Augmented TV, the time is ripe
Posted on 05. sept, 2010 by Anthony Hamelle in médias
This post is a slightly adapted translation of an original post in French published on PR2Peer.
Whereas in France the largest TV network (the French public broadcaster France Télévisions) may finally be looking at the digital scene more seriously, owing to a managerial shift, here’s an interesting topic – that was first addressed here in the spring of 2009. Over the past 18 months the first attempts at augmented TV have been made, in the US political arena (Barack Obama’s inauguration day at the beginning of 2009), in the sports arena (live conversations around Football games) or more recently in the British political arena (2010 general election campaign). 2011 should mark the coming of age of augmented television.
Augmented TV is going to radically change the relation consumers and citizens have to their TV screens, moving from the passive state of viewers to the active one of co-creators of the TV experience – coincidentally Jay Rosen was in France recently to talk about the transformation of newspaper readers into information users. As for all the industries that have been confronted to the advent of the web 2.0 and its social uses, the TV industry is going to have to learn to share or even co-manage the TV space with its audience.
What augmented TV isn’t: participatory shows or collaborative journalism
For the sake of clarity, let us set aside what augmented TV is not, what only amounts to an alteration of some of the TV experience’s modalities yet not to a modification of its nature.
As in the TV show Partageons nos idées (BFM TV & Cisco), the ability Internet users have to intervene through phones, webcams, text messages or e-mails in a TV show leaves producers, reporters and anchors fully in charge, deciding in an insulated manner what topics should be addressed or which pieces of news deserve to be put forward. This is nothing more than fake augmented TV.
The crowdsourcing of information (mostly stray dogs, accidents and natural disasters judging by the likes of iReport or témoins by BFM TV) is another example of what augmented TV is not, leaving untouched the monopoly the media have over the TV experience. On the other hand the ability viewers have to debate crowdsourced current events is very engaging et makes them somewhat active, all the more since TV producers may take part in the conversation. Nevertheless this online debating activity remains asynchronous to the viewing of TV shows. We could call this augmented TV production as journalists can tap into an enlarged information and testimonial base to which they would not have had access otherwise. Still, the viewer remains passive…
Let us mention another instance of what augmented TV is not. The increased ability individuals have to autonomously produce and spread their content has nothing to do with the convergence of the media with their audience. Pieces of user generated content (UGC) often make their way onto the TV screen thanks to light-hearted TV shows such as Les Perles du Net (Direct8) – it is actually no surprise that seemingly superficial pieces of content such as LOL Cats make up the vast majority of the pieces in these shows because of their role in our times of attention scarcity, as explained by Danah Boyd in her Hacking the Attention Economy post.
What augmented TV is: a new dimension by and for users, without journalists necessarily being involved
Two parallel phenomena are ushering in a new TV experience: the growing statusphere and the simultaneous consumption of different media.
The statusphere is made up of social networks and micro-publishing platforms that facilitate conversations, that make them « real-time ». There are more than 500 million people worldwide who can share statuses – that is to say short information bits on their current activities (holidays, readings, work, TV show being watched) – with their respective communities on Facebook. There are tens of thousands of opinion leaders and trendsetters who can do so in an even more reactive manner on Twitter – at the rate of 2 billion + daily updates. By definition short-lived and connected to a live event, these micro-conversations are a natural addition to TV shows. Furthermore the statusphere platforms make it easy to connect such conversations to TV shows, thanks to streaming capabilities for Facebook or to hashtags for Twitter.
All this would remain purely theoretical if TV users were not simultaneously using their TV sets and the micro-conversation platforms. Well, lucky us, numerous studies are pointing towards this trend. The British media oversight body, Ofcom, has recently confirmed this inclination. In the UK the simultaneous consumption of several media represents a fifth of the total media consumption time – an even higher rate is observed among the 25- age cohorts. The figure for simultaneous TV-web consumption was 3.5 hours per month in 2009 in the USA.
A third phenomenon actually strengthens the augmentation of television: the hardwiring of augmented TV. After Samsung and Yahoo!’s connected TV and its on-screen widgets, Google is venturing into the field with its Google TV – and Apple is making a first step in this direction with its revamped Apple TV. Obviously the role of augmenting goggles played by tablets, like the iPad, should not be overlooked.
The added dimension is twofold. The first sub-dimension is conspicuous. The TV experience immediately becomes more social since any Internet user can discuss a show with their communities (friends, families, colleagues) on Facebook or with other people watching a show on Twitter (thanks to hashtags such as #dailyshow or #60minutes).
The second sub-dimension of the new TV experience has to do with the nature of conversations occurring on Facebook and specifically on Twitter where a quarter of tweets include links. Moving beyond mere opinions or judgments, more and more users add links to their updates; in other words they offer additional information (articles, posts, Wikipedia pages, etc.) that augment the perception or knowledge of discussed topics.
Let us look for instance at an interesting instance of augmented TV in France. The 20th of May edition of show A vous de juger (political talk show) was augmented by the French labour ministry (disclosure: with which I worked on their digital efforts) and the Socialist Party (largest center-left / left-wing party in France) on the occasion of a debate around the national retirement scheme overhaul proposed by the Government. Each of them contributed to bringing some added value to the debate, sharing links pointing to detailed articles that enabled users (using the #avdj hashtag) to access precise, data-backed and substantial arguments.
Whether you’re a political party, a Government body or a corporation augmented TV presents opportunities you cannot miss. TV remains indeed the dominant media as far as time spent is concerned – 4-hours+ daily in Europe and North America. Therefore, it is wise to bring closer to TV the assets you’ve built (Facebook pages, website, Twitter account, etc.) or earned (UGC) on the social web; this offers to increase the return on your social media investments and to redress some of the approximations sometimes brought about by TV formats and time constraints. This is how reputation and e-reputation can converge and mutually strengthen each other, this is how potential image discrepancies existing between different media can be resolved.
For media companies augmented TV paves the way for efficient loyalty-improvement strategies under which users will benefit from a more stimulating experience. Compiling and maintaining Twitter hashtag databases, flocking to Facebook live streaming, having journalists and producers take part in the statusphere conversations as they happen or, in the long run, customising additional services (by way of mobile apps) based on the place of consumption (Foursquare, Facebook places) are some of the perspectives that should be considered.
TV augmentée : quand les micro-conversations (Twitter & Facebook) enrichissent l’expérience télévisuelle
Posted on 19. avr, 2009 by Anthony Hamelle in médias
Je m’inspire ici très fortement et volontairement d’un billet publié hier sur Netpolitique intitulé « Débat politique augmenté : quand les micro-conversations (Twitter & Facebook) enrichissent l’espace public« . Le propos tenu sur Netpolitique s’intéresse à l’apport des outils de micro-conversation tels Twitter ou Facebook et son statut (fonctionnalité de plus en plus mise en avant du reste) au débat politique télévisé. En un mot, Twitter permettrait d’enrichir l’expérience citoyenne en approfondissant les sujets évoqués à l’occasion du débat, en complétant les questions des journalistes par d’autres angles ou encore en corrigeant certains approximations.
