Full Stream Ahead 2016 Session Four
The horn of plenty
C
omedian Hugh Dennis aired the thoughts of many trying to navigate the new television landscape when he introduced this session. In a video diary shown to conference delegates, he was seen stuck inside a room for a month. His task was to watch all the content available to modern audiences. “Watching telly used to be so easy,” he complained. “Four channels, maybe five – everyone watched the same thing in the same place at the same time, unless your family was at the cutting edge of technology and had a VCR.” “Now, you can watch any episode of anything at any time, anywhere, and it is doing my head in. Everything I want to see is being ruined by people who seem to have more free time than I have. “I don’t want people to look at me pitifully when I say, ‘Making a Murderer, what’s that about?’ So, I’ve locked myself in here.… I’m not coming out until I’ve watched everything.” His experience of TV overkill involved watching some “Scandi”
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Paul Hampartsoumian
From left: Hugh Dennis, Sue Unerman, Jim Ryan, Simon Pitts and Ben McOwen Wilson
Tara Conlan listens as a panel discusses a connected world where everything is available everywhere at any time series, Narcos and Games of Thrones. He then had a “slightly weird day” where he “accidentally watched an advert”. Another day was spent on cat videos on YouTube, but then he found that, “YouTube make TV shows now, too, so I have to watch all its channels. What next? Fifty hours of free TV every time you order a tin of beans?” The film cut to the following day with Dennis saying to camera: “So, I ordered these beans from Amazon Prime and it turns out that I do get 50 hours of free telly. I’m never going to get out of here.” The star of Outnumbered and new BBC Three hit Fleabag then opened the debate by asking the panel: “With so many different ways of consuming TV,
will the next generation ever be able to concentrate? Are certain demographics being left behind? What does it mean for linear [and] is there too much content?” The overall impression was that, despite the explosion in new ways of consuming content, traditional television is still extremely popular. Research by Enders Analysis showed that more than 80% of UK video viewing is of broadcasters’ content. ITV’s Managing Director of Online, Pay-TV, Interactive & Technology, Simon Pitts, said: “I know that it’s not a fashionable thing to say but young people still watch lots of mainstream telly… X Factor, Bake Off, Britain’s Got Talent – these get about a 65% share among 16-34s. Coronation Street gets a 35% share of 16- to 34-year-olds. “But we shouldn’t kid ourselves: young people aren’t going to wake up one morning and instantly turn into their parents. They are watching TV in a very different way and it seems it’s all about multi-device, a bit less live and a bit more involved.” Dennis, who used to work for Uni lever as Lynx brand manager, wondered