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MUMBAI: Imagine a digital world where new broadband networks scale
up the present 500 channel universe to one that is 500,000 or even
five million strong.
An indication of the sheer breadth of possibilities (some would
say frightening) that the brave new digital future is throwing up
for those in the broadcasting business.
It was a point that was expanded on by Turner International Asia Pacific
president Stephen Marcopoto, in one of today’s plenary sessions
– Digital Entertainment living.
Said Marcopoto, “In order to reach this new consumer model
we need to produce and deliver content to as many of these gadgets
and technological touch points as possible. More than 30 million
hours of TV are produced each year but we face the end of appointment
viewing as scheduled broadcast channels and distribution are displaced
by a choice of millions of download and on-demand programs. The
pressure on content providers to innovate is therefore greater than
ever as consumption moves from passive viewing by a large mass audience
to the active engagement of individual consumers.”
One of the biggest challenges could be on advertising models, Marcopoto
said. “In the world of mobisodes and iPod downloads, the revenue
models risk being turned upside down. The argument to advertisers
is that these ‘third screen’ platforms reach people who
would not normally have watched the show on air in the first place,
so the advertisers don’t lose consumption. But in reality it’s
way too soon to know the true impact of this technology on revenue
streams and distribution. The hope is that through making popular
shows convenient and available at a fair price, content owners should
be able to avoid the savagery the music industry suffered.”
The next huge challenge the industry faces is in the changing economics
of rights ownership. Marcopoto stressed the “absolutely fundamental
need that digital rights management (DRM) is enforced. “We
know the case for DRM - without a strong system in place to ensure
only paying consumers can access media, piracy will continue to
run rampant and cut drastically into profits for producers and distributors.
And, with declining sales, creative input will also drop and the
overall quality of media produce risks decline. But potential solutions
are out there and closed network providers like Kontiki have developed
deals with players like AOL to deliver DRM protected content efficiently,
with no more risk to piracy than a normal download,” he opined.
Marcopoto finished his presentation with a quote from Mark Pesce,
the head of Future STR, a consultancy based in Sydney. “The ‘Three
Fs’ of finding, filtering and forwarding (content)—scaled
up to the swarm of a billion internet users, describe the network
media world. How the media industries of the present day—predicated
on mass communication to mass audiences—negotiate the transition
into a world of microaudiences, each fiercely guarded by an army of
ever-vigilant nanoexperts, remains an open question.” |
