Connected TV Experience: Choice + complexity = Inertia
A new series of blogs about the broadcast industry, narrated by David Brennan…
What was always seen as TV’s greatest weakness – its passive audience – is actually its greatest strength. It’s a fact of life that the predominant mindset when we are watching TV is “entertain me… but don’t make it too hard!”
We are engaged rather than attentive (two very different things) and will almost always go for the simplest, quickest, most convenient option. I believe that is the fundamental reason why the linear schedule has remained so strong and why on-demand has primarily been a complement rather than a competitor. Choice and complexity (and three clicks is considered complex in TV land) tend to breed inertia.
I was reminded of this when I attended MediaTel Group’s Connected TV Experience event showcasing of the latest TV technology at iBurbia yesterday. Nigel Walley took us on an energetic and comprehensive journey through all of the different ways consumers can already access the content they love, sometimes via three different routes within the same TV platform (Virgin Media – I’m looking at you!).
It was impressive, confusing, beguiling and occasionally dumbfounding… often all at the same time. If the audience of intelligent, experienced, techno-literate media executives that MediaTel normally attracts couldn’t keep up with who provides what under which branding, then what chance is the poor old consumer going to have?
We are already seeing signs of a growing inertia, despite most people’s enthusiasm for television (they’ve certainly spent enough on the technology over the last five years!). It is a major factor behind the low numbers of people connecting their laptops to their TV sets even though they simultaneously opine that they wish they could watch on-demand programming via the main set.
It is why up to half of those people purchasing internet-connected TV sets don’t use that connectivity at all (and a high proportion of those that do use it in a very limited way). It is part of the reason why on-demand viewing of TV programmes is still only a tiny proportion of the total, despite it being almost ubiquitous these days.
After looking at the range of options now flooding the market – from platforms, broadcasters, aggregators, middleware providers and set manufacturers to name a few – it is difficult to separate the good from the bad, and consumers are going to struggle to see the benefits of one over the other.
What will set the winners apart, I feel, is functionality and design that is geared to (and intuitively understands) the TV environment, rather than to a technical specification. The winners will know that they will have to make navigation simple, TV-centric (i.e. more rich media) and immediate; three clicks is about the limit. But, most of all, the market will need to consolidate and to make the proposition simple. Otherwise, if it’s too much choice and too hard to make that choice, then it will be no choice at all, as far as the average TV viewer is concerned.
The upside of inertia is the potential for deep-seated change, and I saw enough from the iBurbia session to know that, when we start making use of all the opportunities that smart TVs can offer, then change will come. For the moment, though, it doesn’t look like coming from those who have earned their success in the more lean-forward world of the internet.
Plenty for the speakers at the Connected TV event to ponder…