Analog competition
Guest commentary The television is evolving from a sequential to an interactive medium - and thus to a universal advertising space, says Stephan Howeg.
Guest commentary The television is evolving from a sequential to an interactive medium - and thus to a universal advertising space, says Stephan Howeg.
Mr. and Mrs. Swiss watch around 150 minutes of television every day. In quantitative terms, this will hardly change in the coming years. In terms of quality, however, epochal changes are underway. What is meant by this is not the audiovisual content or formats themselves, but how viewers interact with the existing TV offering.Today, television is still a sequential medium and therefore inefficient: if you want to watch the "Tagesschau" but the evening movie is already on, all you can do today is wait. This is because the "Tagesschau" is only "delivered" again later on SF info. In contrast, the Internet content you want is always available. Well, almost always. And if you don't like one site, you google another. Television is gradually taking over this permanent availability of content from the Internet. In other words, instead of following the clock and the TV guide, viewers access what interests them - when and where they want.
The increasing fusion of the advantages of computers and TV means the end of program dictation. With a digital video recorder, finding, recording, playing and archiving the individual TV menu is child's play. Viewers no longer have to wait for "Lüthi & Blanc", they simply call up the last episode or record all upcoming episodes at the touch of a button.
Such applications are made possible by targeted investments in the television cable: today, it no longer only transmits TV signals, but also acts as a multimedia interface for television and radio, broadband Internet and telephony. Cablecom has been cultivating this "triple play" in Switzerland for a long time. It has been so successful that the former monopolist Swisscom is currently trying to adopt the recipe. For some time now, it has been running tests to transport television over the conventional telephone wire. Apparently with little success, as it was recently decided to fall back on the tried and tested television cable. And this with the help of an analog recording device, while the real innovations are happening in the digital sector.
Advertising will also face new challenges in the future. Television will soon no longer be the mass medium through which commercial messages reach the general public: New technologies make it very easy to skip spots in recordings. Conversely, digital television also offers the advertising industry new opportunities. The viewer intervenes in the action, obtains additional information or books the dreamboat passage directly on the screen. In other words: with the digital television experience, the entire broadcast content becomes a potential advertising space. If that's not a prospect.
> Stephan Howeg is Head of Corporate Communications and a member of Cablecom's Executive Board.
Mr. and Mrs. Swiss watch around 150 minutes of television every day. In quantitative terms, this will hardly change in the coming years. In terms of quality, however, epochal changes are underway. What is meant by this is not the audiovisual content or formats themselves, but how viewers interact with the existing TV offering.Today, television is still a sequential medium and therefore inefficient: if you want to watch the "Tagesschau" but the evening movie is already on, all you can do today is wait. This is because the "Tagesschau" is only "delivered" again later on SF info. In contrast, the Internet content you want is always available. Well, almost always. And if you don't like one site, you google another. Television is gradually taking over this permanent availability of content from the Internet. In other words, instead of following the clock and the TV guide, viewers access what interests them - when and where they want.
The increasing fusion of the advantages of computers and TV means the end of program dictation. With a digital video recorder, finding, recording, playing and archiving the individual TV menu is child's play. Viewers no longer have to wait for "Lüthi & Blanc", they simply call up the last episode or record all upcoming episodes at the touch of a button.
Such applications are made possible by targeted investments in the television cable: today, it no longer only transmits TV signals, but also acts as a multimedia interface for television and radio, broadband Internet and telephony. Cablecom has been cultivating this "triple play" in Switzerland for a long time. It has been so successful that the former monopolist Swisscom is currently trying to adopt the recipe. For some time now, it has been running tests to transport television over the conventional telephone wire. Apparently with little success, as it was recently decided to fall back on the tried and tested television cable. And this with the help of an analog recording device, while the real innovations are happening in the digital sector.
Advertising will also face new challenges in the future. Television will soon no longer be the mass medium through which commercial messages reach the general public: New technologies make it very easy to skip spots in recordings. Conversely, digital television also offers the advertising industry new opportunities. The viewer intervenes in the action, obtains additional information or books the dreamboat passage directly on the screen. In other words: with the digital television experience, the entire broadcast content becomes a potential advertising space. If that's not a prospect.
> Stephan Howeg is Head of Corporate Communications and a member of Cablecom's Executive Board.
