OUT OF THE ORDINARY

The future of broadcast TV

In the run up to Christmas I had the pleasure of 'discovering' Summer Heights High, the award winning Australian comedy currently showing on BBC Three. The series provides a brilliantly funny parody of high school life in Australian and is well worth watching. The question is where? My first experience of it was on BBC Three as a result of a tip-off from Jamie C. The problem for me though was that as I was a little late to the party the BBC had already reached episode 5. Not to be put off I went to the BBC iPlayer and found episode 4 which I devoured with indecent haste. Nowhere near sated I then looked around for more of the same and of course this is where the limitations of the otherwise brilliant iPlayer kicked in. With almost all programmes available for only a maximum of seven days after broadcast episodes 1,2 and 3 were nowhere to be found.

Unwilling to accept defeat quite so easily I turned to YouTube to fill in the gaps. Now credit is due to ABC TV who have been progressive enough to create a Summer Heights High YouTube channel but not surprisingly while its stuffed full of clips it doesn't contain full versions of the first three episodes. For this I had to turn to iTunes and take advantage of the fact that I have a Mac Mini connected to the widescreen TV in my living room. So with only minimal delay, three thirty minute episodes download in minutes over a fast broadband connection, I was able to get up to speed and catch-up with the BBC's scheduling. 

So where to from here? Do I reorganise my calender to ensure I am in when episodes 6, 7 and 8 are broadcast on the BBC. Do I trust myself to use the iPlayer to catch the episodes within seven days of broadcast? Do I hand over £1.99 per episode to iTunes as the cost of my busy lifestyle? Thankfully my Sky+ box provides the most obvious answer and I am now happy in the knowledge that, in the absence of a hardware failure, I won't be missing the end of this great series.

So alls well that ends well but this experience does raise an interesting question about the role of broadcast TV in this increasingly on-demand world: has it been reduced to little more than a series of trailers for content shown through more convenient platforms? It certainly seems to be going that way in my world.

To Be Frank

Interesting to note that of the 100 most popular videos on YouTube, 4 are commercials. Of course it wasn't going to be long before advertisers recognised the power of distributing their commercial messages through social media platforms. However just posting standard 30 second spots to video sites is unlikely to generate much traction. Instead, within this environment advertising is just another form of content and must therefore live or die by the same rules. In the absense of the ability to interupt the audience, entertainment, interest, humour or intrigue are just some of the possible dimensions available to faciliate the move from advertising to branded content.

I think this demonstrates the point, but then I would as it was created by Profero on behalf of FRANK:

But as ever I'm more interested in your thoughts than my own!