Lack of involvement and predictability are two factors that kill any relationship and every viewer dreads having those two feature prominently in his/her relationship with the television set. Right now, there is just way too much of both on the idiot box. News -- breaking or unbroken -- looks, feels and sounds the same other than for the packaging and the people and all the killer programming in terms of soaps smell and foam emotional in the same 'K' manner across the board.
What's left is a myriad concoction of talk shows, repetitive talent hunts and insipid contests that are painfully different from each other only in terms of the tackiness of the sets and the stock shots of the audience supposedly dancing in the aisles every time one of the hosts even as much as fakes a sneeze on camera.
What helps of course is that there is no viable alternative that has the massive reach that television has. There is nothing out there that beats the economic appeal of an awesomely low entry barrier of Rs. 6000 for a television set and a Rs. 350 monthly subscription that gets you all that there is to get on the coaxial end of the television dream. As a result, advertisers still pile on to the dated platform, paying for visibility, living largely on a prayer that they get noticed, hoping that they got the demographics and the targeting right.
Away from all this, new and disruptive plays are dipping their toes in the waters with varying degrees of mileage in terms of longevity and warmth provided by the market. Operational costs and uptake across the world has settled into reasonable levels to justify risky acquisitions of properties like YouTube by Google. The issues of legality aside, who would have thought that one day it may actually end up being profitable for a website to host a truckload of video content and give it all away for free?
Elsewhere, more and more established journalists are either blogging on their own or starting up their own sharply focused ventures, joining the swelling ranks of bloggers who are often much better in aggregating news and providing commentary than most of the established outlets that are burdened by advertising and revenue implications.
Also looming on the horizon are factors like IP Television that are starting show up even in places like India. Increasingly, the conversation and the control over it are veering into the hands of the audience. They want to speak and control what they want to hear and see, the only question is who will deliver it to them?
Obviously, there are the usual caveats and pinches of salt that need to be consumed while considering all of this. IP television and pure play internet streaming in their present form lack the legs in terms of adoption or the cost-effectiveness to make any sense in a country like India.
As of now, both stand as tentative value additions that are being pushed forth by service providers who get nightmares every other minute about their negative or negligible average revenue per user in providing internet services. The uptake and the internet audience in India is still miniscule compared to the traditional players, who are, unlike in the west, far from reaching saturation levels in growth or penetration. It will take a while before the revolution comes to our aangan, but it will come eventually.
In the meantime, my television stands largely ignored in my room. Other than episodes of Lost, Formula 1 and a handful of programming on Discovery Travel & Living, there is not much for me on it. I can't watch the news I want to watch (NDTV sort of does it with the new MYNews initiative, but it is not quite what I want), when I want to watch it. The present format and formula just does not make the cut for me.
Compared to that, I can figure out what the rest of the world is reading about and commenting on the internet in five minutes flat. In twenty minutes, I get commentary on the top news from all sides of the aisle and make up my own mind, while on television the same talking heads brandish their repetitive talking points endlessly, day in, day out.
Of course, there is no single conduit that will rule the roost in the future. The smart players are evenly spreading their bets across the spectrum and positioning themselves where they can be relevant to the users than be in your face all over the place with the same messaging. I believe that someday it will all stand united, under a single interface, with data and preferences that follow you in a device neutral manner. It won't happen today or tomorrow, but less than five years would be a bet that would get a good wager from me.
Meanwhile, let us carry on our romance with the legacy application called television. first published:October 22, 2006, 13:19 ISTlast updated:October 22, 2006, 13:19 IST
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I think the tragedy with Indian television these days is that all we have is more of the same, over and over again. Pick any segment - entertainment, news, lifestyle and even faith - and all you get are variations of the same five themes. I don't intend to imply that the surfeit is killing the video star by a long shot. Far from it, the industry is booming, bottom lines, stock valuations and ad revenues are in the best shape they've been in for a long time, especially when you consider the maddening rate at which the sector has been expanding. Then, as Dire Straits once sang, "Why Worry?"
Lack of involvement and predictability are two factors that kill any relationship and every viewer dreads having those two feature prominently in his/her relationship with the television set. Right now, there is just way too much of both on the idiot box. News -- breaking or unbroken -- looks, feels and sounds the same other than for the packaging and the people and all the killer programming in terms of soaps smell and foam emotional in the same 'K' manner across the board.
What's left is a myriad concoction of talk shows, repetitive talent hunts and insipid contests that are painfully different from each other only in terms of the tackiness of the sets and the stock shots of the audience supposedly dancing in the aisles every time one of the hosts even as much as fakes a sneeze on camera.
What helps of course is that there is no viable alternative that has the massive reach that television has. There is nothing out there that beats the economic appeal of an awesomely low entry barrier of Rs. 6000 for a television set and a Rs. 350 monthly subscription that gets you all that there is to get on the coaxial end of the television dream. As a result, advertisers still pile on to the dated platform, paying for visibility, living largely on a prayer that they get noticed, hoping that they got the demographics and the targeting right.
Away from all this, new and disruptive plays are dipping their toes in the waters with varying degrees of mileage in terms of longevity and warmth provided by the market. Operational costs and uptake across the world has settled into reasonable levels to justify risky acquisitions of properties like YouTube by Google. The issues of legality aside, who would have thought that one day it may actually end up being profitable for a website to host a truckload of video content and give it all away for free?
Elsewhere, more and more established journalists are either blogging on their own or starting up their own sharply focused ventures, joining the swelling ranks of bloggers who are often much better in aggregating news and providing commentary than most of the established outlets that are burdened by advertising and revenue implications.
Also looming on the horizon are factors like IP Television that are starting show up even in places like India. Increasingly, the conversation and the control over it are veering into the hands of the audience. They want to speak and control what they want to hear and see, the only question is who will deliver it to them?
Obviously, there are the usual caveats and pinches of salt that need to be consumed while considering all of this. IP television and pure play internet streaming in their present form lack the legs in terms of adoption or the cost-effectiveness to make any sense in a country like India.
As of now, both stand as tentative value additions that are being pushed forth by service providers who get nightmares every other minute about their negative or negligible average revenue per user in providing internet services. The uptake and the internet audience in India is still miniscule compared to the traditional players, who are, unlike in the west, far from reaching saturation levels in growth or penetration. It will take a while before the revolution comes to our aangan, but it will come eventually.
In the meantime, my television stands largely ignored in my room. Other than episodes of Lost, Formula 1 and a handful of programming on Discovery Travel & Living, there is not much for me on it. I can't watch the news I want to watch (NDTV sort of does it with the new MYNews initiative, but it is not quite what I want), when I want to watch it. The present format and formula just does not make the cut for me.
Compared to that, I can figure out what the rest of the world is reading about and commenting on the internet in five minutes flat. In twenty minutes, I get commentary on the top news from all sides of the aisle and make up my own mind, while on television the same talking heads brandish their repetitive talking points endlessly, day in, day out.
Of course, there is no single conduit that will rule the roost in the future. The smart players are evenly spreading their bets across the spectrum and positioning themselves where they can be relevant to the users than be in your face all over the place with the same messaging. I believe that someday it will all stand united, under a single interface, with data and preferences that follow you in a device neutral manner. It won't happen today or tomorrow, but less than five years would be a bet that would get a good wager from me.
Meanwhile, let us carry on our romance with the legacy application called television.
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