From a platform perspective, the oppor- tunity is to be able to deliver an incredibly rich, more selective, more ubiquitous ex- perience—everywhere, all the time. At the same time there is a risk associated with it. Historically, the platform business has been built up through bundling of con- tent. Increasing ARPUs associated with that bundling went, in significant part, back into the creative industries. With connected devices and the potential for broad based, à la carte viewing there is some point where that may break down and no longer make sense for either the platform or the content owner. Stated simply, platforms won’t be able to con- tinue to pay top dollar for content. If you follow the chain of the value destruction, content owners suffer from lost revenues and most likely the quality of the cus- tomer experience starts to deteriorate.
Linda Jensen CEO, HBO Europe
The real opportunity is bumping the content offering that you’ve got over to new devices in a way that will make sense. We’ve rolled out HBO Go in 10 markets; we built the software ourselves, it’s quite flexible and it handles a number of devices already. There is almost no op- portunity at the moment to build in a way that is good for all devices at once. Since there are not a lot of suitable, off-the-shelf applications you are really challenged to find the right solution to adapt your content.
There are critical
questions the industry has barely got to grips with
John Hardie, CEO, ITN
I hold to the theory that traditional TV is still by far the most popular medium, and that TV news is a particularly good example of the enduring power of it. But I am no luddite. We absolutely have to embrace a bewildering array of devices and platforms. TV channels and TV news services have had websites for nearly two decades, so there is nothing new about taking TV news and expanding it to other platforms. The difference is that for most of that time it was a kind of one-way relationship. It is very different now and in the future, where the model is more of a hub and spoke structure. You have to design your newsroom with simple application technology in order to output stories to any platform.
Chris Dedicoat President, EMEAR, Cisco
You cannot align media to one type of device. While each might have different characteristics, notably the quality of viewing and listening, the world is moving towards multiple devices and is moving very rapidly indeed. Broadcasters, media companies, and service providers all have to understand this.
Since technology is often ahead of the business process, how you create busi- ness processes to take advantage of new technologies becomes a major differentiator in determining success or failure.
The world is moving toward multiple devices very rapidly