Can hybrid television redefine Australian TV? – Piracy, digital rights and the ad experience
Ahead of tonight’s launch of Freeview Plus, Mumbrella’s Nic Christensen looks at what the new HbbTV service will mean for broadcast rights, piracy, and the way advertisers serve up their content.
It’s not every day that you get a TV sales boss like Nine’s Peter Wiltshire admitting the weaknesses of television as a medium.
“It was one of the great achilles heels of broadcast television that it was one-to-many,” says Wiltshire who is group sales and marketing director for Nine.
“For years we’ve been talking about how do you build a one to one platform in broadcast television. That channel was going to be the remote control, then the telephone, now it’s a smartphone and we are reaching a point where the back channel becomes the TV itself.”
Nobody from the TV channels mentioned (of course) the elephant in the room: the ability of viewers to fast-forward through ad breaks at 30x – you’re lucky if anyone even sees a 30 second tvc. Add to that the commercial channel’s seeking to INCREASE their advertising content, it will only get that much worse for advertisers.
Why spend a lot of money for advertising time that is not only diluted by up to five minutes of other advertising time but also through the interminable (and oft repeated) house ads that top and tail each break.
At least with print media it can’t be fast forwarded because readers still scan each page, even if they don’t stop and read it.
OMG. Why didn’t somebody think of this like 10 years ago.
The age old issue of relevance and usefulness of adverts rather than what represents the lions share of TV adverts which is annoyance. Like Facebook gotta question, people’s mindsets when they are talking to friends/trying to relax by watching (much of the mindless Australian TV) we get served, how effective and cost efficientient is TV advertising anyhow?
To be honest I have never seen so much bull$#1 in one article.
I have a better idea. How about a 100% on-demand service, with no ads for a modest monthly fee. Wait – it already exists. Netflix.
BTW if you think you are smart paying for Hulu and still getting ads!? Something is wrong with you 😉
>>”It was one of the great achilles heels of broadcast television that it was one-to-many,” says Wiltshire who is group sales and marketing director for Nine.”
It’s not its Achilles heel, its its strength. If you want to advertise a product and know it will reach all the population how do you do it ? – TV.
>>>”A major factor behind the free-to-air network push has been the rise of piracy and the general consumer trend towards time shifting shows and catch up TV options.”
The Philips LP-2000 video cassette recorder was introduced in 1970. Plenty of time for the networks to adjust I would have thought.
>>>”Nobody from the TV channels mentioned (of course) the elephant in the room: the ability of viewers to fast-forward through ad breaks at 30x – you’re lucky if anyone even sees a 30 second tvc”
You’ll miss the program too. No channel runs breaks that divide into precisely 30 second intervals. They wised up to that about 15 years ago.
Don’t know if you’ve caught the latest Harold but you most certainly don’t reach the “all the population” on TV anymore. You reach a smaller and smaller percentage of the population year on year and that juicy advertising market with lots of disposable income (the under 30’s) – its an even tinnier share of the audience. Free to air reaches less and less people each year. There’s never be less reach.
Yeah I don’t think I’ll be buying yet another box to plug in to the tv.
Hugo, can you please cite your data source. Or is that just your opinion?
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All the data I have seen (and it’s truckloads) shows that TVs reach is barely affected (we’re talking tenths of a decimal point), but that the duration and frequency of viewing is dropping in some demos (and conversely rising in others as FTA multi-channels increase choice), leaving overall viewing levels barely different to the early ’90s, but spread across many, many more channels resulting in lower average audiences to individual programmes.
What utter drivel. Talk about integration and personalisation till your out of breath, this is exactly the reason hbbtv will be a right f up. All these FTA sales wankers who still dine at Peacock Gardens and La Grillade will try to fill it with adds, which will drive people even quicker to Netflix and iTunes , srvices which have content worth paying for.
I agree with the first comment re the elephant in the room.
People will no longer sit through ad breaks, they wither fast forward, download or hop onto the net during live shows.
This is a massive challenge, and I believe more and more people are ver cluey on how to avoid ads.
Does this technology allow us to finally see real audience numbers instead of the survey periods? I imagine the amount of Australian’s watching broadcast TV is much smaller than surveys suggest.
Numbers will continue to dwindle even on rewind as the ads are switching people off, no doubt!
Mumbo jumbo by the truckload.
Wiltshire a ‘veteran’? Fuck me isn’t he 40?
All the rest, just like the ‘veteran’ comment reminds me of the launch of AM Stereo!
No bastard will buy the technology as it will be too expensive PLUS the punters will be confused as it won’t be available in Regional Markets…..so what 30% of Australia misses out? Please – this is a dog with fleas.
WJ, thank you for your erudite and fact-packed well-researched and reasoned response. I imagine you know not what you talk about.
And anonymous, it’s nice to know TV that ads are a recent phenomenon. Thank goodness they weren’t around in the 60s, 70s, 80s etc. otherwise there would be no-one watching TV by now. Thanks for raising the alert.
Maybe in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s the content was worth watching? Come on though Big Brother, the bachelor, voice/Xfactor (same thing different celeb’s) I think people will vote with their remotes as numbers do continue to reduce…
So it’s the programmes and not the ads now that are making people switch off, is it Anonymous?
In the 25 years that we have electronically measured TV viewing, the average minutes viewed per day has dropped from around 3hrs 13 mins to 3hrs 6mins. Yep, 7 minutes in nearly a quarter of a century. I wonder how many bazillion gazillion remote votes have happened during that time. The thing that has changed is that that quantum of viewing is no longer spread across just five FTA channels but across 17 FTA channels and in 30% of homes up to 118 Foxtel channels.