The complex future of TV

The advent of digital technologies has redefined the media landscape, not least our concept of television. As consumers embrace content across multiple platforms, industry stakeholders must continue innovating to stay in the game. Brett Savill, strategy and corporate development director for Broadcast Australia writes.

The digitisation of television and other forms of visual/screen-based entertainment is at the epicentre of a wave of change in viewer behaviour. An ever-broadening range of digital viewing options—including internet downloads, cable TV, direct-to-home (DTH) satellite, IPTV, terrestrial television and mobile TV—are vying for viewer attention, presenting both challenges and opportunities for industry stakeholders.

Modern consumers, particularly the youth market, demand a different viewing experience all together from the passive armchair TV viewing of their forebears. The twin progeny of digitisation—personalisation and interactivity—have created an entirely new viewing dimension, where content is actively sought across multiple platforms. It is no longer viable for content to be available from one source only. Where once a program might have been broadcast at a set time and on a set channel, it now needs to be available online for catch-up viewing, plus often on a mobile TV service as well.

Popular consumer devices such as smartphones and media tablets are driving consumer expectation for portability—access to all multimedia and entertainment services from just about anywhere. Mirroring this phenomenal growth of mobile wireless broadband services, the future of television viewing also looks likely to incorporate an expanding range of portable and mobile devices such as netbooks, high-tech phones and a new breed of low cost portable TVs.