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I was watching a roundtable on The Future of Television hosted by the Aspen Institute in the US, whilst much of it was of limited interest; some of the conversations percolated with other things that have sat around in my head for a while:
So here are the thoughts that I was kicking around in terms of outtakes from The Future of Television discussion
- The internet looks less like an atomic bomb and more like a transport medium to the content industry.
- Business models not channels are disrupting media and interruption marketing as a business model is threatened. Instead a subscription style model a la HBO is more likely to be The Future of Television. The key difference is that the bundling of cable TV stations is giving way to an a la carte style option instead
- Attention poverty is an issue: better not more. While there has been an interesting focus in new forms of content, the need for telling great stories is timeless. More importantly, interactively isn’t everything, lean back content still has a place. Technologist have thought that media consumption would evolve to an exclusively lean forward world.
- Social is only appropriate in certain contexts
- Gamification is a phrase to get marketers and designers to think again about incentivisation. Again this depends on how interested people are in lean forward content and what the benefits are in the gamefication mechanisms – usually this is some form of dopamine hit a la the Tinder interface
- Games are considerably stratified from social games (the equivalent of a crossword) to role playing PC games (think Games Workshop addicts)
- Immersive gaming isn’t for everyone
- Immersive experiences aren’t ready for prime-time
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This isn’t the vivid cyberspace that I signed up for…
Eight trends for the future