 When
will interactive television deliver against its promise?
By Paul Hudson
Paul has extensive
business and analysis experience and maintains a close
relationship with the Call Centre Association (CCA),
having been involved with the sponsorship and direction
of CCA Research Institute. |
When will interactive television deliver against its promise?
It’s a killer question, and it has been a central theme
to part of our work now for the last few years. There has
been much written on the subject but the key question of when,
and how, is yet to be answered.
There are many social and behavioural reasons that undermine
the current take-up of interactive television, especially
from a commercial perspective. Primarily, it will take longer
for human behaviour to respond and adapt to such radical changes
in technology than most analysts predict, as technological
change evolves at a quicker pace than behavioural change.
In the case of interactive television this can clearly be
seen – the technology is far more advanced than current
behaviour and user take-up. Furthermore, the technology is
still developing, so the ‘turbulence’ for this
device is very high, making any predictions of usage difficult
at best.
Interactive television success stories are well documented.
Big Brother saw a huge (and profitable) success in interactive
voting, and over two million people took their own prehistoric
safari alongside the BBC’s Walking with Beasts. However,
most companies are still struggling to find successful ways
of using interactive television as a source of revenue. ITV
Digital certainly found it difficult to deliver any meaningful
success in the interactivity stakes. So far, interactivity
only works when it is either deepening/extending the viewing
experience or providing quick and ‘disposable’
gratification. Where companies try to mimic their services
on the PC-enabled Internet, they are significantly less successful
because an interactive television has different characteristics
and behavioural responses.
With the introduction of Freeview, the government, the BBC
and Sky aim to bring the age of digital TV to a wider audience,
eventually enabling the total switch-off of analogue signals.
The BBC has its own digital strategy, attempting to bring
a mass audience to interactive television and normalise the
social behaviour of interacting with a television screen.
But the creation of normative behaviour follows recognisable
key stages that take time to occur, such as the experimental
use stage and the adaptive behavioural stage. Normative behaviour
will only exist once a critical mass of users has been achieved
and behaviour has had time to adapt.
These key stages can be supported through the effective design
of services that aid the learning process. At first, services
needs to be designed to mirror as close as possible current
experiences and expectations, and need to be based on simple,
easy to follow ‘rules’. Next, opportunities need
to be provided to educate and extend the experience and allow
the user to see the significance, relevance and meaning of
the service to their lives. High quality, well thought-out,
relevant services must be provided to support behavioural
change and market growth.
So there are still many challenges for the Freeview platform
to overcome. However, as a learning ground and potential solution
to normalising behaviour, it must offer a key opportunity
in speeding up the interactive television promise and bringing
closer the successful harnessing of this medium for marketing
and revenue creation. And only these will dictate the ultimate
timescale for interactive television’s success.
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