Freeband TV News

Death of the traditional broadcaster?

Chris Andrews

Reports find the future is OTT and ‘hybrididty’

A couple of reports were published this week, the overriding theme of both that the traditional broadcasting model was doomed, and Over the Top services and ‘hybridity’ would be their downfall.

First, from Trender Research, was a report looking at the major trends in online video consumption and how these are changing the business models for cable, satellite and IPTV service providers.

The major finding of the report ‘Pay TV and the Growing Over the Top Video Threat’ is that 7% of households will forgo pay TV subscriptions by 2012, in favour of some combination of OTT services and free over-the-air television.

“The good news for Pay TV service providers is that the 80/20 rule applies in the case of OTT video,” said Trender Research CEO and principal analyst Brian Mahony. “The vast majority of consumers will not consider abandoning the familiarity, comfort, and content of traditional television until several obstacles to OTT adoption are overcome.”

These obstacles include limited live TV, sport, high definition content, and the relative complexity of setting up and using OTT devices and networks. However Mahony believes it is only a matter of time before these are, indeed, overcome. “Judging by the rapid growth of online video consumption on sites like Hulu, and the plethora of enabling devices such as Roku, Xbox, and a range of new HDTV models, our [7%] projection may be conservative.”

Meanwhile Global Media Consult has published its first international content trend survey, questioning 280 media experts, which looks at expected development of the content and TV markets within the next five years. The key findings of this report were that IPTV, internet-enabled devices and the lacking willingness of viewers to pay fixed subscriptions will lead to a “tangible power shift within the content markets over the next five years – and bring an end to the predominance of classical broadcast providers”.

The overall market size for content and new IP-based services is supposed to grow and gain in value, the report said, with “the sectors of broadband and IPTV [seeing] relevant growth with new content services”.

That sounds pretty serious. To repeat that was “An end to the predominance of classical broadcast provider” in the next five years. However the report goes on to say that “the established TV distribution via cable, satellite or terrestrial will suffer only minor losses in their existing market shares”.

Christian Knaebel, general manager and founder of GMC, said: “The survey reveals that the content markets will gain in volume and dynamic thanks to IP, hard discs and ‘hybridity’ – an opportunity for all players that are ready to act flexibly, creatively and to anticipate consumer demand. What surprised us is that the experts see CE manufacturers, IPTV and over-the-Top providers so clearly as winners of the hybrid revolution – that’s a wake-up call for the established free-TV, pay-TV- and cable providers not to miss the boat.”

Just as a final point, the report found that the ‘bottleneck’ for //

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