I was sitting in my hotel room in Dubai, waiting for the Champions League Final to come on the TV only to discover at 10.30 (kick off was 10.45 local time) what I thought was the UEFA Champions League was in fact an Arab competition. Rapid trolling through the 200+ channels available revealed that there was no coverage on any of them. I was desperate now, it was too late to go out and find a sports bar so in desperation I went on to UEFA’s website to see if it offered any advice only to find that for €3.00 I could have it streamed live to my laptop with an English commentary. I’m not going to pretend that the visual experience was as good as my large screen high definition TV at home but it was good enough and fulfilled my need to see the match live.

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This got me thinking about how our watching habits are changing and how we now watch content that not long ago we would have only accessed through a traditional TV receiver. It’s been well documented how the massive expansion of cable and satellite channels have brought about the demise of the halcyon days of massive TV audiences for individual programs, with the possible exception of major sporting events, and how this affects TV advertising revenues and the whole financial balance of the TV industry. When you throw in the advent of hard disk recorders and series DVD packages it’s not hard to see that the way we watch TV has changed forever.

Just as the music industry failed to embrace the change in their customer’s behaviour in moving from buying albums to buying individual tracks it seems that the TV consumer is moving to viewing clips as demonstrated by the rise of YouTube and the availability of clips on media websites such as the BBC and CNN, and if the TV industry doesn’t react positively to this change then they will find themselves in the same boat as the big music labels. In general the big entertainment corporations seem to resist change but with some enlightened creative thinking they can turn this threat into a very lucrative opportunity.

There are obvious parallels with the first age of web (I guess it’s now known as 1.0) and the music industry with such applications as Napster in that there is a need to monetarise the offering early before it gets away and people expect it for free. There are clear lessons to be learned for these applications and services e.g. target the masses not the early adopter/tech savvy/conspicuous consumer, don’t be greedy, and charge a reasonable fee for the user experience and value-added services.

As a consumer my real interest is in how I can access English language TV whist I’m travelling, BBC World and CNN are available widely but by their very nature extremely repetitive and after a while become very wearing. There are a number of technologies that enable you to watch your home TV remotely but they are expensive if you only occasionally travel and just want a little bit of home from home. I’m currently using an alternative software product that I downloaded from http://www.mypcchoice.com/tvsoftware.html that gives me worldwide access to TV, music and movies.

Whatever the future holds, and whatever technological developments in both hardware and software come about, one thing is certain how we watch TV has changed forever and will continue to change. The big question is what these developments will mean to all the industry stakeholders from TV companies and program makers thru advertisers to viewers and consumers.

©CJM 2008