Cell phones, iPods, Internet? The future of television is here.By Susan Young, STAFF WRITER
02/19/2006 insidebayarea.com
THE REALITY hit TV executive Nina Tassler when she saw her teen son carrying around his computer like it was an extension of his arm, with an iPod in one pocket and a cell phone in his hand.
"I realized that while we still think of these things as foreign objects, to my son and others of this generation, it's part of their bodies and their reality," CBS entertainment President Tassler said in an interview last month. "They move effortlessly through these technologies."
It was time to jump on the techno speed train: iPods, cell phones and the Internet are all becoming ways of luring more people to TV programs. Like CBS' Tassler, network executives know they need to use the new technologies to their advantage.
But what most TV people in charge don't want is for the technology to drive the network into completely changing the way it develops shows.
"It's about looking at consumer needs, looking at the consumer experience, going everywhere they are: iPod, VOD, Movie Pod," says ABC entertainment President Stephen McPherson. "There are all these platforms out there that are incredibly, incredibly exciting. But you have to be careful. I think there's a little of technology kind of wagging the dog."
The candid Tassler admits that just thinking about how to explore — and exploit — all these technologies is enough to make her brain explode.
"I don't think anybody knows anything just yet, honestly. This is all emerging so quickly," Tassler says. "My husband just learned how to e-mail, and yet my son has been communicating on his cell phone for the past two years. Itis imperative that we make our content available to audiences where they are and when they want to watch it. Their habits are changing, and we have to be there."
Right now there are three different platforms through which to watch TV: the Internet, which keeps the viewer connected but isn't as mobile; highly mobile devices like iPods and other MP3 players, which need computers to get their content; and cell phones, which allow viewers to connect while on the run.
How people use the technology depends on their situation, says media critic Mark Glaser, whose blog can be read on PBS' Web site, pbs.org/mediashift. He asked on his blog: "What would you watch on a small video screen, on like an iPod video screen?"
"People were saying, 'If I was stuck in a line somewhere, I would watch anything,'" Glaser says.
But size, says Cyriac Roeding, does matter.
"If you have the chance to see it on a hi-def television screen, why would you not?" asks Roeding, the vice president of wireless for CBS digital media. "But if you are on your way and you might otherwise not have access to it, it might be great to see it on that very small television screen."
The technology is still in its infancy. It takes almost as long to download a program onto your iPod as it does to actually watch the show. Streaming video on a computer works most of the time, but not always, depending on the computer, the modem speed and your firewalls.
Still, the opportunities seem as endless as the space that was once so restrictive.
"The idea is that in the past, movies, music, books, all those things depended on distribution into retail outlets where you had to pay a certain amount to get it into those," Glaser says. "But the Internet and new distribution avenues are basically opening it up so you can add an infinite amount of inventory."
The one thing that's constant is content, and most of that content will come from the television producers.
Ya gotta have contentTelevision producers such as Howard Gordon ("24") say they are finding themselves walking on a precarious ledge. While storytelling is still the key to a successful show, producers are being asked to make shows that work on various levels.
Can the show work on a tiny cell-phone screen? Does it lend itself to Web applications? And what about commercials? In a landscape where viewers want fewer commercials, can producers slip products into their series?
"There's obviously a big push to embed some of these companies' stuff on our shows," Gordon says. "You know, we've done deals. I know 'Lost' has done deals. It's nowhere near replacing the advertising revenue, but it certainly helps me argue when I'm going over budget."
Gordon shares his eye-opening moment, which occurred during breakfast with a friend, who is a CFO at Disney.
"I never heard myself referred to as a content provider," Gordon says. "But I learned that is, in fact, what I was. And now that I am, it really is a challenge."
Viewers like youIn the new ABC series "The Evidence," viewers try to suss out who did the crime from the evidence collected by the detectives. The show lends itself perfectly to a Web element.
"The idea of potentially showing next week's evidence for next week's episode and allowing viewers to write their own story on the Web site or imagine how it all fits together is very consistent with the heart of the show," says "The Evidence" producer Samuel Baum.
Tassler says the new technology platforms are "somewhat" affecting the way new series are developed.
"We're thinking about different ways that we can sort of engage the audience," Tassler says. "Sort of tweak their curiosity, get them interested in the ancillary narratives that go along with your regular broadcast."
Television shows have already evolved so audience members can either sit passively in front of the set as they have done for generations, or they can interact with the programming.
Nothing demonstrates this as well as the top series on TV, "American Idol." Audiences can sit passively in front of their sets and watch the show from beginning to end. Most, however, choose to use their cell phones to call in their votes.
Interactive television has already landed. Viewers not only watch "American Idol," but they can change the course of the show by voting certain people in — or out.
If viewers want to know more about the show, they can go to the official Web site at http://www.idolonfox.com and read about the hosts, the contestants and join the message board to voice their opinions.
Viewers want to be more involved with their programs. They want to know all the little details. What was that book Sawyer was reading on "Lost"? And where can the viewer go to buy that book? Web sites offer every piece of minutia to cater to the fans.
And they want to make an impact. "American Idol" producers have latched on to this idea by linking their TV show Web site to "American Idol Underground," where visitors can listen to new bands who send in their work to be evaluated by the masses.
Yet Fox entertainment President Peter Liguori says it's foolish to go jumping headlong into technology before having something to back it up.
"To us, it's a content strategy. If we have the best content, we're going to be able to take advantage of all the other distribution sources," he says. "I just think right now it's at such a nascent stage no one knows (what will work and what won't)."
Forging new groundABC, part of the Disney company, which has long held a tight rein on the distribution of its movies and TV series, shook things up last fall by boldly deciding to put such top-rated series as "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" out for iPod consumption.
"Why I look at the iPod deal and smile so brightly is that if you look at it, Steve Jobs had, without a doubt, the best cutting-edge piece of technology in the iPod," says ABC's McPherson. "It is the best consumer experience there is out there. Fifteen million sold over Christmas. Yet when (Jobs) went to launch that, he needed 'Lost' and 'Desperate Housewives.'"
McPherson said Jobs called up Disney chief Bob Eiger to get that content.
"He needed those shows. It all starts with the shows. So in development, we're still going to try to make the best shows possible, the best voices, the best point of view, and then we'll exploit them over those platforms."
Albert Cheng, executive vice president of digital media at Disney-ABC Television Group, says the Walt Disney Co. moved forward with an Apple iTunes deal because of piracy threats.
"We as a company had to take a mindshift and say, we cannot deny that this technology is changing the way that people are consuming media. And we need to be able to partner with someone who's trying to legitimize platforms," Cheng says. "So the company took a huge, bold step. It definitely sort of ignited the dynamics."
TV networks are still trying to figure out the best way of using these technologies to attract viewers.
Tassler points to its CBS' Comedy Bowl project, in which CBS comedies were streamed on Yahoo! during winter break, as an example of how there's a huge demand for broadening how TV is used.
When "Two and a Half Men" aired after the Yahoo! streaming video experiment, the TV show had the highest ratings ever among the hot ad demographic 18- to 49-year-olds. Another comedy that aired on Yahoo! scored the second-highest 18-to-49 rating on its next CBS airing.
Brad Adgate, senior vice president and director of research for Horizon Media, the nation's largest independent media services company, says that last summer, MTV's "Video Music Awards" generated 11 million downloads within two weeks of the airing. Also last summer, the AOL Music Live concert on ABC drew 3 million viewers — and 5 million people downloaded the concert online.
Making technology payWB executive Garth Ancier says that at some point there has to be a payoff for the networks.
"You have to look at each of these (technologies) and how many people are participating and what they're paying and what their pain tolerance for paying is," Ancier says. "Do they want it with commercials, without commercials, do they want to own it, do they want to lease it? I think everything now is basically in sort of a test stage."
Right now, it costs an average of $2 million to produce an hour of TV. Running that program once or twice on TV isn't enough to pay that bill, so networks are looking at other ways to foot the costs, including DVD sales and now iPod downloads, streaming video and other options.
Warner Bros. studio will begin selling old television shows through AOL in March. Shows like "Welcome Back, Kotter" will be streamed with 15-second commercial pods.
"Whether we get 5 billion downloads or not, I think the key message here is that we need to be forward-thinking about making something that consumers want and something they will pay for," Cheng says.
For consumers, it's simple: They just want to watch what they want, when they want it.
"You know, as a viewer, I don't really think about what the business model is," Glaser says. "I think, 'Hey, is it easy to do this? Can I buy it for 99 cents? Is that convenient for me?' And if it isn't convenient for me, if the networks don't offer to me something that is convenient, I'm going to go find it on a file-sharing network or somewhere else and go around it because I want to get what I want when I want it."
