Tag: Google

Join The Crew of The ‘Flight To Quality’!

Join The Crew of The 'Flight To Quality'!

I wrote recently here that Google is likely to become one of our biggest paymasters in the future of the TV production industry, but this still sounds like crystal ball-gazing, or science fiction. Right now, most predictions for TV watching in the future, other than the licence funded BBC, are based on viewers paying a little – or a lot – for what they want to watch. And it looks like they want better than they’re getting just now.

When television viewers can choose what they want to view and when, they have less tolerance for low-budget, vapid TV wallpaper. Adam Curtis, maker of The Power Of Nightmares and Century of the Self, recently told C21 Media that the BBC iPlayer is one of the things changing the state of play for documentary production, because people can watch docs again and again, which means they can be “as complicated as you want.” This discerning viewing goes far beyond BBC iPlayer – any digital TV box with a recording facility gives viewers the same power of involvement and will be the kiss of death to patronising telly.

David Cuff is Virgin Media’s Commercial Director, and I recently heard him tell a room full of interactive TV producers that, “there is a flight towards quality. People are watching better quality programmes, for which they are prepared to pay”. But this isn’t just about affluent viewers getting the good stuff. We can still do the traditional thing and pay through our shopping bills by watching adverts, they’ll just be better targeted to each of us. Advertisers don’t really have a problem with smaller audiences if they can get a better focus on just the people they really want to reach.

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Google Plans To Be The God of Television

Google Plans To Be The God of Television

In 2009 television advertising revenue fell by 17% which has panicked broadcasters into questioning their future. After spending 3 days at the RTS Cambridge Convention this week Moray reports on how Google claim that they can save the day.

“I’ve just spent three days at the RTS Cambridge Convention, the gathering every two years of some two hundred people who own or run the UK’s TV industry… Sessions led by the likes of Mark Thompson, Peter Bazalgette, Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw, Andy Duncan and Dawn Airey, worried over the future of the BBC and the commercial broadcasters. But the big question lurking over every session was, ‘where will the money come from?’… Then, like a deity summoned from Olympus, Eric Schmidt appeared on a live satellite-link to answer questions from the delegates and give the word of Google. If Larry Page and Sergey Brin thought up Google, the most successful start-up in history, Eric Schmidt is the Chief Executive they brought in to run and grow it. And Google is aiming to be the god of all television.

I’ve just spent three days at the RTS Cambridge Convention, the gathering every two years of some two hundred people who own or run the UK’s TV industry. The mood certainly wasn’t self-congratulatory, if anything, the tone was typical of that set by Phil Redmond, creator of Brookside and Grange Hill, when quoting screenwriter, William Goldman, ‘nobody knows nothing’.

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