The future of television

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by Chris

The FAST channels are linear channels and they exist because the demand is there. All your observations have merit but your conclusions don’t fit your observations - you can see as well as I can that FAST channels came out of nowhere to occupy a space created for on-demand streaming because there is a demand even amongst people who are comfortable with IP delivered television for a pre-determined linear stream.

Once you accept the logic of meeting market demand for a linear scedule, you also accept the same logic that goes with everything else in a competitive marketplace - your offering must be more compelling than your competitor’s. The additional effort required - accurate scheduling of programmes and advertisements, deciding what shows to place where in order to draw in and hold on to an audience - becomes marketing spend that pays a return. Though I also think you’re over-stating how difficult it is for an established professional TV channel with its own play-out suite to actually do all that stuff.

Aside from all that, as long as it is necessary to maintain legacy delivery networks, whether cable, terrestrial, satellite or some combination of those, linear schedules will have to continue to exist because that’s the only way to deliver TV over those networks. I still think your imagined timetable for final shut-off of those networks is wildly optimistic.

I am only saying what the broadcasters want, Chris, and I am pretty confident they will get their way. I have already acknowledged that the FAST channels are a different case altogether, because they rely mainly on old cheap material.

The main channels in this country are becoming too expensive to run when viewed against the cost of new material, the reducing audience share and the amount of money the advertisers are willing to pay for their ads to appear. Their most valuable audiences are migrating to streaming, and that’s where the advertisers will go.

You have not commented on the channels that are leaving in favour of streaming, but you are giving undue weight to those few channels that have returned. If you recall, for example, I said from the get-go that it was too early for BBC3 to go streaming only, and sure as eggs is eggs, the channel returned. That was not unexpected. Similarly, the return of those children’s channels to Sky reflected the fact that they could profit from Sky subscribers who had were not yet able to access streaming services through their subscriptions.

We are never going to agree on this and in the end one of us will be proved right. Only ten more years to go and all will be clear.