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The suddenly-rapid pace of digital change in the TV market may be a 'ketchup moment'.
The suddenly-rapid pace of digital change in the TV market may be a ‘ketchup moment’. Photograph: Alamy
The suddenly-rapid pace of digital change in the TV market may be a ‘ketchup moment’. Photograph: Alamy

TV industry faces its ‘ketchup’ moment: ‘Mobile is now the first screen’

This article is more than 8 years old

France Télévisions’ director of future media Eric Scherer on the trends providing headaches and huge opportunities alike for television firms

“The TV industry will have to work on a mobile-first strategy. Not a digital-first strategy, but a mobile-first strategy, because mobile is now the first screen, and it’s taking time away from the TV.”

Eric Scherer is director of future media at French broadcaster France Télévisions, so understanding – surprise! – the future of media is a key part of his job. In a speech at the MIPFormats conference in Cannes this weekend, he outlined the digital trends that he thinks are presenting traditional TV firms with headaches, but also huge opportunities.

“We are in a growing business. We are not in the print business, we are in the video business, and it is a growing business,” said Scherer, before warning his audience of television industry executives that they must adapt fast to changing technology and habits of viewers.

Among the trends picked out by Scherer was the emergence of “a new syntax, a new grammar, a new vocabulary” for news, particularly when delivered through “the new kids on the block” in the form of apps including Instagram, Snapchat and Periscope.

“They are always mobile, they are always social, they are always interactive … and it is more and more live,” he said, before turning his attention to YouTube and the growth of multi-channel networks (MCNs) like Maker Studios, which was bought by Disney in 2014.

“These are the people who are the new big players,” said Scherer, showing a slide of fresh-faced YouTubers. “These are the kids now ruling the entertainment, and it’s just the beginning of it. Again, new grammar, new syntax, new vocabulary.”

Scherer added that the TV industry is realising that data will play a crucial role in helping it to increase the size of its audience; to have a stronger relationship with those viewers; to improve its shows; and to forge better partnerships with big brands to make more money from digital platforms.

He warned TV firms not to abuse the privilege of having access to big data on viewers and viewing, though.

“Trust is the next killer app when you talk about data,” he said, noting that at a time when governments and big technology firms alike are under scrutiny about how they track internet users: “You better have a good relationship with your end users. Trust and transparency are considered as new services.”

Eric Scherer at the MIPFormats conference. Photograph: Stuart Dredge/The Guardian

Scherer also talked up the idea of “immersion” as a key trend in TV viewing, including 4K-resolution screens and shows delivered not just by broadcasters and online firms like Netflix and Amazon, but also from companies like GoPro, with its next generation of wearable cameras.

Virtual reality headsets are also on his radar. “VR is a total immersion inside the content, inside the fiction, inside the news, inside the documentary. Of course now it’s often in a very huge and very ugly helmet … but Samsung, Google, Sony, the big guys are all working on that,” said Scherer. “This immersion is the big new media of the next few years.”

Scherer’s warning that TV firms must be thinking about mobile-first strategies was delivered alongside the claim that young viewers are not interested in what’s on the big screen in their living rooms.

“The young people will not come back to the TV screen: at least the major TV screen that we knew for the last 40 years,” he said, while pointing to the booming video viewing on Facebook as one reason why.

While Facebook has said that it is currently averaging 3bn video views a day, Scherer quoted a different statistic: Facebook now has more videos with more than 1m views than YouTube does. A stat that may be slightly misleading, if Facebook’s metrics count videos that have automatically played in people’s news feeds.

Scherer said the key challenge for the television industry is to move from “a mass media in a few markets – we were basically carpet-bombing without knowing where we were dropping our content – to a more precision media where we can target, and will more and more be able to find the market niches”.

Earlier in his speech he also claimed that the forces influencing this shift have accelerated dramatically in 2015 alone.

“This disruption has been expected for years now. We knew it was coming but we were short of some concrete evidence on this disruption. And guess what? In the last few weeks, the last few months, boom. Everything is coming almost at once,” said Scherer.

He likened the shift to banging a bottle of tomato sauce for a while before it suddenly pours out. “We can call it the ketchup moment, if you want. TV is changing very quickly, and this change is right now.”

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