Future of TV up for debate at Banff Festival http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2010/06/14/con-television-banff.html
An explosion of viewer choice is leaving TV networks and cable operators with a difficult choice: evolve or risk becoming irrelevant. That's the overriding issue facing small-screen heavyweights who have gathered at the Banff World Television Festival this week to discuss an industry shaken by an increasingly fractured and fickle TV audience. Festival director Peter Vamos says digital and online entertainment loom as real threats to the survival of conventional TV networks and their hold on audiences. "It hasn't decimated the industry the way we saw it decimate the music industry, but that may be a question of yet," says Vamos. "Everyone's fearful that's what's going to happen — that ultimately people are going to watch (elsewhere) .… They don't need to watch the final 2½-hour episode of Lost on CTV at whatever time it starts … they can watch it at any time, and they may be able to watch it on Rogers VOD, but they may be able to just download it from the Internet and burn it to a disc and pop it into their DVD player." Broadcasters, producers, and stars including Brit comic Ricky Gervais, variety show titan Nigel Lythgoe, and Canadian icon William Shatner are among those attending the four-day conference, which launched Sunday with a look at 3-D TV. TiVo president and CEO Tom Rogers is set to lead a discussion Tuesday on how various sectors can avoid being marginalized, and maybe even gain from the digital trend. "We're at a real point in the television world — both broadcast and cable, networks and operators — that this stuff has to happen, is going to happen," says Rogers, previously CEO of media company Primedia Inc. and former president of NBC Cable and executive VP of NBC. "Is it going to happen to them or is it going to happen with them?.… I don't think there's a lot of time for people to figure this out." Networks are consumed with trying to stop DVR ad-skipping and online challengers when they could be looking at new ways to use interactive media and distribute content, he says. Adding urgency to the debate are the myriad TV manufacturers that are shipping HD sets with built-in chips that connect to the web. "Here in the U.S., there's a fair amount of momentum toward what's called 'over-the-top television,' which is delivery of video over the Internet directly to the TV set," industry analyst Larry Gerbrandt says from Los Angeles. "The viewer is going to be bombarded with an explosion of choice on the TV set. Historically, that hasn't been good for traditional television networks, especially the broadcasters we've seen continue to lose viewers. It just fragments viewing." Still, Gerbrandt says the trend has actually increased television consumption overall. The impending arrival of Google TV in the U.S. later this year has many on alert. Google TV will essentially allow viewers to use their TV — or any other screen — to search for programs on the web, on their own computer, or those carried by cable or satellite providers. Traditional networks are being hit hard on several fronts, notes Rogers. He urged them to find new ways to use ads, since time-shifting, pause, rewind and fast forward allow viewers to skip commercials. He noted that TiVo gets around the problem by integrating ads into its interface. Meanwhile, he warned that a network's very identity is threatened as integrated technology allows people to build their own viewing lists based on personal favourites, such as only seeking out Oscar films. "That's not a channel approach to finding things, it's a more personalized interest way of finding things," says Rogers. "Their role as kind of anchors for ways for people to find content is going to be challenged and that means they're going to have to find creative ways for them to use a user interface, the key means by which all this is done to promote themselves. "That's something you haven't seen a lot of channels work on, but they're going to increasingly have to maintain their relevance in this world." As for cable and satellite operators, their broadcast offerings pale in comparison to the wealth of material available online, says Rogers. "As that unlimited world is brought to the television set, does the operator — cable, satellite — embrace it, find a way to present it, find a way to integrate it as part of their offering?" he asks. "For cable, that should be somewhat natural because most cable operators also sell broadband connections.… Increasingly that's going to be their challenge, because consumers are going to take it, they're going to demand it, they're going to want it and the question is, 'Will they be embracing it and the ones providing it, or will it be done around them?"' Vamos says the hot-button issue is one reason this year's festival is allied with the nextMEDIA conference, which is focused on multiplatform production. Sessions from both sides will run concurrently. "Our position more this year is: piracy is going to happen," says Vamos, noting the TV fest has also added a non-fiction stream. "Piracy is distributing your show far and wide, so what does that mean? That means there's an awful lot of people seeing your show, so how do you leverage that? How do you build upon that? These are the sorts of discussions that are probably worth having as opposed to: put up legislation, lobby the government, make sure the pirates are punished." Technology guru James Stewart, president of the Toronto-based Geneva Film Co., sees an extreme scenario further down the line, predicting widespread 3- TV without glasses, and even without television sets. "I've seen tests with LED paint where you just paint the wall and you plug it in and you have a TV on the wall," says Stewart, whose company mainly creates 3-D ads for theatrical release. "You can paint objects and turn them into video screens. That kind of future, the technology exists right now, so I can see mass adoption of all of that. "It's just a matter of time." The Banff World Television Festival runs through Wednesday. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
