Red Bee Media’s Tomorrow Calling debate tackles the big issues set to shape the media and technology industry by 2020

This week Red
Bee Media held its inaugural debate on ‘Networks, platforms and devices’ as
part of Tomorrow Calling, a year-long study into the future of media,
chaired by media commentator Raymond Snoddy – with great success and lively
discussion.

Panellists were
invited to give their view on where things are going.

The media landscape in 2020

Steve Plunkett, Director
of Technology and Innovation at Red Bee Media opened with the view that the
biggest theme is an era of accelerating change.

This, he said,
was in part to be attributed to the proliferation of high speed internet access
predicted to reach 75% of UK households by 2020.

Bruce Daisley, Sales
Director at YouTube and Display at Google stated that innovations such as the
Kindle had changed the landscape and set the trend of things to come.

Claire
Tavernier, Senior Executive VP, FMX and Worldwide Drama at FremantleMedia added
that things will get better and faster and that new entrants will help make
that happen. Tavernier continued that something else as game-changing as Google
will enter the market in the next decade.

Dharmash Mistry,
Partner at Balderton Capital projected that we may eventually see media in the
cloud as a virtual and not physical product. He predicted that Facebook would
become the leading distributor of media by 2020, be that anything from music to
film.

John Bishop, Director
Strategic Initiatives at Cisco began by saying there will be no second class
experience across screens, with all devices as equals, driven by better
experiences.

Virgin Media’s
Ian Mecklenburgh, Director, Consumer Platforms and Devices said digital rights
was the priority issue to tackle in the next decade, resolving where and when
consumers had the right to watch content.

Media
commentator, Raymond Snoddy, then instigated debate amongst the panellists.

The future for connected TVs

Questioning the
rate of new technology adoption, Tavernier said that whilst a number of people
will get connected TVs, it will take a long time for most to plug them in. She
added that the primary use of connected TVs will be for VoD, wherever, whenever
and a significant challenge was agreeing a common billing system.

Daisley
interjected branding it extraordinary that the biggest screens in the house
were not connected. Plunkett said that connected TVs would play a major and
ubiquitous role in the future of media, driven by innovation such as
Microsoft’s Kinetic.

Bishop thought
that the most innovation would be away from the TV, saying it has always been
regarded as the high-bar but that in the next decade, compared to other
devices, it will become the low bar, and potentially this change will come
about very quickly.

Mobile and tablet devices

On devices,
Plunkett confirmed that tablets had a vital role to play. He said that mobiles
were too small for long-form viewing, that computers were too cumbersome but
that tablets occupied a sweet spot.

Fighting the corner
for traditional broadcasting, Tavernier said she found it hard to believe that
linear had no future when over 12m people tune in to watch a programme. She
said this brought a lot of value and was not going to go away.

Daisley
concurred saying that ITV had got its mojo back and asked if we could see a
world without it.

Search and discovery

Turning to
search, Bishop said that search will play a far greater role in how viewers
find programmes, down to enabling viewers to pull specific, smaller viewing
segments from long form content.

Answering a
question on the role of Tivo, Mecklenburgh said he didn’t expect consumer
behaviour to change as quickly as it has, revealing that 20% of users find
programmes without the EPG through intelligent search and recommendation.

Mistry argued
that the EPG as we know it would not be the main way we’d find out programmes
in the future, favouring a search model more synonymous with the web.

Content, distribution and monetisation

On content,
Google’s Daisley said it is not in their DNA to own content. He added that
Google is a catalyst that stimulates wider industry innovation. Mistry
contributed that, for good or bad, Facebook is becoming essential as a
distribution platform.

Moving on to the
question of monetisation, Tavernier said she was sceptical that micropayments
would ever fund an entire TV business model. Mistry commented that clinging to
yesterday’s revenue models is the biggest constraint on the media industry.

Google’s Daisley
revealed that they are testing technology that only changes clients for video
adverts that are watched, allowing viewers to choose to fast forward or not. He
added that the less an advert was watched, the more the client would have to
pay.

Tavernier said
FremantleMedia is working on new, interactive programme formats but that most
viewers want a clean broadcast experience, supported by interactive elements on
other devices.

Plunkett added
that content remains king but the challenge is about packaging and distributing
it. Mistry said he did not think YouTube would be the aggregator of high
quality video content, but will continue primarily as a platform for user
generated content.

A bright but challenging future

The first debate
ended in agreement that the UK was in a good place to make the most from the
new era of media but that it had its work cut out to avoid domination by
American owned distribution platforms.