Where is TV heading?

It’s often said that no media has ever died. The book, art painting, photography, the movie, the radio all have survived new media and technology arriving. But that was before YouTube!

 

Internet and broadcasting is merging and at some point I believe that TV becomes seamlessly integrated with next generation of home media systems in a scale that changes everything within broadcasting as we know it. That doesn’t necessarily mean that broadcast corporations will die. But I do believe that broadcasters should look closely at how they brand themselves. In my opinion a broadcaster that uses its brand and transform from a large channel enterprise more toward a knowledge and competence brand will survive into the future. Maybe its time for broadcasters to get far more serious about their websites and how to use them in their core business, instead of being very protective and separate broadcasts and Internet activities as much as they do at the moment. Is that a clever policy?

If we look at it: What is the business of broadcasting? For Public service broadcasters it’s like the morning paper you get on your door every morning, core business is to deliver as interesting content as you can to an as large amount of subscribers as possible. For a commercial broadcaster it’s to gather as many viewers as possible, and sell them to advertisers. Is there anyone that can see the similarities to the core of Internet business? Content and a large amount of people gathered around a specific subject. I believe that broadcasting and Internet has a lot in common of what they can offer, and with business models that is very suited for at close cooperation. The best of TV and the best of Internet is a hit in my opinion. While waiting for the broadband development, I believe that conceptual connection between the TV programs, and Internet e.g. communities is very interesting aspects of how to create a win-win situation. Internet has the options to interact far better with the audience and to connect the knowledge of the user and take advantages of that both in a commercial way, and in an editorial way also for the content creation of TV programs.

Who’s the Internet project Boss?

Have you ever wondered who’s really in charge of an Internet project? Or who “should” be?

I’m really tired of the constant “struggle” where IT Dep’s have opinions like; they should be in charge of Internet projects and that if not for them the Internet wouldn’t even exist. But hang on; it doesn’t make anything better if was the Communication dep. either. Claiming “content is King”. Providers, crews, individuals that keep claiming this kind of arguements are doing nothing but being trapped in “the monkey trap.”

“There is no Internet project!” (to rephrase a line from The Matrix movie) Internet is a channel as any. (E.g. TV, publications, radio, Cell phones) There is most surely a desired outcome for a company in need for an Internet involvement. IT / communication/ PR or what is – companies tend to forget that for the customer it’s not a project -with a start, and an ending. For the customer Internet is a long lasting process using that channel for their purposes (Business, involvement, information tasks and so forth). All kinds of businesses have all of a sudden become their own publishers. – Thanx to Gutenberg, and a brand new world of technology!

Gartner recently stated (ITxpo in Barcelona) that the CIO’s have yet a paradigm shift ahead of them. I’d say that it’s not only the CIO’s that have this challenge – We all do, and the responsibility for making the right decitions of how to go about it is in the hands of top management both on the customer and provider side of the table.

I don’t really care who is to be the “Boss” in an Internet project! An Internet project is always a team effort. The one in charge should be the one that’s best to manage, and motivate, and make everyone in the team able to do better than they thought possible themselves. The manager that empower everybody in the team, make all involved focused on the task at hand – and make sure that all agrees on the idea; the best result comes from what is happening in the group dynamics, not the singular effort from each and one alone. This person could be from IT Dep, Comm. Dep or from the Consultant/strategy Dep. or what ever. The best motivator, best inspirator, with management skills and a broad set of knowledge of all competence needed for the task is my favorite candidate for the job.

Interactiv or not

I’ve been involved in the Internet business since the beginning. Then, and surprisingly enough still, the word Interactive keep popping up in the most peculiar ways.

I’ll use another web 2.0 site to help out; Wikipedia. In short Interactivity; In the “contingency view” of interactivity, there are three levels:

Noninteractive, when a message is not related to previous messages;
Reactive, when a message is related only to one immediately previous message;
Interactive, when a message is related to a number of previous messages and to the relationship between them.

The Reactive communication is what I speak of as two way communication. Real interaction is when the one message in a flow of messages, gets altered because of the content of former messages. This Blog is not interactive. I write what I want, you can involve by giving comments, but that doesn’t alter my text.
If you would like to create an interactivity with me, we we could implement a chat, and discuss the subject, your opinions would alter my opinions and honestly, most likely would these postings become better.

About transparency

Until recently we all have spoken about the Internet as a channel for the external communication, and the Intranet as the internal channel for communication.

More interesting is the development we see today, where the ideas of transparency and two way communication becomes the standard. Even TV is moving very quickly in that direction. What does this mean? Transparency? Two way communication? It’s to very different concepts, and adding them together creates a third. For now I’ll write a little about transparency.

 

The word “transparency” invites you to think of the idea that what is communicated is open for all to see. Who is the messenger and who is the receiver? Towards whom is the message meant for? and so forth. It’s by far a more horizontal form of communication, and can be a more honest kind of communication.

One example could be; “in our company all communication that is possible to be open and free, shall be open and free for all. Only information that has to be hidden for most will be opened towards groups or individuals. If you implement this idea, you get a combined inter- and intranet where there is a conceptual point in letting everyone outside and inside the organisation be exposed to the same communication flow. You give access for “added internal information/ communication flow” only to those who really needs it. It leads to less double communication, and allows the company / organisation to increase efficiency and reduce cost and double exposure of information elements. In addition everyone in the organization become well aware of how and what the company are communicating externally. The marketing and branding gets internalized in the organization. It’s great way of building a common culture in the company.

Another example of taking transparency into the real world and live by it could be if your company / org. decide to show directly what activities the employees are involved in, to show externally what the company really are doing, what they are spending time on. I discussed this with my friend Gavin Bargus today, as he asked me: “What do transpaerency really mean to management in companies?” My question is also: “Do managements really mean it if they state it ?” or does it just become some sort of “show of statement?” As a customer I would really like to know this, because it would show me where my money goes. Gavin asked : “If you connect every employee to the hour reporting system in a company, presented it as a bar/graph on the website, wouldn’t that be real transparency?” The result could be that every one could see that e.g. Geir(me), as a consultant (or the consultant group) spent e.g. 18% of his time in meetings with customers, 42% writing strategies for 2 customers. He also spent 5% to increase his knowledge and 12% administrational time. 13% of his time was spent in sales activities. A set of bars presenting the total of the whole company would show how efficient the company is as we speak. The question “Where did my money go?” would be answered at all times. That is transparency! It is an option to be in front of competition on the marketplace, to be honest and it would build an organisation that really works as a team to win on the marketplace.

But I can hear the CEO’s out there, shouting; “Is this man crazy?” We can never show this in real time, it’s madness!” It’s “illegal” “our staff would go wild and hang us!”

I would say: Nop, they wouldn’t – nor would the customers! It all depends on the intention, and the purpose and how it’s done. To be honest, to be open and transparent, has to involve the braveness to show what the reality is, to put integrity into ones actions, daringly and without the temptation to manipulate with facts. Not to do so, should at least give the consequence that one stop using the term transparency uncritically.