I've spent some time last year (and I hope to do more of it in 2009) talking and writing about the increasing challenge to traditional television which the growing online video sector poses - both in terms of the original content available from the likes of YouTube and Current.tv and in terms of the shared and re-broadcast television content available from Justin.tv and various bittorrent networks.

My argument in that context was that such online services are gradually becoming more convenient than television itself, even where it's enhanced through VCRs, DVRs, TiVos, iPod Videos and other time- and space-shifting devices. Well, as it turns out, younger television audiences at least in the US agree with me. The Wall Street Journal reports that a new study by Solutions Research Group found that

Sydney.
Up next at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress is Robert Leach, Head of MCn Connect, whose interest is in digital television - and he begins by saying that interactive TV is now here; he finds it impossible to watch TV news without being able to 'press the red button' and get the latest news headlines. (Hmmm... Most Australians appear to use the Internet for this, rather than pay-TV?) Digital TV is changing rapidly. Does this mean the death of TV and TV advertising?

No, says Robert - we are watching as much TV as we ever have done, even though usage of other devices is also growing. Where the major growth area lies is digital video in its various forms. In the digital environment, devices have multiplied, but media are converging; the challenge for marketers and advertisers is to involve and engage audiences in video content. Where the Clinton campaign slogan in 1992 was "it's the economy, stupid", today the slogan for advertisers should be "it's the content, stupid" - if broadcasting or other media forms are declining, this is not the fault of technology, but of the content being broadcast. Great content will continue to attract a mass audience - but that audience may exist across a wide variety of devices from conventional televisions to online and mobile devices, scattered across time and space.

Sydney.
My talk was next at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress, and seemed to go down pretty well - I had been somewhat worried about getting booed off the stage by the broadcasters in the room, seeing as I was pointing out the dark clouds on the horizon for them. Here's the Powerpoint, and the paper is online, too - hope the audio recording worked, too! the audio turned out a little noisy once again, but it's better than nothing...

Technorati …

Sydney.
The next speaker at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress 2008 is Tiffany Hall, Technology Controller of Nations & Regions at the BBC. She's focussing on the experience of rolling out the BBC iPlayer, an on-demand TV catch-up service (similar to the ABC's iView); programmes can be streamed or downloaded, and the service is funded by UK television licence funding (which is why content at present is not available outside the UK - unless you use an anonymiser proxy with a UK IP address). The player also contains parental guidance features (as timeshifting undermines the more conventional scheduling of differently rated programmes at different times of the day). iPlayer streams at 800kbps, with sound at 250kbps, and there are further moves to maximise the picture quality. About 80% of users use Windows, about 20% Macs, and only around 1% Linux; the player is now also available on the Nintendo Wii and on the Virgin platform.