The future of TV: like Martini

 

1950s General Electric TV Set

What’s Martini got to do with telly? Patience… The role of TV in Britain was defined by the BBC’s first director general, Lord Reith: to educate, inform, entertain. More than 80 years later and in an increasingly fractured media world, the telly is still doing that and still number one.

 

“TV viewing has actually increased in recent years,’ Ofcom’s director of research James Thickett told me. “It’s about 27 hours per week – up by about 30 minutes in the last 5 years.”

In the future though, won’t the digital generations, brought up with Facebook, Flickr, Bebo, Blogger, Twitter, Wiis and PSPs, be too active and creative to sit goggle-eyed in front of the TV, whether it’s HD, 3D, holographic or an immersive entertainment cave? In the future, will they switch off the TV set and go and do something less boring instead?

Well, no, because stories are as old than the hills, an essential part of what it is to be human, so passive, sit-back-and-watch TV-style story entertainment is resolutely here to stay.

And, well, yes too, because what’s going to change is how and where we watch TV. In the future, watching TV will become less the family-sit-round-the-telly experience, it’ll be more personalised and time-shifted, that is, instead of watching at scheduled primetime, we’ll watch anytime that suits us. It’ll be like ordering a Martini in the 1970s.

The digital/Twitter/Bebo generation is already doing that. Instead of rushing home to watch Grange Hill like we did, they’re watching Beyond the Rave webisodes or Lost: Missing Pieces style mobisodes on their laptops and mobiles. And as we increasingly watch TV on devices originally conceived as interactive, shows will incorporate ever more interactive enhancements into the original. Strategic advisor to Channel Four, Steve Moore is already working on “bringing social networking to the TV experience”. BAFTA-nominted director Basi Akpabio suggests TV shows will have more external enhancements in the future, “like The Apprentice predictor”. The next step major step will be the convergence of the PC and TV.

“With Internet Protocol TV (IPTV), TV will go from a linear to a non-linear medium, like how news went from linear in newspapers to non-linear on the web,” the BBC’s chief advisor to the deputy director general, Richard Addy, told me. “Imagine how it’ll be when you can access any piece of video ever made from any device you like. The questions then become: what do you want to watch, where do you want to watch it – and how do you find the stuff you like?”

GoogleTV anyone? It may be a hoax till now but don’t bet against the concept. After all, aren’t today’s Electronic Programme Guides (EPGs) a bit limiting? Wouldn’t it be great to have Google-style search when you want to find something to watch? There’s a design challenge here: computer search works with a keyboard, a TV with a remote. One solution launching in the US next year is from a company called Rovi: a unified media guide that will allow users to search and even offer and see social recommendations of broadcast TV and channels like YouTube XL, a version of the website but with videos optimized for watching on a big screen.

The internet, mobile and whatever’s coming next will not kill the TV star, they’ll enable and enhance it. Wherever people watch – on the beach, skating or even at home , TV will continue to do what it’s supposed to do: educate, inform, entertain. Lord Reith would be happy.