The Future of Television? Binge-Watching is Only the Beginning (wsj.com) 46
With providers like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, and more creative risks, network leaders are placing bets on how audience experience will evolve [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled]. From a report: "What might we see coming down the road?" says Beau Willimon, creator of The First, Hulu's sci-fi drama starring Sean Penn and Natascha McElhone. "Perhaps like [the characters] in my new show, we're all wearing augmented reality glasses, and we're experiencing television shows in a more intimate way -- a way that feels much more experiential than simply watching it on a rectangle."
[...] Television, as most people have known it for most of their lives, is no more. "At some point you'll get to a place where thinking about television from a linear standpoint will be like dial-up internet," says Hulu CEO Randy Freer. "It's a great time for content; not a great time for cable networks. I think what will happen is: Cable networks that have been able to create brands for themselves will have an opportunity to expand and figure out how they present to consumers."
Cable networks with a clear identity have a critical advantage in a subscription-based world, while networks with less-defined name recognition -- those that have been just another channel in the cable lineup -- will likely find it hard to entice the growing ranks of broadband-only consumers to buy an a la carte monthly subscription service. HBO is moving into the new era. "In the domestic market of the United States, where there is a surfeit of content more than ever, I personally think that brands matter more than ever," says HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler.
[...] Television, as most people have known it for most of their lives, is no more. "At some point you'll get to a place where thinking about television from a linear standpoint will be like dial-up internet," says Hulu CEO Randy Freer. "It's a great time for content; not a great time for cable networks. I think what will happen is: Cable networks that have been able to create brands for themselves will have an opportunity to expand and figure out how they present to consumers."
Cable networks with a clear identity have a critical advantage in a subscription-based world, while networks with less-defined name recognition -- those that have been just another channel in the cable lineup -- will likely find it hard to entice the growing ranks of broadband-only consumers to buy an a la carte monthly subscription service. HBO is moving into the new era. "In the domestic market of the United States, where there is a surfeit of content more than ever, I personally think that brands matter more than ever," says HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler.
Watch kids to see the future of TV (Score:4, Interesting)
If you watch kids watch TV today, they watch TV in a completely non-linear way. They fast forward through stuff, rewind scenes and rewatch them, and essentially re-edit the show to what fits whatever's in their heads.
The older kids have literally run out of TV; they've watched all the shows on Netflix.
Once that happens to a large segment of the population the problem will be coming up with enough content to fill their day. How do you engage them? TV as we know it today isn't the answer.
What's the point of having a Netflix subscription if you've watched everything? What's the point of HBO if there's nothing there? What's the point of network TV when you can just wait and watch all the shows you want in a day?
A friend of mine is actually experimenting with microfiction, in an engagement experiment. It's been pretty fun so far, but does that work at scale?
These are all pretty interesting problems.
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I snorted. lol
Re:Watch kids to see the future of TV (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think my 2 year old has ever watched actual TV, pbskids.org, Netflix, etc. but no TV. I noticed the other day that she routinely uses her finger to move the timeline at the bottom to what she wants. She always chooses what she wants and the choice seems to naturally grow to older shows (within the limits of the service which is kids stuff only).
Interestingly, there is some pure entertainment content available, but she never chooses it. I've pulled it up and she seems bored with it.
I am an extremely self-driven learner though, so she may have just inherited that tendency. It will be interesting to see how that works. I was extremely hampered in my childhood by lack of access to the materials I was interested in learning when I wanted to learn it. When I got my hands on something advanced, magic happened - like when I picked up my Dad's old College Algebra book during the summer after 5th grade and finished it that summer. She won't have that issue.
"Watch the kids - observe retards" -Chinese saying (Score:2)
Much like Randy up there.
People who hear "television" and think "tv shows".
The equivalent of people hearing "newspapers" and thinking "funnies".
At some point you'll get to a place where thinking about television from a linear standpoint will be like dial-up internet," says Hulu CEO Randy Freer.
Television is NOT sitcoms and movies.
News will always be linear.
Sports will always be linear.
Current and live events, be they annual things like music festivals, elections or talk shows or even things like "reality" shows - those will always be linear.
Because time is.
Watching how a five- or ten-year-old (or a clueless CEO) uses an information medium may be interesti
Content hour calculation (Score:2)
Friends: 236 episodes, which at a generous 50 minutes/episode comes out to about 492 content hours. That's 20 days of 24-hour-a-day watching. 4 hours a day = 123 days of watching.
That's assuming that it's all worth watching.
When you're a kid that's unsupervised or watching in the background, that's 4 hours a day for almost half of the school year. That's not much.
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Have some kids.
Come back when you're an authority and not an armchair asshole.
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At that point we may as well get Sword Art Online.
Remember linear books? (Score:3)
Remember back when books were linear, but the the technical revolution of Choose Your Own Adventure overturned hundreds of years of the art form by giving the reader just what they had always wished for: editorial control over the art they consume.
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Remember back when books were linear, but the the technical revolution of Choose Your Own Adventure overturned hundreds of years of the art form by giving the reader just what they had always wished for: editorial control over the art they consume.
I remember those books as just containing a lot of story paths, written by others, and I wanted to (and did) pretty much explore them all.
It was new and different, and really cool, but I figured out pretty quickly that I wasn't really choosing my own adventure so much as reading a lot of story variants spun out of the same basic premise.,
Bread and circuses (Score:2)
Bread and circuses. Keep the population well fed and entertained, and you shall rule the world.
First person viewer (Score:3, Funny)
It is the logical combination of traditional story-telling and video games. The "viewer" gets to see the programme through the eyes of whichever participant they choose. That might be a bystander, or they might be a character, That would give scope for a viewer to alter the storyline, so there may have to be ways to either set it back on track or to simply allow the viewer to make their own show. I can see both possibilities, eventually.
When all the actors are avatars which are downloaded and run rather than simply being a series of images shown in quick succession, along with the scenery and the story, then TV watching will become a much more immersive experience.
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Gaming is the future? I'll buy that.
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The delivery medium changes habits. Since netflix, I watch a series until it gets boring, how ever many episodes and the swap to another, to watch until it get boring and then swap again, maybe back to the first. Is that binge watching or not, it gives a good sense of series development and when that series becomes a bit stale due to extended exposure the ability to swap.
News, the internet and I take my pick, as a rule of thumb avoiding all US main stream media channels as well as UK ones and then what eve
Church Windows? (Score:1)
The next big thing.