Livewire: The Communications, Media and Entertainment Blog

Almost a decade earlier, the concept of communication had an altogether different meaning to it. The consumer experience was uniquely categorized into different contexts, each being enabled by certain set of devices or mediums. Web symbolized a context full of interactivity, exclusivity and an "anywhere" kind of experience, TV represented the living room context where friends and family gather for a communal viewing experience whereas the mobile brought in exclusiveness, personalization and mobility. These mediums carried the information or content from the content providers, over the distribution networks, to the customer premises for rendering. These devices were also closely tied up to the overall distribution infrastructure & topology and therefore had unique constraints in terms of the content that they could render.

The "living-room" experimentation of technology and consumer behavior started a few years back. The TVs of early years offered a "lean back" experience that was essentially broadcast, offering no interactivity or personalization. The consumer experience was primarily tied to the fixed programming schedule available from the service providers with no control available to the end user.

Enabling the living room experience

The onset of convergence as a phenomenon started to make a paradigm shift, by bridging the gap between the service or content producer and their consumer. The transport & distribution medium between the two converged and evolved beyond the constraints of specific content type that could be rendered on a device.

One of the key enabler for this transformation has been the commoditization & cheap availability of high bandwidth in the last mile. This has made the video streaming over internet a reality and has helped evolve the consumer behavior accordingly. The video viewing on the internet has become a common web usage scenario as more and more people turn to the web channel, for viewing videos online.

Secondly, technology has played its role to have significantly evolved the transport, distribution and network infrastructure used in delivering the content to the end user. As a result, the notion of TV as a "broadcast" or one way communication has changed. The return path provisioning has really made interactivity on TV a possibility thereby paving way for  the development of TV based interactive apps.

Evolution of user experience on web and mobile has been another factor influencing the TV transformation. The personalization, exclusivity and interactivity offered by the other two mediums is actually influencing and evolving the consumer behavior to a level that is purely missing in any form of TV viewing. The traditional TV viewing has forced users to align to the fixed programming schedule available with no scope for customization of flexibility. This shortcoming has been very well leveraged by the concept of "online video" - an entertainment concept that is utilizing internet as a delivery medium, to offer a serious competition to the TV industry.

Another key differentiator has been brought about by the linear expansion of user experience on web and mobile. A typical user can now use a single medium to have a mix of experience varying from communication needs, information exchange, social connect to finally viewing an episode of his favorite soap that he missed last week. Convergence has enabled an uninterrupted experience for the user, without having to switch from one device to another. for the different lifestyle needs This has provided the end users with the much awaited freedom and flexibility to align the converged experience to their lifestyles than the other way round.

The impact

As a result, we've been a witness to strategic shifts spanning the entire digital ecosystem. Service Providers, OEMs, third party app vendors - all included have stepped up efforts to get their share in the pie, as more and more content and applications start spanning across the device or platform boundaries. Multi-Screen strategy has been on top of the agenda as it offers two pronged benefits - contains the churn in an ever increasing competition and also adds effectively to the ARPU figures.

However, for the TV industry, it has clearly highlighted the onset of following trends:

• End user perspective: TV might not be the only medium or device that people will use for satisfying their entertainment appetite. The success of community portals for online video viewing - the likes of YouTube, have already demonstrated the potential of using web as a medium for delivering content programming online.

As a result, people get alternate mediums offering far more flexibility to watch the same or similar content. They now have the choices to mix any combination of content and context to create their own unique experiences.

• Content owner perspective: The content owners are now no longer required to depend only upon the broadcasters for airing the content. They now have more options in terms of using mobile and internet as the delivery medium for their content. This further dilutes the significance of using "TV" as part of the content delivery chain.

Finally the new Avatar

The strategic shifts in focus and strategies, highlighted above, have made the transformation on TV, all the more compelling. There are many challenges that await the TV industry, as they gear up to take on the competition in an evolved ecosystem. On one end, the challenge for the TV service providers is to survive video cord-cutting and on the other side, they really need to define an innovative roadmap for the TV, giving it a new shape and definition. At the same time, it is equally important and challenging for them to keep the advertisers continue with their TV based spends, to sustain viability of the overall business model. The web as a delivery platform for videos has already allowed ISPs and content providers to cut a share out of the TV revenues.

Finally, we see that as part of the resurrection efforts, TV industry is also aligning to take on the convergence route for re-defining the TV viewing experience. As a result of it, we see the following trends taking shape:

• More and more "post-air" programming is now being made available online, than earlier, by the TV service providers
• Industry think-tanks are innovating unique service bouquets, comprising of experience offerings across multiple screens
• OEMs are also making attempts to roll out new devices that are "internet-enabled". These devices can connect directly to the internet without any dependency on other peripherals.
• There has been an equal interest amongst the developer community as well to shell out apps that can make TV viewing experience all the more interesting and engaging. Yahoo launched its TV widgets last year which enable the viewers to watch weather updates, live stock quotes etc as they watch their favorite shows on TV.
• Advertising on the new avatar of TV is another promising area that is getting a lot of attention. The evolving delivery platform for the TV makes targeted advertisements possible and enables Ad telescoping as a new mode of delivering Ads.

I am sure this is only the beginning of the trend and there are more interesting times ahead as the TV takes on a new shape and evolved definition in this transformation. The efforts being attempted will for sure contain the TV viewers and enhance the overall experience, but the real test will be for the industry to leverage this transformation effectively, to drive additional revenues. In the race to get the first mover's advantage, building and sustaining a viable business model around the connected services is all the more important.

It would be interesting to see how effectively the TV service providers can align and map the stream of changes to the consumer behavior and leverage the new business models to drive home revenues.