In the beginning the broadcasting was limited to geographical regions due to largely to technical limits of transmitter height, transmitter power, radio frequency propagation and the curvature of the earth.
The technology and its limits lent itself to regional and national programmes. This in turn fitted nicely with cultural boundaries, language and advertising brands. TV programme rights followed suit and were sold on geographical (usually national) basis.
A French person can watch free to air (FTA) French programming in France (with or without adverts) but if they come to the UK they can not. The broadcasting technology didn’t allow it. When satellite came along this was not the case – hence the preverlance of BSkyB systems in Spain where UK expatriates watch UK TV, even though this is not allowed by BSkyB.
What is the impact of this – on the programming, none. On the advertising maybe it is less effective but when Ford advertises a car or there’s an advert for Cif, or Snickers, these are international brands and the value is unaffected. The losers are those advertisers that don’t provide their product in Spain. You could also argue that the local TV advertisers are also losing out, but do the expat’ community speak Spanish or watch Spanish TV?
If you now travelled from Spain to say Turkey, or further away from the UK, you would eventually find that the satellite footprint ended and even a very large dish would not pull in a signal.
The internet now bypasses the limitations of satellite in not being distant limited. SlingBox and others have utilised this to enable consumers temporarily away from home to watch TV from home. Losers? The advertisers aren’t losing, because they are not trying to get an impulse buy, the “impact” of the advert will have an effect when you return home. The rights owners haven’t lost out as the consumer has only temporarily shifted location.
As internet TV becomes more prevalent the model that grew out of the technological limitations becomes increasingly threatened. As geo-blocking artificially tries to limit access it throws down a gauntlet for those that see the Internet as a free and open medium. However, on the internet the role of the broadcaster is missing.
Broadcasters provide a useful role not just in what they commission (by far the most important role), not the scheduling of content, but the role of content discovery that the consumer needs. From a consumer’s perspective broadcasters aggregate content that would otherwise require a trial and error search on the Internet. If the broadcasters’ brand value is clear such as Discovery, History, MTV or Disney etc the consumer knows what content to expect. On more general channels the experience can be a bit more hit and miss.
The role of discovery can be fulfilled by social web sites, community blogs etc but how many do I need to join and how often do I have to check them. Broadcasters could develop a strategy to be the online content discovery mechanism that would naturally flow into the content delivery mechanism and thereafter the advertising channel. Since the content is potentially distributed globally they become global brands and since local adverts and adverts based on personal profiles are possible the advertisers win too. The online portal becomes a pull through to the traditional broadcast, where higher quality and differentiated services such as 3D can be delivered.
I don’t know what the future of the internet hold for the broadcasters but the old model is not going to survive.
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