Are We Entering The Golden Age of Television?

The “GOlden Days”

Believe it or not, at one time here in the UK we had 3 television channels; BBC1, BBC2 and ITV… and not everyone had BBC2…

… BBC2 was considered posh.

In the “olden days” we’d sit around the television with the family and all watch the same television programme… that’s right, at the same time!

We’d talk about the programme as a family.  That’s right, we’d talk… not Snapchat… not text each other… but we’d talk.

Hard to believe we know.

Then one day Channel 4 dropped into the available channels…

Remember the first night of programming on Channel 4? Brookside? The Paul Hogan Show? Walter with Ian McKellen?

Here’s something that might bring back memories for those of you of a certain age. –
https://www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-11-02/channel-4-turns-30-relive-the-first-day-on-air

… and then, together with the Spice Girls, Channel 5 joined the foursome.

Television was having a growth spurt.

While all this was going on, satellite television was already making a name for itself.

OK there were casualties along the way; remember Squarials from BSB? 

No neither do we.

Now those millions of eyeballs
that programmes like the Christmas Morcambe and Wise shows could garner when
there were only 3 channels would now be diluted down right across the board.

Hundreds of channels, thousands of new programmes, including the more obscure; programmes that wouldn’t have stood a chance in the “good old days”.

If we had all these channels then we had to watch them, right? Viewer numbers to established programmes diluted.

Advertisers were running scared and even the main channels found it tricky to sell advertising space.

When Tom Was Everyone’s Friend.

In 1999 the term Web 2.0 was coined by Darcy DiNucci and the term would then lie dormant until around 2002 when the internet was blooming with the proliferation of broadband accessibility.

Now the web was developing into a “platform”; podcasting, where you
could “time-shift” your listening habits, blogs, playing movies, social
media.  Remember Myspace when Tom was everyone’s friend?

Slowly and gradually the
web was being used not just to play hosted media, but to stream.

With some foresight
Google was quick to see the future and snapped up Youtube.

Netflix went from renting
DVDs to streaming programmes to securing distribution rights.

There was a revolution in the air…

… but what about television?

Fast forward to now with tablets, smartphones and a glut of other streaming devices. Not only that, but now we have other behemoths having muscled into the streaming world; Amazon Video, Apple, and so on.

… but what about television?

Hang on, we’ll get to that in a moment.

A Global Family

Remember those days when the whole family would sit around the box in the corner of the room, watch the same programme and chat and discuss it as a family? Well the “family” is a bit bigger now… and spread out… and time-shifted.

Now we might not all watch the same programmes at the same time, although we occasionally all get together to binge watch something.

Just like with podcasting, we can now time-shift our viewing habits.

On a given evening each member of the family might all be watching different programmes on various devices, however more often than not they eventually end up watching the same programmes but at different times.

As for discussing and chatting with the family about what we watch, we still do that, but with our extended “family”; our followers on social media.

We live tweet the programmes, we blog about them later.

Programmes will trend while they’re on and we’ll share it all with our family; maybe not in the same room but around the world.

We now have a global reach to a potential global “family”.

“Television” now doesn’t just mean the square thing in the corner of the room or hanging on the wall. Channels can still get diluted now, however the weak don’t survive and the good ones have to be really good. As Sky has said for years, “Believe In Better”… and they must be to stand out in an ever-expanding market.

Netflix has come a long way since its early days where its innovative business model meant you didn’t have to pay for late returns on its DVDs. Netflix now makes its own movies and television programmes as do Apple and Amazon.

What Does All This Mean For Television?

Television is having another growth spurt at the moment, but this time it’s different… and it’s bringing plenty of work with it for everyone; writers, directors, actors and so on.

Netflix is establishing its own studio hubs like the one at Shepperton for example and even changing the rules of the film industry as in the Netflix VS. Cannes Film Festival 2019.

Netflix is just one of the giants vying for to add us to its viewing figures.

Where does this leave advertisers?

Television advertisers are alive and well and looking forward to 2020 and beyond, as television is now in many ways another streaming device. Television, is another platform on which advertising has found its new place together with AVOD such as found on the free version membership on ITV Hub and Youtube for example.

With AI driven algorithms based on our viewing habits and social media profiles, gone are the days when 9 million people had to watch the same paraffin commercial.

Now we’ll be served with commercials that actually interest us

As for our original question, “are we entering the Golden Age of television?”

Well it certainly does look like it doesn’t it?

In fact, it seems that the best is yet to come.

Stay tuned!

 

© Ray Knight Casting – 2019
For more information about Ray Knight Casting, please visit
www.rayknight.co.uk

 

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