The Future of Television: Tired and Lonely (Part 1)

This is actually a piece I initially wrote but never published more than a year ago. I’ve resurrected it, because with the emergence of Hulu and Boxee, in the midst of the national (now-irrelevant) transition to digital, it feels as if we are poised for a sea change in what constitutes the television (or more broadly, home entertainment) experience. I think it’s a useful exercise to test these new entrants against the same criticism I had then. But let’s start with then….

At the time, I had attended a talk hosted by the Churchill Club, "The Future of TV: Connected and Personalized." The vision I saw and heard was “The Future of Television: Tired and Lonely:”

Connected = After spending my work day stuck to a computer, I now get to (have to) interact with my TV. Yay.
Personalized = I’m going to get content so tailored to me that no one else is interested. Word, I get to watch it alone. If I actually want to be social, they’ll give me a cool headset so I can talk to my friends about the super-personalized content that they can’t watch because they’re not me.

With a panel from Microsoft, Universal McCann, Current TV, AT&T, and the Yankee Group, the talk was predicated on the following assumptions, the first enabling the latter two:

   1. Distribution and access will migrate to IP.
   2. Television will be ubiquitous: any content, anytime, anywhere.
   3. Television will be interactive: there will be a push and a pull with the consumer, not just passive viewership data, but with the consumer actively providing information or content back into the system.

(I'll note that these assumptions stretch the definitions of Television and Consumer, but for the sake of brevity I will maintain this vocabulary until we create better terms).
From a technical standpoint, I challenge neither of these premises, and neither did any of the panelists. With a panel of technologists, analysts, service providers, and advertisers it is not surprising that the talk focused on who will create the content and how it will be monetized, or more specifically, how to advertise in this environment.  Important questions, but as is typical of industry it indicates a failure of thinking across two fronts.

   1. Dismissal of the customer experience: in this case an assumption that by giving the consumer more options and more control, the experience is undoubtedly being improved and need be considered no more deeply.
   2. Confining monetization models to the existing paradigm, or at most a mild evolution of the present model.

When I first wrote this piece, I concentrated on the former, and I resurrected it because these new emergences still have me questioning our ability to deliver on a truly rich experience.

The sum of what’s being described here, a highly interactive and personalized experience, is both draining and isolating. When people want to plop down in front of the TV and vegetate, the last thing they need to deal want is to actively engage with their TV and have to make decisions. And when I want to share a show with my friends, the last thing I want is to watch it at a different time and a different place. How much fun is the Super-bowl if I watch it alone, 5 minutes behind real time, with my buddy on Skype? We know from our research that while there are many modes of content consumption, two of the most desired, most valued, are “zoning out” and “sharing with friends and family.” While these modes can, and likely will evolve, the emotional and experiential needs behind them will not and may even become more critical as the rest of our worlds continue to isolate us and require constant interaction. These emotional needs are not catered to under the model foreseen and described by the industry.

No consumer will ever ask for fewer options or to be forced to watch what their friends are watching, but at the same time we know this has real value. We also know that as we have access to more and more choices, we become stressed and indecisive. Channel surfing turned from useful, to bad habit, to disease as we jumped from 4 to 40 to 400 channels. Online comparison pricing has people spending hours shopping for the cheapest item to save pennies. So does the present system survive in some limited form to deliver this? Do new tools appear to serve this need? Or does the need itself disappear as the ADD generation takes over the driver’s seat of content consumption? I posed this question to the panel and was decidedly unsatisfied with their answers. Let’s look at some of them:

   1. We ARE enabling the social – we give people headsets.
   2. We ARE enabling the social – there is always the water cooler
   3. You WILL still be able to zone out – the same content you zoned out to before is still there.
   4. You WILL still be able to zone out – uh… what was the question again?

All of these answers assume the problem will take care of itself. All of them demonstrate a fundamental disconnect from the customer. All of them are an opportunity for newer, different businesses that are nascent now but will kill these giants over the next few years. While the giants  may believe the experience will take care of itself, I believe the monetization will take care of itself, and it will go to the team that delivers the best experience. A year and change later, I’m still wondering who that will be.