LAS VEGAS – With the digital, global, avalanche of content ever growing and never slowing, discoverability will be the number one challenge in the video industry’s future, according to panellists on a forward-looking TV panel at the National Association of Broadcasters conference here in Las Vegas.
Entitled “TV 2020 in the networked society” the panellists noted the deluge of content consumers face now (let alone in five years) and the crippling inability of user interfaces so far to properly sort and organize content in a way that is satisfying to consumers seeking good content and producers who want those viewers to find their stuff.
(As many know, this is a key issue the CRTC identified during its TV Policy Review and it will be convening a Discoverability Summit this fall to tackle the even trickier aspect of making Canadian content easily discoverable. Click here and see paragraph 63.)
With all video going IP and on demand, in a few years consumers won’t be able to tell, for most content, how they are receiving it. IP-delivery and broadcast will soon look like the same thing, said Tom Morgan, CEO of Net2TV. And with all of it able to be sliced, diced and delivered anywhere at anytime to any device, expect consumers to be lost.
Jeff Shultz, vice-president of business development at CBS Interactive noted his former company, Clicker, was the first Internet TV guide and was purchased by CBS in 2011, and it was difficult then, when there were only thousands of places to catalogue. “Discovery is one of the biggest challenges in media,” he said, adding that while there are many ideas about what may solve it, tons of new sources of data will have to be factored in.
“Meta data, curation, location, recommendation, social… How those play together has yet to be determined and that’s where the action is going to be over the next five years,” said Shultz.
“The consumer experience will suck.” Bob Greene, Liberty Global
The old way of doing it on the cable box grid or virtual keyboard just is never going to cut it, despite the fact consumers have grown used to it, agreed the panellists. However, the various ways online video providers are pursuing discoverability, with recommendation engines and other algorithms exploiting user data is still not the holy grail.
Change will happen, added Schwartz, because the “more powerful platforms and more innovative players will exert positive pressure on the existing incumbents, because it won’t be acceptable to have antiquated search techniques.”
There is much experimentation among mobile developers, added Bob Greene, managing director of online entertainment at Liberty Global, who said he has used an app which lets viewers text what they’re in the mood to watch to their connected TVs. “Consumers do want to at least navigate with their phone first,” added Simon Frost, head of marketing and communications at Ericsson.
Greene also cautioned that the various walled gardens of apps and web portals make it very hard for consumers to search for video. He pointed to HBO and Netflix and other apps, where consumers have to repeatedly go in and out of various apps to search for content they might be in the mood to watch and asked if that is the future, “the consumer experience will suck,” he said.
While the panel discussed and crystal-balled many things that might happen in video, discoverability and developing far more consumer friendly user interfaces “will be the biggest impediment to this business,” added Morgan, “and there is no number two, three, four or five.”
