BANFF – It will be October before Dawn Airey, the opening keynote speaker of this year’s Banff World Television Festival, starts her new job in charge of global content at Britain’s ITV Network, but she’s already excited by the prospect of transforming a traditional TV network so audiences can more freely use and “play” with its content.
Funny and bold, Airey told a room packed with programmers, producers, distributors and protectors of copyright that traditional, content-controlling broadcasters will do much better in the emerging multi-platform environment “if they learn to relax their sphincter muscles.”
She says there’s some evidence they’re beginning to relax already, but wonders if the fact that more content will be flying among platforms with big screens and very small will “mean an end to complex storytelling” of the type on such series as 24 or, for instance, CSI.
She’s not predicting an end to networks immediately or ever, in fact. “Only a broadcast model can focus the world’s attention” on such major events as the Olympics, she says. Most Britons, in fact, still watch conventional TV and analysts expect ad revenues in the U.K. to grow by 5% over each of the next five years. As well, 31 million Americans regularly tune in to American Idol.
But she says extending audiences is about extending brands to all media, new and old. Deal or No Deal, an Endemol format program sold to more than 20 markets, is available, she says, in more than 26 mobile versions, and even allows betting in markets where that’s legal.
“It’s transcended television,” she says, adding “you can consume it on whatever platform you choose,” dissecting each twist or turn in the plot.
While the “old media” instinct to control content is still present – such as the NHL’s strategy of controlling which clips to post on YouTube, “fault lines are emerging” as the “social media” sites begin to set the agenda. “All that matters is constructing the coolest platform possible around which users want to gather and converse.”
For instance, Airey says when YouTube users posted such popular skits as Saturday Night Live’s Dick in a box and Lazy Sunday clips, it went a long way to rejuvenating SNL than anything done by NBC, the broadcaster. But the network owned the copyright and took the clips down, opting to post versions on its own site. Airey wonders, “Which action benefited NBC more, given that YouTube generated millions of hits for the clips, but NBC could top and tail them with ads?”
Tensions arise within organizations over how to react to hijacked intellectual property. Airey says lawyers could start suing consumers or tracking people who post clips illegally, but “the solution has more flexibility between content owners and copyright holders.”
Why wasn’t YouTube created by a major content aggregator and “controller” such as NBC or another broadcaster? “We lack imagination and creativity and are still catching up.”
