A new mind-set for the TV set

For millions, the realisation of TV when you want it, wherever you want it is fast becoming an everyday reality, writes Richard Lambert, account director at specialist PR consultancy Braben.

Technical innovations from new and established players have caught the imagination of the public this year like no other.

Through the uptake in technology that has enabled us to access video content in new ways and the substantial marketing budgets used to spread the word, a significant and lasting shift in mind-set is almost tangible.

Despite the red button being in existence for over a decade, the London 2012 Olympics prompted 6.6m to use it for the first time, research from Starcom MediaVest shows, typifying the growth in mainstream appetite for TV content once the preserve of the early adopters.

As the world of TV technology and business descends once again on Amsterdam’s RAI for IBC (the International Broadcasting Convention), we surveyed the top TV journalists attending the show – and who will write much of the content that we will read – to understand their perspectives on the shifts we are seeing.

Fascinatingly, the TV set was voted as the most important screen to the future of the industry versus the mobile phone, tablet and PC with 100% of the vote. The popularity of the box in the corner shows no sign of fading. The tablet came a close second behind the TV reaffirming the natural synergy of both used together for ‘dual screening’. The mobile phone and PC were tied in third place.

Perhaps, most tellingly, when asked what form of video content they could not live without, half said linear TV. Through innovation, once seen as under threat, the TV set has managed to reinvent and even strengthen itself as the dominant, default screen.

Earlier this year a UK House of Lords committee proposed that all TV should be broadcast via the internet. This hypothesis was met with a level of scepticism from the journalists we spoke to with almost two-thirds disagreeing.

Both Satellite and the internet came out top as the form of content delivery with the brightest future commanding a third of the votes respectively way ahead of digital terrestrial and cable.

2012 has arguably witnessed a meeting of consumer and industry minds, with both demand for and supply of TV services in harmony of sorts. The bemusing stories of internet TVs being left unconnected may well be consigned to the history books.