As January draws to a close, I've nearly finished developing my predictions for what
will happen in digital in 2014 and thought that I’d post them here to get some
wisdom from my readers! Some of these will be positive, some might be busting
some myths about categories that have captured the zeitgeist. Now, more than
ever, comments will be greatly appreciated. This one is a bit light on numbers – I
need to work on that...
My prediction
2014 will see the launch of at least 10 new high quality,
economically viable TV and tablet channels aimed at specific ethnic and/ or
national audiences.
Why I think this
This is a simple one! As tablets have become ubiquitous in
middle class homes and the penetration of connected TVs has increased thanks to
the natural replacement cycle and the availability of extremely cheap dongles,
like Sky Now, the cost of providing a TV channel into a home has fallen by an
order of magnitude. A channel on the Freeview terrestrial broadcast system
costs about £10m a year (assuming you’re not trying to get into the top 20
channels). Satellite is more like £500,000 a year. The cost of the hardware and
software for a streaming channel is more like £50,000. Content management
technology has fallen by a similar amount, as has the cost of running a
business, thanks to more flexible office space and improved productivity
technology.
Add to that a growing population in the UK that were born
outside, and you can see the opportunities for high quality (in picture terms,
at least) content offers aimed at audiences that have hitherto been too costly
to access. Services like IROKO TV, which offers Nollywood films on a streaming
basis have even been able to move onto Sky. Al Jazeera have bought a Freeview
channel, joining Russia Today. The last two services have ulterior motives, of
course – they are attempting to promote the national interests of their
parents. But there are plenty more that are aiming to make some money. ESPN
offers college football from the US. The NBA has its own streaming channel for
basketball. The list goes on, but is not universal.
In the very near future, I expect to see content services
aimed at Indians, Poles, South Africans, Australians and the numerous other
ethnic and national groups that reside in the UK. Many of these will likely be
subscription-funded, taking advantage of people’s increasing comfort with
paying relatively small subscription charges to access film and TV shows that
match their interest. This behaviour is likely to be most prevalent in London
and the South East, but doubtless will begin to creep into other regions as
familiarity with digital continues to grow.
And remember: I'm running the London Marathon for the NSPCC this year and any donations would be greatly appreciated. http://www.justgiving.com/afroglives
And remember: I'm running the London Marathon for the NSPCC this year and any donations would be greatly appreciated. http://www.justgiving.com/afroglives
Very interesting. I would certainly use one of these srvices. A few questions:
ReplyDelete- is this content going to be localised in any form, ie only for Indians, Poles, etc that live in UK?
- who will be the content providers, ie broadcasters?
Thanks