The convergence of technology is a subject that has been well documented, to say the least. If you are a technophobe, you may well see it as having been covered to death. But no matter how you see the situation, or what part of the techno spectrum is being discussed, there is always one over-riding takeout – the absolute certainty that we are on the brink of revolutionary change.
Change that will affect lifestyle, habit, leisure, work and time. Change that will eventually make any or all of the following obsolete – TV, VCR, Hi-Fi, DVD, computers, cameras, PDA, cell phones and fixed-line phones. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some, but you get the message.
Confuse this more by throwing in techno-speak like 3G, broadband, wireless, bluetooth and blackberry, and you’d think anyone over 30 may as well pack it in right now. But that doesn’t really happen. In the real world what we have indeed managed to do is adapt (‘cos the option is to die). Many of us vividly remember working and operating in a world without PCs and cell phones, making do with telex machines and typewriters. We survived the shift. Our ability to embrace change is incredible, and as innovations are thrown at the market in greater quantities and with greater frequency, so has it been absorbed into our daily behaviour more and more effortlessly.
The point of all this? Well, I think the technology that will surely change advertising and media as we know it is only months away in South Africa, and once more we’ll have no choice but to adapt. It’s already doing big things in the US and UK markets. The PVR (personal video recorder) or DVR (digital video recorder) will change everything.
Dissemination of the device is growing in leaps and bounds, and in the next few years (two to three, most probably) it will have major and meaningful market penetration. This PVR is essentially a semi-smart device that one pre-programmes off the TV menu, allowing the downloading of 40 to 60 hours worth of programming onto a hard drive for the viewer to watch at any time. No doubt the storage capacity will treble or quadruple shortly. Just think of the top-line ramifications for advertising.
You watch 20 minutes of the rugby, are forced to chat to your mother-in-law for an hour, and then pick up the game “live” exactly where you left off. You can break just for a phone call if you like – and be watching five minutes behind the rest of the world.
Suddenly, where TV stations want to schedule the show is of academic interest to you. The viewer decides what’s on and when. The viewer constructs his own personalised prime-time. And clearly a show no longer competes for audience only with the other programmes scheduled for 20h00, but with every single show scheduled for broadcast at any time, on any day that month. Result? Competition of maybe 30 shows grows to an option of thousands, literally, all the time.
Of course it’s currently critical to many advertisers that their message is viewed on a specific day, or specific time of the day. Whether this will be plausible in future is anyone’s guess. And if that’s just one potential downside, the skipping of commercials will be a far bigger problem. Ad free environments may come at a cost to the viewer, but are a distinct possibility.
I’ve barely scratched the surface. This is merely a broad idea of how fundamentally the consumption of the TV medium can change in the very short term. In South Africa it will certainly affect the top-end of the market first (rumour has it that the earliest PVR models will be introduced pre-Christmas 2005). But the ripples may eventually extend to the very core of the media model itself.
Harry Herber is group managing director of the MediaShop.