I have to confess that other than the occasional Storage Wars marathon, I don’t watch a lot of “traditional” TV. But I’m also far from the norm, according to current Canadian statistics. The CRTC says that the average Canadian watches almost 30 hours of TV a week.
What is considered traditional TV these days? When an online content producer like Netflix can compete at the Emmys alongside traditional networks and cable powerhouses like HBO and AMC, we have to appreciate that the days of traditional TV disruption are upon us. Closest to the core of this has to be the addition of the second screen.
According to the CRTC, those who watch TV with a connected device in hand (tablet, laptop, smartphone etc.), are currently at 28%. Those who are actually engaged in content relevant to the program they are watching is much less.
Traditional TV consumption these days includes intermittent checkin-ins, likes and peer-to-peer dialogue through social channels like Facebook or Twitter. This is obviously not great for advertisers. It is shown that when commercials are on, the social engagement levels (on the second screen) go through the roof. When the show returns, the social engagement settles back down but remains fairly steady.
While I believe that “social TV” is a logical approach to capturing that audience while keeping the content relevant to the activity, it has, so far, fallen short. Many of the major broadcasters and content creators have leveraged the work of technology partners to come up with attempts to keep the viewer engaged, but the engagement is often nothing more than a walled chat feed, trivia engine or contest entry tool. This augmented experience isn’t a long-term solution for sustaining viewer attention.
“It is hard making great television – it may be harder to make compelling, synchronous experiences for viewers,” says Miguel Monteverde, VP of digital at media company Discovery Communications (the Discovery Channel people). “Networks and shows need to conceive social components just as early as they produce scripts and scenes.”
And this is where there is still a mighty disconnect between the quality of the broadcast content and the immersiveness of the online engagement. While content producers are rethinking the structure and flow of content, from script to screen, there are hundreds, if not thousands of entities out there working hard to bridge the divide.
Get This, for example, lets users shop –online or through a mobile app – for products featured on their favourite shows as the show is being broadcasted.
The Independent Film Channel stepped into second screen engagement by providing a “live experience” with IFCSync alongside its second season of the cult comedy Portlandia. The platform has users log in via Facebook and integrates a social engagement (trivia, real-time chat, and unlockable extra content) in real-time as the show airs on IFC.
Yet for all the effort to better integrate the second screen, just as many TV viewers are looking to the very same technology to keep them away from ads.
Commercial Break, the app that alerts viewers in real time when their TV program comes back from commercials, announced its public beta on the July 28. According to the official press release, Commercial Break is available on Apple’s App Store free of charge during its public beta. “The average American sees more than 10 hours of commercials every week. Commercial Break is [our] attempt to help them take back that time,” said Commercial Break cofounder and CEO Haim Kairy.
And there are lots of other examples (everything from GraceNote and TVPlus to Apple’s ad skipping iTV service and Google’s ChromeCast) that show us how in flux the current multiscreen universe is, and how developers are trying to capture our attention and lead us all into the next phase of content consumption and engagement. We have a long way to go, but at this point, with so many technologies pulling in different directions, I am not sure that we will know when we have actually gotten there.
Cameron Wykes is the chief invention officer at KBS+.
[@CameronWykes] [LinkedIn]
