Making Gimli green
Friday, October 17th, 2008Welcome 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?
