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If there is one primary topic in the media world these days, other than have you seen the Duchess of Cambridge pictures, it is the connected world.

Over the past few years it has become a familiar theme. It was the main uniting feature at this month’s IBC conference and associated Leader Summit in Amsterdam and discussed widely at the CTAM, cable conference at Vienna last week. There was also a sustained examination of every facet of the phenomenon at MediaTel’s Connected Consumer seminar this week – and putting the emphasis on the consumer usefully emphasised that this debate has moved on and is now about much more than what television set manufacturers have decided to offer us.

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Just like the old jokes are the best jokes, so old, or rather familiar, questions are absolutely the right ones to continue to ask until the answers are absolutely and unambiguously revealed. We have not got there yet although the outlines of the connected world – and the associated emerging buzz words “the second screen” – are starting to emerge from the mist.

MediaTel’s quarterly Connected TV consumer survey provides useful benchmarks. Ownerships of smart TV’s increased from 12.9% of respondents in the third quarter of 2011 to 15.7% now. It seems like a modest rise but when combined with changing habits of new television purchase – down from once every 10 years to every five to six years – you can see a strong trend emerging.

It really does become a reasonable proposition, as many are suggesting, that 50% of the television homes of Western Europe – with the UK probably in the vanguard – will have smart TVs or at least connected devices in some form by the end of 2015.

The old questions remain. What will consumers actually make of all the technological power being put at their finger-tips? Will it enhance the existing big broadcast brands or lead to the creation of a long tail of almost forgotten but much loved television programmes?

There is also the possibility that apps for the burgeoning number of over the top (OTT) operators like Netflix, LoveFilm and Blinkbox will finally lead them to the sunny uplands though some will fall by the wayside. Or not.

At the seminar Damien Read of BT Vision noted that what the viewers really want are relatively modest – the ability to record programmes and the live pause function.

Author and consultant Michael Bayler provided a theoretical framework for trying to understand what is happening in the living room when the consumer is brought together with smart and connected devices. There are now two eco-systems working in parallel. There is a macro big TV system and a micro-system devoted to such things as social communication. The two may converge occasionally but actually there is very little overlap.

There may however be more overlap than Bayler acknowledges. A lot of the micro communication is linked to what is happening on the big screen though some programmes such as X Factor encourage such communication more than others. Indeed we heard that as much as 40% of peak time Twitter traffic is television related.

In custom research for IBC’s Leadership Summit, Deloitte concluded that the most common use of full connectivity in TV sets is likely to be “a moderate increase in viewing of mainstream TV content catalysed by access to catch-up services and a wider portfolio of content.”

What is clear though is that there is little appetite among mainstream broadcasters for spending much if anything on original content for the second screen. They believe, rightly, that the money should go to the first screen and anything else would be parasitical. The question then becomes an argument about which actually is “the first screen.” For most people surely that will remain the flat screen on the wall.

Other take-aways from the seminar is that shock, horror the YouView box is actually a great piece of work. Cynical hacks like to go for the too little, too late, too expensive line of argument on YouView. Not so according to Nigel Walley who has put YouView through its paces at his iBurbia emporium in Chiswick. “YouView is the only proposition that has the five apps everyone wants. Smart TVs don’t have these and do have many more we probably don’t want,” says Walley. The famous five he is taking about are of course the catch up services from the main broadcasters.

The great why doesn’t BT buy ITV argument re-emerged, initially from the audience. Why indeed? It is still astonishing that no-one had the courage and the imagination – and you wouldn’t have needed very much – to bid for ITV in 2009 when the share price slid unbelievably below 30p. Now it might take bids closer to Greg Dyke’s heroic 130p a share effort to land the UK’s leading commercial broadcaster and one obviously heading in the right direction.

BT will probably never make a move in that direction but in BT Vision they are clearly serious about television but 38 live Premier League games and library films and television programmes are unlikely to add up to a breakthrough.

And then there are the dreaded metrics – audience numbers to you and me. The more complexity you have with the connected consumer and first, second and even third screens the greater the need will be for reliable information. And we are clearly not there yet – or more precisely we will not be there when significant numbers migrate from the main channels – if they ever do.

As Jean-Paul Edwards from Manning Gottlieb OMD, who has been trying to divine the future these past 17 years put it, there was at the same time too much data and too little. Too much background noise, too little significant, meaningful data.

Here again the conclusion has to be everyone will have to live with increased complexity and continuing uncertainty for the foreseeable future. A gradually evolving BARB will continue to do the heavy lifting on television while failing to afford to be able to do everything. At the same time more targeted “metrics” will sprout alongside.

To the hopeful person who asked “can’t we have a single body measuring everything?” the answer probably remains: In Your Dreams. TouchPoints will have to do for now.
(This article first appeared on Mediatel)

We all had a good laugh at Eric Schmidt’s harpooning of the Lord Sugar, the well-known property tycoon.
How silly of Sugar to turn down an Apprentice candidate because he was an Engineer for goodness sake.
After all, noted the Google executive chairman, reverting to the stiletto, we haven’t done so badly.
Schmidt, one of the many engineers at the top of Google, obviously gained his biggest headlines from his MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival with his entirely sensible appeal for the UK to bridge the gulf between the arts and sciences. It is an appeal echoed frequently by Prof Brian Cox, another Edinburgh star, who likes to point out in a rather perplexed way how BBC types from the arts side of the trenches feel comfortable almost boasting about their total ignorance of science.
There is nothing new under the sun. The somewhat faded novelist C.P.Snow highlighted the issue in his Two Cultures lecture in 1959.
Changing attitudes of TV producers might help a little but only education secretary Michael Gove could actually do anything about the undoubted problem with dramatic changes to the curriculum.
Under Schmidt’s big tent argument there were a number of much more contentious issues – such as the launch of Google TV.
Naturally in everything it does Google seeks to advance the cause of humanity and the common good –while making honest billions along the way.
Lord Grade could not have been more wrong when he denounced Google as a “parasite.”
Rupert Murdoch was of course totally mistaken when he elaborated on the parasite theme by describing the company as “a tapeworm in the internet.”
And how silly of former Channel 4 chief executive Andy Duncan to even suggest that Google took more revenue out of the UK than ITV’s total earnings.
It was therefore totally daft for anyone to fear the arrival of Google TV in Europe early next year with the UK “well among the top priorities.”
It was complete nonsense for silly players, such as the US networks, to think that Google was about to compete with them and start creating its own content.
If that were to happen, all you would get, said the self-effacing Schmidt, would be a lot of bad sci-fi movies.
No, the point was to create an open platform for the next generation of TV to evolve rather as the creation of the Smart Phone platform had sparked a whole new era of innovation, said Schmidt oozing both natural and choreographed charm.
Beware someone who smiles at you that much, was the immediate comment of one media academic after the lecture.
The fear surrounding the arrival of Google TV is understandable. The company is so big, so rich and so ambitious.
In football terms think Manchester City and quadruple it. Google has the resources to build or buy anything its wants.
Except there might just be a bit of a flaw in Eric Schmidt’s big argument. Britain’s broadcasters may indeed be stuffed too full of arts graduates but Google may have too many engineers in power positions for its own good.
As Ken Auletta argued in “Googled: The End of the World As We Know It” there has often been a naivety about the engineers of Google.
There is an admirable “can do” approach in inventing things but that nevertheless often fails to take account of what impact their innovations will have, how consumers perceive them and sometimes a disinterest in whether or not they will make money.
Lets assume that Google TV destroys the financial models of the original content creators of Europe.
Gee we’re really sorry that really wasn’t our intention at all, would be the likely response.
Luckily we don’t have to have any worries on that score. The launch of Google TV could turn out to be a dead duck – one of Google’s imaginative clunkers.
Such a judgement is based not just on an optimistic whim.
As Google would expect there is intellectual rigour and proper research behind it.
Nigel Walley, chief executive of Decipher, who tests all new boxes, tellies, media revolutions to destruction has put the new Google TV box through its paces at his Chiswick headquarters and found it seriously wanting.
According to Walley there is actually little new or imaginative about Google TV.
Unless you buy a television set with an integrated Google TV box – and there is no sign they exist so far- Google TV will be add-on to any set-top box (STB) rather than a replacement. It has no TV tuner in it so therefore can’t receive broadcast TV.
As Walley notes: “When you get it out of the box it asks you which STB you want to use with Google TV, and goes off to find the right EPG data. You then have to run the ‘out’ cable from your existing STB into the Google box, rather than directly into your TV.
The Decipher chief executive adds: “ Then there is anther cable that comes out of Google TV into your screen carrying the combined Google and STB data. Most consumers will have lost the will to live by this point.”
The benefits of the Google TV set-up?
It opens up your TV to any website rather than the limited list that other companies are letting into their devices and it allows TV web players to integrate with Android apps.
The overall verdict of Decipher?
Unless there is a miraculous re-design it is likely that Google TV’s flaws, including its inability to integrate web sites with broadcast channels, will outweigh its benefits.
Maybe Google should bring in some of those highly creative British “luvvies” to advise the Google “geeks.”
Apart from giving Lord Sugar his just deserts Eric Schmidt was spot on in targetting the UK’s regulators, in particular the Competition Commission which blocked Project Kangaroo.
Schmidt was rendered almost speechless by the concept that the potentially world beating concept was done to death because it might have been too successful.
Even if YouView meets its revised 2012 deadline several years had been lost – the equivalent of an eternity in the fast-moving world of regulators.
Mazel Tov to Britain’s regulators.
Raymond.Snoddy