April 2006 Archives

At the opening of the 'What is all this talk of Cross Platform and New Media?' seminar at the Film and Television Institute a few weeks ago we started off by asking a very simple question. 'Who has a digital watch?" In the audience there was one sole digital watch wearer. Yet, if you cast your mind back to the early 1980's digital watches were everywhere, they were high tech, futuristic wonders. I remember the family gathering around a family friends new watch and listening to it play a tune! It came with ten preprogrammed well known ditties, like 'Auld Lang Syne' and 'Happy Birthday' that could be dispersed at the press of a very tiny button. People were wary of this digital technology though, small children were unable to read the time on regular clocks, a cause for alarm in society - what would happen to the children of the 1980's in adulthood, struggling to read the time on the town hall clock. The next question we asked was, "Who here is wearing a watch?" It turns out that around 30 percent of the audience were wearing a watch - all of them with moving hands and their owners were able to read the time. Our grandparents cause for concern didn't come true it appears. Our final question was, 'Who uses their mobile phone to tell the time?' That was the other 70% of the audience. A perfect example of technological convergence, phones and watches have become one and many of us hadn't even noticed. Most people who own a mobile phone have lost one, misplaced it or had it nicked. A colleague of mine had her mobile phone stolen off her desk. Determined to lot lose another expensive telephone she bought a handy accessory that strapped her phone to her wrist. It made me wonder though, why did our watches go into our telephones, and not our telephones into our watches? By comparison the watch has actually gone backwards by a hundred years, we now all have pocket watches again, like our great grandfathers. You do get those phones that feature a head set that you stick in your ear, but anyone wearing one of those looks incredibly pompous and slightly silly, besides they always appear to be talking to themselves if you haven't noticed the ear-piece - making it difficult to determine on the street is who is a Businessman and who is a Crazy man. Our mobile phones are more than just communication devices and timekeepers, they are used for music, games, address books, reminders. I use mine to wake me up in the morning, I set the alarm and then put the phone and the extreme other end of the house, it rings louder and louder until it's turned off. I use it to calculate my grocery shopping as I walk around the store, so as to ensure I don't over spend. Most importantly it is the device that plays my theme tune, there's no denying it, your phones ring tone has become a way you say something to the world about who you are... mine plays 'My Sharona' by The Knack. A new survey by Associated Press and AOL shows that younger people use their mobile phone's for more and more things. They are cameras, SMS devices, MP3 Players, Note Takers, Game Consoles, alarm clocks, reminder lists, internet access points and yes, they are also telephones. In the 1960's the Television show 'Star Trek' suggested that in the future people would carry around Tri-corders, hand held devices that could survey geographical rock formations and analyze chemical compounds and communicate with the mother ship. Well - we have the hand held devices but they don't do anything as noble as Mr Spock displayed. They play 'Snake' and new tunes by rap bands. So my grandparents concern about digital watches didn't come true, Gene Rodenberry's Tri-corder is used to find your mate on the other side of a crowded bar and we reverted to carrying the time in our pockets. Predications that were close but not exactly on the money. Today people predict how we will watch television, what will we watch on mobile platforms? Will our programs be downloaded over the computer? Is free-to-air television in it's final death throws? Is it becoming a global viewing audience? Will the audience want to interact with programs? If we take the common thinking and apply "The Tri-corder Rule' and accept that in all likely-hood the common beliefs are going to be close to the truth... but not quite there. What will we come up with?

The NEW YORK TIMES reports that ABC (America) will trial giving their most popular shows away for free over the internet. Beginning in May, four programs 'Alias', 'Commander in Chief', 'Desperate Housewives' and 'Lost' will be available online the day after they are broadcast on television. The net-version will have advertisements included that viewers will not be able to skip forward through like they do on TIVO. While this is an expected move in the face of illegal downloading it does have big implications for existing distribution channels. If it becomes standard for web versions to be available the day after American television broadcast is this going to reduce international sales of television programs? Why watch 'Desperate Housewives' on Chanel 7, I saw it last year over the web. The easy answer to this challenge is Australian television broadcasters will have to catch up and play shows at the same time as their country of origin. Big television programs will have to have world-wide releases. Yet this creates more problems, television programs are publicized by their stars and staggered releases of films and television programs around the world allow the stars to travel and promote the program. In the case of feature films, cinema prints from the US can be shipped to Britain and then on to other countries , reducing the costs as prints are reused in different territories. Their is a distinct advantage to the broadcaster though, advertising can be sold twice, once for the broadcast, and again for the web-cast. Yet you can see the legitimate argument that will be put forward in no time from foreign buyers of programs, if I'm only getting the TV advertising sales, and your making the web-cast advertising sales - I think I'd like to pay a little less for your product. The big advantage to this model of distribution though is it may allow the shows with complex story lines to retain audiences. Programs like 'Desperate Housewives', 'Lost', '24' and 'The Sporano's' have intricate and fast moving plots. For many viewers if you miss a week, you lose the plot. There's no point tuning in next week, wait for the DVD of the series later in the year. Allowing us to catch up on missed shows over the internet could allow larger audiences to build for these kinds of programs. ABC America has obviously been thinking along these lines as none of the programs offered for internet viewing are reality programs, competitive 'celebrity' shows or sporting programs.

A few weeks ago at the Cross Media discussion at the Film and Television Institute one of the topics that was highlighted was the growing trend towards audience interaction with the product. An example of the re-cut trailer for the film 'The Shinning' was cited as example, but the question was asked - how is this going to make money for a producer?