Television 2.0's foremost challenge is...

written by: Gianluigi Cuccureddu

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Published on Tuesday, 30 November 1999 01:00

And the answer is: Attention.

Conventional television business models will disappear or diminish when -amongst others- IPTV will be adopted. Here lies the cause and effect when relating to the challenge, content providers first need to find ways to attract people, get their attention and retain their attention and from there on the business model can be reshaped to meet the new characteristics.

The Web is already undergoing this transformation when it comes to monetizing attention, quality content means spent-time and the fate of Television 2.0 doesn't really differ from that point of perspective. TV 2.0 has an advantage, it can make use of the multi-faceted of user media-usage.

Convergence and integration of television, Web and social aspects could bring in new experiences which will grasp the attention of the digital user.

 The two most important characteristics which will challenge Attention are first of all the openness of the television landscape, which is expressed through the amount of channels, be it vertical channels or channels created by the consumers themselves, it becomes a real-time battle to get attention, producer and consumer lines fade, just like it did with Social Media and new power understandings will arise as time passes by.

Secondly, the extent to which consumers control is the effect of the openness of the future television landscape, just like the Web, users decide what how to consume their time. Attention is time and time is money (revenue). Where advertising revenue is earned in our current television business model, consumers can bypass advertising which will create a downward spiral for the advertisers and content providers. Current interests are simply too vast to open up and allow an open TV platform, therefore companies create so-called walled gardens to try not losing all the control and therefore to keep its revenue streams established.

This won't last forever, even though TV set producers -from the hardware point of view, are coming up with their own standard for lack of any wide accepted standard- could slow down market development.

It does sound like a chicken-egg issue, what do you think comes first?