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Companion TV Apps: viewers excited, then bored
Red Bee Media created quite a stir recently, explains DAVID MERCER, Principal Analyst at Strategy Analytics, when it launched a multi-screen TV app using Civolution's audio recognition technology to accompany FX UK's new series of The Walking Dead.
According to Bill Patrizio, Red Bee Media CEO, the app would deliver a "new dimension in engagement that fuels excitement, deepens experiences and extends consumers' enjoyment." Media producers are, indeed, increasingly seeking to extend and control the TV viewing experience across multiple screens through the introduction of tablet and smartphone co-viewing applications.
My colleague, Caroline Park, conducted an ethnographic study of this second screen app with iPhone and iPad users and reported her results in Multi-Screen TV Experiences: Observing Users of The Walking Dead Co-Viewing Application. Strategy Analytics observed six fans of the show as they experienced the latest episode while using the co-viewing app.
The good news from our research is that The Walking Dead fans were excited at the prospect of using the app and interacting with the show. One of the most popular features of this synchronised app was its ability to remind iPad or iPhone users when the TV show was about to start and that the content synchronisation would begin. Developers and service providers should be encouraged that such a basic feature has relatively high value.
However, in general our users felt the app became boring within 10 minutes of the show starting. There was not enough interaction to keep viewers engaged with the app while most of the show was being broadcast. By this time, most of our participants had put down their tablet or smartphone and were watching the TV show as a traditional 'single screen' experience.
We also found that some users experienced technical problems with audio synchronisation. Viewers were told to raise the volume on the TV in order to improve audio synchronisation, to the extent that one viewer complained of being deafened by the noise.
Not surprisingly, when connection is lost between multi-screen devices during a live broadcast, the risk of viewer dissatisfaction becomes very high!
Contact: www.strategyanalytics.com
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On predicting the future
Predicting the future, let alone the future of packaged media, is a perilous exercise, and possibly counter-productive, as the exercise closes doors rather than keep them open, argues JEAN-LUC RENAUD, DVD Intelligence publisher. Consider that: Apple was left nearly for dead 15 years ago. Today, it became the world's most valuable technology company, topping Microsoft.
Le cinéma est une invention sans avenir (the cinema is an invention without any future) famously claimed the Lumière Brothers some 120 years ago. Well. The cinématographe grew into a big business, even bigger in times of economic crisis when people have little money to spend on any other business.
The advent of radio, then television, was to kill the cinema. With a plethora of digital TV channels, a huge DVD market, a wealth of online delivery options, a massive counterfeit underworld and illegal downloading on a large scale, cinema box office last year broke records!
The telephone was said to have no future when it came about. Today, 5 billion handsets are in use worldwide. People prioritize mobile phones over drinking water in many Third World countries.
No-one predicted the arrival of the iPod only one year before it broke loose in an unsuspecting market. Even fewer predicted it was going to revolutionise the economics of music distribution. Likewise, no-one saw the iPhone coming and even fewer forecast the birth of the developers' industry it ignited. And it changed the concept of mobile phone.
Make no mistake, the iPad will have a profound impact on the publishing world. It will bring new players, and smaller, perhaps more creative content creators.
And who predicted the revival of vinyl?
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