Live blogging from Mashup, "TV 2.0"

Introducing the event Simon Grice of etribes and Mashup says sites like TV-Links.co.uk and Joox.net are the reason he hasn't watched live TV for 6 months. And hasn't rented a video for 6 months…

Tom Weiss, CEO of TV Genius, is Chair.

John Varney
Sturart Prebble, launch CEO of On Digital, said digital TV is about turning 1 audience of 20 million into 20m audiences of 1.

But with no backchannel they could only create lots of channels that weren't very good.

The shift towards IPTV (BT Vision, YouTube, Titan TV, Aattoo, Jaman, Babelgum) headed towards 1 billions audience of 1. The entire Net population.

Is this TV 2.0? No. It's TV delivered by other means.

The events of 9/11 was the last event covered by major TV networks. The rest have begun to be covered by ordinary people with mobile phones like 7/7 or the Bali bombings. They gave this coverage to broadcasters. But the trend is towards user generated content, especially for major events. Future events go straight online not straight to the big broadcasters. This indicates a big change in only 4 years. Broadcasters are in effect helpless.

It doesn't mean IPTV will be irrelevant but it does mean that it will fail if it doesn't take account of the community of viewers and users.

TV: 15 mins of fames
YouTube: 15 secs of fame
Twitter: 15 characters of fame

Summary: It's not about TV 2.0, it's about version 1.0 of 'something else'. The web becoming a media in its own right. The winners will use content as a community experience, broadcasting every single life to billions of people. The losers will just put TV onto the web.

Mike Short, 02 and Mobile Data Association

Policy from government is not helping paid-for content.
He says Brussels announcement's preference for DVB-H is not helpful.

The mobile is the "fourth screen" and it's not just TV, but messaging, downloads you name it. By the end of next there will be 100m GPS enabled mobiles in the world. So maps and applications anywhere anytime is heading to a visual world.

Video capability of handsets is not great. BUt the mass market fourth screen needs to be more imaginative than just TV.

We need to think about personalisation of content and interactivity. Premium rate mobile means that you are partly more in control of getting involved in TV shows, but it has to evolve.

We also have to think about advertising. So the transaction basis may not continue… so a Mobile Sky or sponsored advertising. Adverts where you can influence the outcome on the screen.

1 billion phones shipped a year. 4bn phones by 2012. We need to plan for this. Some innovation will come from Asia, not just Europe.

Nick Brown, Cube.tv part of a2a Groupl PLC
(Inventor of the Red Button on Sky)

How do we generate cash out of this fragmented audience. We all have cameras now but who cares? Where's the revenue? Audience? How do we fund it till we answer these questions? How to drive and retain viewers?

In the next 8-10 years while there is a shift to watching OUT of home, there is also a stable revenue stream for watching IN home.

Trainers Eye is a new channel he is working on. It's a niche products, – trainer stables for horse racing. Why not buy a channel like toy buy a magazine in the newsagent? Move it into pubs and clubs and outdoor screens

Idea is to push meaningful content to outdoor screens, instead of BBC News 24 but comedy with SMS interactivity.

They want to launch a 'red button for outdoor'. Want to switch interactivity from the phone into the email in-box, which will be a TV mail. Supported by ads and driving audiences into and out of content. TV in your email basically, possibly using a Flash player.

All of the content ITV has only 15% were hitting on-demand button. Most people still want linear lean back TV.

What do viewers want. There is 3/4 bns of pounds spent on TV? So where's the cash?

PANEL DISCUSSION

Existing speakers joined by….
Peter Miles, Sub.tv
Richard Griffith, BT Vision, Strategy dir.
Mateo Berlucchi, LiveStation – Microsoft's Joost Killer) (Sign up for it and mention Mashup to get a beta invite)

Mateo: Old TV model based on lack of choice. People have become a lot more time-poor and the audience is now fragmented. But the Red Button never took off. So people now want real interactivity and that's what the web delivers.

Richard: In theory we could do a lot more interactivity because we will have a broadband backchannel. But we have to be smart. Ordering a pizza via digital TV is torturous. The remote control is not the right device. So doing interactivity right is really important.

Peter: IPTV is just more clever TV. Yes, return path and interactivity. But TV 2.0 is a lot more about integrating messages and people can consume it in different ways. Young people don;t really use email now they use IM, so it's that kind of leap. It's about finding a community and delivering content that relates to them to a niche audience where people want it and they can in turn create content for the community.

The BBC and ITV are losing young audiences they.

Richard: Young people are going to get jobs and old and people get home form work and want to watch stuff on the big screen and sometimes on demand. But it's not just about what young people do.

John: Every study over the last 15 years shows that 30-45 year olds are not the same as their parents who now just watch Newsnight.

Question:
Paul Cleghorn, tioti.com: People under 40 are watching TV while doing something else like doing email.

Peter: Youth are great at filtering out ad messages because they are multi-tasking and consume media in a different way. They are digital natives, not immigrants.

A guy from Three: We run TV through DVB-H and TV on demand and have done it for three years. People's interest can be satisfied by a small as well as a big screen interest. In Australia where we run live TV over the mobile. We see drop in mobile voice. People switch on mobiles to see BB when the ads come on the TV. So it's about understanding what individuals want at any one time. Choice drives a lot of it.

Matteo: Broadcasters will have an upper hand because they still are in the market for broadcasting fantastic content. A guy with a Web cam still won't be able to compete with CNN.

Nick: Youth don't spend money. Their choice is to find content without paying any money.

Richard: Joost is not the death of BT Vision. Great pictures if you are on a PC but not great for TV. Apple TV has an advantage as it gets to the TV. Both have the same problem which is content. Wither you own the right or you are a firm like BT where you are buying content rights. You need money to play in that game and the problem with a lot of companies

Nick: Joost does not work well with UK broadband networks. Quality will go down and as they try to scale they will hit products. They have great marketing and hype. BT Vision and Apple – the bar is already set at Sky Plus. With has 2.5 units in the market. Apart from a few issues you have

My problem with BT vision and Ale is how to you sin-post non-linear TV. Watch more o to E4?

Peter: Is Joost disrupting? Yes. Kill TV ? No. People want to watch rugby on 42inch plasma screen not PC. We show student sports on Wednesday afternoon as we know student groups are watch TV. So they can send messages to eachother.

John: There is room for Joost and ITV and Channel 4. The question is what is the percentage that moves online aw
ay

from the networks.

Nick: Will be more like the original Sky model. Before Sky it was The Big Match etc. People predicted the death of live Football when Sky came on but the opposite happened. So Joost and other players will bring in gross numbers of niche players, like fishing or chess. There is going to be a space for them.

TechTV. John Robinson: We're still looking at broadcasters if we want to watch a movie. We're not looking at values in packets. The value is in the technology not TV. TV is just a way of gathering people to sue the technology. americans can build these networks because they have a very big market. So it's best to devise a device where you can track the audience. The tech is there, we have to find the way the advertiser wants to pay for it.

Peter Daw (Dawe Vision): Will users cease to distinguish between PC and TV screen? Is the concept of TV of lean back only one of four other ways.

Mike: Interactivity still has to be built around rights. In the digital world we need rights that can flow across platforms. Mobiles are becoming projectors not just small screen.

Question: Most channels are rubbish on digital. Interactivity is not what will save niche channels.

Peter: Most UGC TV is crap but even there there is an audience however small.

Q: What about data?

Mike: Media on demand rather than video on demand is where I start. It's all about the personal experience. Place, time and personalisation.

Matteo: 1.1m subscribers . 1 pay per movie per month and fill up their DVR and the rest is linear TV because they can't be arseed.

Simon Grice: All the historic content created like classic TV shows means there is a lot of stuff to watch online and TV is not needed as much.

Q: Can discovery be generated ?

Answer (my interpretation): Social networks help with discovery of long tail TV.

RAN OUT OF LAPTOP BATTERY AT THIS POINT…