Future of film and tv on the web close

Future of film and tv on the web

We went to a talk last night, given mainly by broadcasters. Predictably the view was that broadcasters had a future in the changing landscape, but that the challenge was really how much they could get down with the kids.

In some ways, a bunch of middle aged men in Soho talking about how 14 year olds are going to be consuming media in a decade's time is probably more about them convincing themselves that they will still have a job then. But it did raise some interesting points.

It is only a matter of time before the broadcast quality of video on the internet, or on mobile phones will become the same quality as TV.  So broadcasters will lose their oligopoly in that sense. Which means they will be left with what? As far as I can see, they will be left with a budget to commission content and hopefully a way of shoe-horning their traditional advertising revenue model into new formats.

But there will be thousands of other people doing the same thing and in the way that YouTube doesn't rely on anything other than a search function and word of mouth, the decision when and what to watch will be impossible for the broadcasters to control on any way near the level they do currently.

The talk ended by everyone saying how exciting it was to be in our industry, and that everything is up for grabs. It IS exciting, but it's also pretty scary and the only certainty is that whatever we think we know or understand about media consumption today will no doubt look hopelessly naive in years to come.