Televisionaries

At Televisionaries last week, Channel 4’s Andy Duncan chose to begin his excellent speech by revealing to everyone in the room – and everyone watching on the web – that he had been given a sheet of guidelines by me on words and phrases that we prefer and some to avoid if possible . How embarrassing, you might think, being outed as a control freak, to everyone’s vast amusement. But I stand by my desire to ask everyone to unite behind some common language. Here’s why…

The guidelines were intended as a means of helping our audience through the often arcane jargon of the TV industry. Media isn’t the centre of the universe for advertisers, quite reasonably, and they can do without trying to work out whether traditional, linear, regular, normal, established, conventional or broadcast TV are the same thing or not. Most wouldn’t know what VoD was and might guess it was a distant planet in Star Trek. IPTV, online TV, broadband TV and web TV… erm… help!

The visionaries on our stage were all given exactly the same advice because we’ve recognised a need for much greater consistency in the language the TV world uses. We need to make it more easily understandable so we wanted our visionaries to share the same lexicon.

One good example of how language needs to be accurate, and a particular bête noire round these parts, is how the word ‘digital’ is used. I always have to ask people what they mean? Do they mean digital broadcasting or do they mean the internet? Given that most major media already have significant digital elements – TV will be 100 per cent digitally broadcast by 2012 – digital is an increasingly meaningless and unhelpful word. If you mean the internet why not say internet or online. That’s what consumers would say. In fact normal people would never use the word digital to mean the internet, though they might use it to describe their new camera or telly. If you mean internet plus mobile plus gaming plus computing then I can offer interactive media as a better phrase, though why wouldn’t you use the more specific word? In my opinion, even ‘the internet’ is a bit broad and unspecific when talking about media planning; do you mean search or email marketing or website development or banners etc?

Another reason we made our suggestions was to minimise jargon. We’re not big fans of jargon at Thinkbox because we prefer, when we can, to use the words and phrases that viewers use; they should be the people we keep at the centre of our focus. We’re trying (with difficulty) to wean ourselves off the industry acronym PVR because it makes little sense to ordinary people. DTR (digital television recorder) makes more sense because it records digital TV and you’ll find that’s what retailers call them. It’s a very good pointer to how viewers think about things. Mind you, most of them just call their DTR Sky+, or its equivalent.

So, there you have it: a teeny-tiny little bit control-freaky maybe, but all done with the best of intentions.

We’re all set for the big event tomorrow. Having seen most of the presentations and new research I’m confident it’s going to be great.

One topic recurs in many contributions, and that’s fragmentation. In the past, lower individual ratings for programmes were associated with off-peak content and restricted coverage. But, as a couple of speakers will point out, that’s just not the case any more. Here’s why.

Firstly, multi-channel offerings have added thematic or ‘passion’ channels to TV’s range. Whether you’re nuts about sport, natural history, arthouse film, news or food you can find them on TV at any time these days. The viewing to those programmes is as engaged and rewarding as any other appointment-to-view TV. They also offer highly targeted audiences to advertisers that in any other medium would be highly valued.

Secondly, the TV companies are actively investing in new platforms that are likely to ‘fragment’ the audience further and they are doing this to enhance the viewing experience. The ability watch your favourite TV on a +1 channel, from a digital TV recorder, via IPTV or from a web service is making TV more pleasurable for viewers but it is encouraging the total audience to access TV at different times, and that is often portrayed as a regrettable thing. However, programmes are seen by just as many people – more in many instances – as in the past. Channel 4 have many examples where a programme, Shameless for example, now reaches many more people in a short space of time via all its broadcast channels and on-demand platforms than it ever did just from one primary broadcast. So there’s no cultural fragmentation going on; the fragmentation is purely about access.

All on-demand TV is ‘appointment-to-view’ by definition. Convincing advertisers and agencies that this sort of ‘fragmentation’ is actually making their TV advertising more powerful is top of our to-do list and worthy of some thoughtful debate tomorrow.

So, thank God, we’re nearly there! Tomorrow we will congregate in a former church and, unlike church, we’ll debate rather than just listen. One final thought is this piece in the Observer last weekend which sets the event nicely in context. Yes, media are enduring a pretty shit time, but an apocalypse it is not. More to the point for us, TV has a very positive future; one that we’re looking forward to exploring tomorrow.

This is your last chance to raise any more issues you’d like us to cover. Fire away.

Welcome to the brand spanking new Televisionaries blog from Thinkbox. Here you’ll find the latest thinking and discussion about TV and TV advertising and we encourage you to dive in, shoot your mouth off, agree with, disagree with or add to what we’re saying. We want this to become the destination for anyone looking for informed debate about commercial TV.

Perhaps we should start by defining what we mean by television. Of course, it includes the form of TV we all grew up with; linear scheduled channels delivered by a variety of broadcast technologies to increasingly gorgeous screens in front of sofas. But by TV we also mean the professionally-made A/V content that people can now also enjoy via DVD, web, mobile or IPTV technology on any bit of hardware with a screen, from an MP3 player to a Wii. If viewers call it TV, then so do we. And, whatever the platform it is on, the advertising around that content will be seen as TV advertising not just another form of online video.

We quite clearly have an axe to grind that Gimli the dwarf would give up his helmet for, so, if you think something we’re saying is tosh or wide of the mark, feel free to tell us. But please also tell us why you think that, so that we have a chance to give you the evidence that shaped our view. We promise that we will be as open-minded and susceptible to reasoned persuasion as we hope our readers will be in return. Clean and dirty laundry; both will be very public.

I’d like to kick off by asking you what you think we should cover at our upcoming Televisionaries event on 20th November, which is all about the future of TV. What questions would you like our Televisionaries to address? What topics would you like to know more about? What do you think the future holds for TV? We’ve just announced our speaker line-up, which includes luminaries such as Peter Bazalgette, Roisin Donnelly, Andy Duncan, Peter Fincham, Nick Gill and Marie Oldham. They will no doubt be entertaining, inspiring and insightful, but if you could ask them one thing what would it be?