I cannot help but think that commercial TV stations are being bypassed by OTT applications, in the exact same way that mobile carriers are being bypassed by OTT application developers. We always hear about mobile carriers simply becoming bit pipes to deliver content by application developers. The same paradigm is true of TV networks.
With the common availability of PVR's that will record entire series of programs for you, who can actually spare the time to watch live TV any more? Sporting events aside, Why watch live TV programming with advertisements when you can invest two thirds of the time to watch the same content that has been recorded by fast forwarding through the advertisements. You don't even have to wait that long. Take a classic example of any 'talent' show broadcast on Saturday evening. Wait 30 minutes after its scheduled start and then watch and not be bother by needless advertising! this is exactly why ITV are having kittens about The Voice clashing with the scheduled start time of Britain's Got Talent. People still watch BGT, but they do so thirty minutes later, and fast forward through all the advertising. ITV have now moved the start time of BGT, to avoid a clash with the Voice on BBC, but are still complaining of a three minute over-run of the Voice!
The delayed watching of television programs of course will kill off the viability of commercial TV. The whole paradigm of commercial TV requires people to watch advertisements. Why would I invest the money in TV advertising, if increasingly no-one actually watches them? Without eyeballs on TV advertising, commercial TV has to suffer
This is precisely why the social aspect of sharing the television watching experience is important for commercial television. Why? As sharing the TV experience usually (not always) involves sharing the experience of watching live TV. A classic example is the zeebox application that allows you to create a chat room with your friends and watch a television show, while having a dual screen discussion. Guess what, before you know it, as you are watching live TV, you may very well end up discussing the advertisements as well. There really can be nothing better than this for someone advertising a product. Generating a buzz, preferably positive, as a side effect of dual screen television watching.
A nice feature, that should be built into the dual screen experience is then being able to share links to the content, yes even the advertisements, to share in real time on your social networks. People love sharing innovative and funny, or even disastrously poor advertisements with their friends. Why haven't the incumbent TV stations done this? Why are their a proliferation of applications like zeebox springing onto the market that allow this? To be fair I cannot easily share a link to a TV ad from zeebox either, however i bet it appears in an app before it appears in anything a TV station offers! ;-)
The more social TV catches on, the more people will feel left out if they are not watching and discussing with their friends at the same time. This will draw more people back into watching live television and hey guess what - watching more advertising! The thing is though, for me, apart from the odd hash tag thrown up on the screen, so far the TV networks have failed somewhat to really engage in the social experience of TV. TiVo is a classic example of the lack of social by incumbent TV players. TiVo could very easily be zeebox. It isn't though. A massive play by Virgin into the TV market, I am sure costing a massive investment, but not a social aspect in the product to be seen.
As I mentioned early I cannot help but feel that the OTT application developers are treating existing TV infrastructure in the same way they are treating the mobile networks! All this being said there is still so much that existing TV networks (and yes even mobile carriers) can do to embrace the world of social, as opposed to fear it. More on that later though! ;-)
Cheers
m
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