the future is tv

Oh really!

I put myself through a day's action scripting ( Flash) to tidy one or two things on my site viewmagazine.tv, and as always happens my mind drifted. I recalled a couple of meetings I attended in the past, the Apple Exec on Regent street where they revealed an assortment of broadcast solutions.

There, one TV exec gave the best exchange yet that TV's USP would forever be that; that it is capable of carrying huge events and bringing people together around the box. The Net and TV's viewing habits get flagged up here.

I'll write about this in more detail on viewmag. Once again this blog allows for an incoherent brain dump. Broadband's quality, speeds and algorithimic compressions may reach TV's, but the goggle box has the upper hand. Though I wouldn't give up the interactivity and the intimacy of my mac experience - me tapping away and watching snipets of "The Unit";not replicable to the same enjoyment on TV sets.

Yet TV is still a fighting force - a ready made medium with still enough eye balls wedded to it. Problem is there's been a lot of abuse of the audience. Partly, perhaps arrogance and ignorance. Nothing beats a skilled TV maker in the same way you'll probably pay for the experience of seeing a David Mamet or Buckenheimer project unsighted.

But a happy medium often TV does not make. Everyone's an expert and whether you like it or not or that you need to show how adept you are a De Bono's 6 hats smiling deferentially at the consumer.

Sidetracking somewhat, the recent visible spat between BSB Sky and Virgin, should be a public warning to Virgin about consumer choice. All the head of marketing needed to do was send a communique to its consumers explaining the issue and any redress they might make for leaving us in he lurch. I changed from Virgin to Sky the week they lost 24, and so did thousand others.

Grand scale projects may be TV's its K.app, but it is also yet to become comfortable with the idea that diminshng made-for-tv content will likely fall further as broadband increasingly mimics TV's characteristics. TV's best years are done. Get over it.

There is a parrallel universe in the making. It's one in which a new breed of broad/band caster will deliver to TV and the Net.
I have always thought mischievously what would happen if say, a large body of broadcasters left say the BBC and set up a rival network.. then again there's Al Jazeera, which if you haven't seen, do.

But the dynamics of the new visual screen world order will require a new business minded exec capable of understanding how to offer "personalised" rewards to viewers. In many cases there will be meeting of minds between the traditional and new: Sky/ Myspace, Last FM/ CBS , but that relationship will not always be sustainable in numbers. That much I remember having an hours debate with Stuart Murphy when he was controller of BBC 3. He got it.

The future really is TV, except one we haven't yet fathomed.