All Bets Are Off! - NMA Dec 09
by Nigel Walley, NMA - Dec 17th, 2009
My father phoned me this morning to mention that the Daily Telegraph was recommending he let Marks & Spencer insert a YouTube into his telly. Now, those of you who have fathers who read the Telegraph will know that there comes a point in life where their pooterish sense of alarm at all things new boils over, at some point, into full blown senility. This was clearly the moment for me and I set about keeping him talking while arranging for my wife to rush round and sedate him. But no, he insisted that on page 7, the Consumer Affairs editor, Harry Wallop, was saying exactly that. This was clearly cobblers, or some sub-editor having a laugh, but I checked online and yes it was true. The home of the starched, white ‘Y front’, is launching an internet enabled TV featuring specially designed versions of iPlayer and YouTube.
My father signed off at this point, clearly inflated at the idea he had taught me a bit about new media. Internet connected TVs were interesting when they launched, but clearly not important. I can say this with certainty because not a single sales person I spoke to was able to explain them to me. However, with the inclusion of iPlayer, the involvement of M&S, and the imminent arrival of Xmas, we have a new dawn. So, at this point, as someone who earns their living forecasting media change, I would like to declare that all bets are off. The world has clearly gone mad and I no longer have any idea of what is going to happen.
However, a note of caution is required. Just because they are now understandable by the masses, doesn’t necessarily make internet TVs any good. And they certainly don’t represent the TV industry’s iPhone moment. What I mean by that is the moment where a product launches and it quite clearly redefines the whole industry. TV systems are certainly getting cleverer, and the M&S TV is a reflection of that. Slowly, functionality like search is creeping in but change is very incremental. There is a new generation of boxes arriving next year from all the big players that may bring the moment, but we will have to wait and hope.
Until the launch of the internet connected TVs, with their downloadable widgets, we haven’t seen anything that looks like the Apple app culture in the TV industry. Partly this is because the companies who build software and set top boxes in the pay bit of the industry tend to originate from strange, Mossad inspired encryption projects from the early 80s. If you ever did anything to mess around with the software in their set top boxes they tended to take a rather dim view. The other issue has been regulation. OFCOM regulate TV EPGs and decide which channels go where in the listing. The idea that I should have complete ability to personalize my TV experience has been alien to both groups. Howeever, once you plug broadband into the back of TVs and set top boxes, both these cultures gets blown away. The idea of an OFCOM regulated anything in TV may become difficult to sustain.
So we are clearly into ‘anything can happen in the next ten minutes mode’ and quite frankly I’m un-prepared for it. We’ll be hearing next that Amazon are going to open shops!
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