Moving into the Digital Age

Opening the proceedings was Ari Iso-Rautio, Head of Capgemini’s Media and Entertainment division, who stressed television’s critical need to reform itself in order to survive. Iso-Rautio pointed to the prior experience of the music industry’s solutions currently transforming its fortunes and the potential for similar answers for TV.

A promising model could be the Canvas project. Canvas, as planned, would consist of a coalition between the BBC, certain commercial broadcasters (excluding SKY) and BT as an aggregator. The project would offer a combination of a Freeview box including a VoD option which means that online VoD content could be watched on TV instead of the computer. Canvas would therefore offer a cross-media solution albeit with its own set of challenges.

While most public and commercial broadcasters highly support and anticipate this project, representatives of existing pay-television operators e.g. SKY, remain sceptical. They believe that it would be too difficult for the Canvas partners to cooperate effectively. The project’s critics are also convinced that Canvas resembles the former kangaroo project too much which was cancelled earlier this year due to concerns about competitive distortion.

A further obstacle which public and commercial broadcasters alike are facing, is the audience’s expectation for free content. While SKY has an established successful subscriber model, public and commercial broadcasters have to re-educate their viewers to accept a charge to allow for new sources of revenue alongside the diminishing traditional advertising.

Despite this new thinking, most experts agree that social networks will play an increasingly important role in our combined future and are shortly to exceed traditional TV advertising importance. Nevertheless, there are still no successful models to monetise this growing and influential market.