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Home  News The future of television
Written by AdNation Editor, Wednesday, 10 March 2010
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 “Television is the world’s most powerful medium,” says Brett Pulley, media and entertainment reporter at Bloomberg L.P., moderator of the “Television outside the box” session at today’s Abu Dhabi Media Summit. “But as it keeps expanding its reach, how will it change? And where are the risks?” That’s what we’re here to find out.
First up, here are the speakers: Robert Bakish, president of MTV Networks International, Raoul Roverato, executive vice-president of new growth businesses at Orange, Dr. Prannoy Roy, executive chairperson of NDTV, and Nuri Colakoglu, vice-president of Dogan Media Group.
The rapid growth that the television industry has witnessed over the last 15-20 years, all the speakers agree, have made life much more complicated. The old days of the cash-cow networks deciding who watched what and when are over. “TV is now democratized,” says Colakoglu. “Mainstream TV is a double-marketing job these days. First of all you have to convince viewers to watch you, then you have to convince advertisers to advertise with you. It’s a weird juggling act.” And technology keeps adding more balls.
Technology, though, is a boon as well as a curse. The cost of launching a channel has reduced dramatically over the last few years, NDTV’s Roy says. And that has reduced the need for foreign investment.
It’s also good for advertisers. As Roverato points out. “In the old days, you might have been reaching lots of people, but you didn’t know who was watching,” he says. “Now, with the proliferation of mobile and digital devices, you know who they are, so you can have conversations with them. Which gives great opportunities to content creators and advertisers.”
Content creation – everyone agrees – is the key to success in the TV industry now. With so much choice, viewers can no longer be expected to sit in front of whatever’s on the screen at the time. They’re getting more choosy (although that makes the existence of Big Brother all the more puzzling).
“To make money, you have to create stuff that people want to spend time with,” says MTV’s Bakish. “When you’re connecting with audiences, then you can monetise that content.”
Roy, too, is convinced that good content will be rewarded. He uses the example of India’s 50-plus news channels to illustrate his point. A few years ago, he says, many of them turned “tabloid-y”, relying on “sex and violence” to attract viewers. Which they did. And advertisers, predictably, went with the numbers. But now, advertisers are rethinking that strategy, and returning to the few news outlets that continued to rely on good journalism rather than sensationalism. “Advertisers will – eventually – go with quality,” he says. “If you stay credible, you’ll get higher revenues in the long run.”
So, the goal for TV companies in the future? Do something good. It’s not an earth-shattering insight, but – judging by the dross that dominates 95% of the TV schedules – it does bear repeating.
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