Paul Norris: Goggle vs Google - The fight for your eyes and ears

Unlike these children of the 70s, modern kids are drowning in viewing options.

Opinion

The advice ran: "Forget TV sets. In three years' time there won't be any. Instead there will be computers with high-quality display screens. Inside there will be digital instructions allowing them to receive anything we dream up."

These words were spoken by technology experts to an American congressional committee in 1991. Eighteen years on, we still have television sets, albeit flat screens, wide screens, screens with digital tuners and HD-capable. So much for the future-gazers.

Yet the experts were right to point to a movement to digital, to computers and to computer protocols. But the movement is not at the expense of the television set, rather it is a move from broadcast to broadband as the means of delivering the entertainment and information that we know as television.

Increasingly we are seeing the delivery of video over the internet, from services accessed by the computer (TVNZ On Demand), to services going direct to the television set. Examples of the latter are Apple TV, TiVo or a new service about to be launched in America called Zillion TV.

The point about Zillion is that it enables the concept of me-channels. It offers almost everything you need to create your own programming schedule - a vast library of movies and programmes across almost every genre that can be streamed at any time from Zillion's servers. No tedious downloading. You can buy or rent these programmes, or view them for nothing if you watch a few advertisements that you have selected.

The key question is what will happen to the traditional broadcasters if these new services catch on. TVNZ and TV3, like all commercial broadcasters, operate by selling audiences to advertisers. If their audiences decline because viewers are getting their television from these new services, the commercial model may be doomed. Will the internet kill the TV star?

The evidence to date suggests that viewers are not deserting traditional television. The average time spent viewing went up by a remarkable 15 minutes a day in 2008 to a record high for the decade of 188 minutes. Furthermore this figure does not include time spent viewing recorded programmes.

Yet there is a paradox here. At the same time as viewing levels have increased, time spent on the internet has also gone up, especially the accessing of video over the internet.

TVNZ recently reported a significant increase in numbers of people using TVNZ On Demand, and in the number of programmes accessed. It is not easy to explain this paradox. The fact that internet users often multi-task, surfing the web with one eye on the television, hardly fits the reality of viewers watching their favourite programmes on demand.

What seems to be happening is that online is adding new viewers. It is also clear that the habit of accessing video over the internet is most evident among the younger demographics, the digital natives who visit YouTube daily and who have few scruples about legality when in search of content they want. The unanswered question is whether this generation is definitively lost to broadcast television or might return as they age. This appears unlikely.

Microsoft even dares to make this bold projection for the European market - that internet consumption will outstrip traditional TV in June 2010, less than a year away. It must be assumed that video will be an increasingly important element in internet consumption.

The advertising picture is a little clearer than viewer behaviour. Advertising spend across all media is in decline, largely as a result of the recession. But there is also a shift taking place, with less money being spent on traditional media and more spent online.

In New Zealand, online advertising was the only major media sector to increase in 2008 - by about 43 per cent over the previous year - with the momentum continuing in the first quarter of 2009, in the face of challenging economic circumstances.

Why does all this matter, if viewers are experiencing more choice and control? The problem is that if broadcasting revenues continue to decline, broadcasters will not be able to fund the popular programmes we all love to watch.

As the US networks suffer the worst shortfall in advertising revenue in living memory, the future funding of such shows as Desperate Housewives, Lost and CSI must be thrown into doubt. Here TVNZ spends around $100 million annually on local programmes, not including news and programmes funded by NZ On Air. This would seem unsustainable in the changing mediascape.

In other countries, with public broadcasters totally funded or part-funded by licence fees or taxation, it is observed that in times of recession and change, the public broadcasting model is more resilient; immune from the vicissitudes of the advertising market.

But New Zealand, with the TV public broadcaster almost wholly commercial, is very exposed. TVNZ is committed to turning itself into a digital multi-platform media company, but MediaWorks (TV3 and C4) is moving more slowly.

It would be just as foolhardy as the American experts to forecast the death of television from today's circumstances. New media emerge, but the old ones seldom die.

What seems most likely is that there will be some mix of broadcast and broadband, with broadband gaining ground as it becomes faster and more reliable. What is certain is that traditional broadcasters are riding a wave of revolution which will surely bring substantial change.

* Paul Norris is head of the Broadcasting School at Christchurch Polytechnic. Issues raised here will be discussed at the School's Conference on the Future of Broadcasting tomorrow.