service broadcasters and their portfolio channels together attract 73% of total viewing in multichannel homes.
  • Most viewing is still live: even in DVR homes (half of all homes), time-shifted viewing is only 15% of total viewing and half of all time-shifted viewing occurs on the same day as the broadcast.

So what might change over the next decade?

Let’s start with platforms.

Although 14.4 M homes currently subscribe to Sky or Virgin, a not dissimilar number (12 M) do not pay for anything except the equipment (Freeview and Freesat) and there is not a lot of churn between platforms, not least because so many viewers have a bundled service with television combined with broadband and telephone calls.

The current model could do with a shake up and BT has valiantly entered the television market through BT Vision with its initial emphasis on sport and its combination with broadband.

Next let’s consider picture quality.

We have recently had the switch from analogue to digital and now set manufacturers are pushing both HD and 3D. However, it is unclear how much viewers want current versions of enhanced quality. Even those who have HD channels do not always use them and 3D is still seen as something of a novelty.

Meanwhile ultra HD – four times as good as HD – is about to arrive and could blow away both HD and 3D.

On the other hand, in the case of television sets, size does matter. Viewers do love large screens and in most households the main screen is becoming larger and larger as well as slimmer and slimmer.

But many households now have several sets and the one outside the living room – perhaps in the kitchen or bedroom – can be smaller without viewers worrying too much.

Important issues are choice and navigation.

Multi-channel households already have a choice of literally hundreds of television channels. The number will continue to increase and connected televisions will eventually provide access to television stations worldwide which will be especially appealing to immigrant communities or those with an interest in other countries and cultures

On the one hand, viewers are likely to continue viewing predominantly the PSB channels, mainly because of the quality of programming but also because of the trusted brand and the shared experience with relatives and friends.

On the other hand, viewers have personal interests and would welcome easier ways of finding content that they like, regardless of channel or country. We are likely to see people making more use of equipment that can make recommendations for viewing and guess what we would like from previous viewing and automatically record relevant programmes.

Finally let’s consider the very notion of a television set.

We can now watch television on our desktop, laptop or tablet computer or on our games console or smartphone. Conversely connected TVs will provide access to a mass of new visual content starting with the huge trove at YouTube. Some people will use their connected TV to browse the web, order things, and do e-mail. This is the long-awaited convergence.

So it may be that over time we stop seeing television as a set or device and view it as simply as one function among many on a multi-purpose device. As Hamlet might have put it: “TV or not TV? That is the question.”

This post first appeared on CommsWatch on 24 June 2013 and was reposted with permission and thanks. The post gives the views of the author, and does not represent the position of the LSE Media Policy Project blog, nor of the London School of Economics.

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