An interesting commentary that will probably get Bert going on several fronts...
Regards
Craig
http://www.forbes.com/sites
Apple TV Ensures TV's Future Is Not Just Apps, For One Really Obvious Reason
On the homepage for the new Apple TV box, which you can buy at Apple stores
from today, it says boldly: “It’s all about apps. Apps are the future of
television.” But Apple is wrong about that – traditional linear TV channels
continue to have a bright future, and Apple TV is part of the very simple
reason why.
Unlike pretty much every other device that Apple sells (iPhone, iPad, iMac),
Apple TV doesn’t stand alone. You need a separate TV set to use it. That’s
right, the traditional TV set in the corner of your living room. As long as
people have those traditional TV sets – which Apple TV means that they still
need – most of them will continue to watch traditional linear TV channels.
And that means that the future of TV, thanks in part to Apple TV, is not just
apps. It’s traditional channels, on traditional TV sets, as well.
Think about it. A modern TV set is, for sure, Internet connected. But it also
has three or four HDMI ports, a couple of USBs and – here in the UK at least –
a very old-fashioned looking port for terrestrial TV input.
At least one of those HDMIs is, for the foreseeable future, likely to be
connected to a traditional set-top TV box. And by “the foreseeable future”, I
mean decades, not months.
I’ve now been writing about the British TV industry for over 10 years, and the
traditional TV broadcasters have been worrying about the threat from “digital”
and “online” for that entire time. Yet they go from strength to strength.
The share price of ITV , our largest commercial channel provider, has never
been higher than it is this year. And the scariest threat to Sky – Britain’s
biggest media company – comes not from Netflix NFLX +2.78% but from BT, the
UK’s legacy telco, gobbling up traditional TV rights to Premier League football.
For those traditional TV providers, the threat comes not so much from on-demand
services – traditional channels generate a lot of content which can itself be
additionally monetised on-demand, for a start. No, the real threat comes from
non-TV devices.
In the UK in 2015, 54 per cent of all adults own a tablet – up from 44 per cent
in 2014. Among 16- to 24-year-olds, 61 per cent said they’re hooked on their
smartphones. It’s possible to watch traditional linear TV channels on-demand on
these devices, but it’s much less likely than it is when families are gathered
together in front of a TV set. So stand-alone screen devices are a big threat
to traditional channels.
But people are still spending a great deal of time in front of their TV sets –
and a great deal of that is spent watching linear channels.
People like linear channels. They like an edited selection of programmes,
commissioned and made by people they trust, and with a tone that they can rely
on. When people get home from a difficult day at work, they don’t necessarily
want to make a series of granular decisions about which TV app to open and
which particular show to watch. Many of them want to turn on BBC One and just
be entertained.
In 2014, in fact, the average Brit watched 3 hours 44 minutes of TV (down just
4.5 per cent from 2013). And 88 per cent of it was live (rather than
timeshifted or on-demand) – down from 89 per cent in 2013. For sure, these are
declines. But they are not the kind of vertiginous declines that spell the
death of linear channels any time soon. (Average TV viewing is, by the way,
still higher than it was in analogue 2004.)
Apple TV will, of course, lead to more people watching telly via apps. But, as
long as Apple TV requires a TV set to operate, it helps keep traditional linear
TV channels alive just a little bit longer.
Follow me on Twitter: @neilmidgley
