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Chris Winter

Chris Winter, Manager New Services, Digital & New Media, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

These are exciting times; Julie Flynn's story about getting a certain group of people to agree to be in the same room at the same time and co-operate on a single project is most apposite.

Let me say at the outset that the ABC believes the public broadcasters have an enormously important role to play in supporting the overall development of digital television. As many of you in the room know, the ABC has been committed to the notion that choice is and remains a key driver for take-up. While the two additional ABC channels were being broadcast, we received plenty of anecdotal evidence that young families in particular were either buying FTA set top boxes, or in some cases subscriptions to pay television, principally because the ABC was offering 12 hours of safe, advertising free television that young kids could watch without constant intervention.

This is borne out by research into early adopters by the DBA, which showed that over 60% of early adopters would like to see more channels in future. Before determining its digital television strategy, the ABC looked into worldwide industry research about what was bringing audiences to digital television. In the UK children’s television services were proving to be the most successful way to encourage audiences to engage with digital television.

ABC Kids started to attract a large audience, reaching just over 450,000 viewers on average each month. And Fly had reached around 210,000 viewers each month.

We still believe very strongly that new content is going to be a crucial part of the success of digital television, supported also by other work we are doing in the area: our interactive television projects over the last couple of years and their role in familiarising both audiences and industry; the research we are conducting into interactive interfaces; and the trial interactive services we are building for the FTA platform.

Let me touch on some other things that are happening in the world, especially amongst younger users and viewers – changes that are challenges for us as broadcasters.

Firstly and most importantly, the Internet is mainstream – 12.5 million Australians have access to the Net either at home or work, and 8.4 million Australians actively use it every month. It has become a major distraction. I feel silly making this point, but it has to be argued all too often. One million of them have broadband access at home -- 150% growth rate over the last 12 months.

Moreover, audiences are using a variety of media – Internet and TV, Internet and Radio, Internet and SMS. Simultaneous use of the Internet and TV is growing. In the US, around 20% of the 100 million TV homes have online access in the same room as the TV; 95% of them have the television turned on at the same time that the PC is in use -- and 80% of the ones who use the TV and the PC simultaneously during primetime concentrate on the computer as their primary activity. Apparently one-third of Americans with Internet access at home would apparently give up television if forced to choose between TV and the Internet… and for the users who’ve had access to streaming media, forty-one percent are more likely to get rid of their television than their connection to the Net.

Audiences want control -- and the ability to select the content they want when they want it and how they want it.

Another survey just published in the US investigated the viewing habits of 13 to 24 year olds. This so-called millennial generation now spend more time every day on the Internet than they do watching TV. For these people the Internet is becoming the primary medium. This "media fragmentation" as one writer puts it must be a headache for marketers -- you don’t need to work in the business to appreciate that teenagers and young adults are critical to the success of many brands.

Other research is coming up with similar conclusions – the influence of television is being eroded. The ABC too has identified that young people, those under 25 (approaching 35% of the population) are using media differently, embracing multiple media forms; more actively selecting media options to become ‘self-scheduling consumers’ and seeking control over their media experiences. We’re finding that a whole generation of our audience is accessing the ABC either only via new media services or a combination of new media/radio and new media/television.

We have already heard Christophe Cazes talking about the PVR -- I'm guessing that if priced correctly, it may be a convincing reason for the public to take up digital television. I have a twin tuner satellite PVR in the house at the moment and it's amazing. The anecdotal evidence from people who have used PVRs is that ironically they end up watching more television than they did before. Some broadcasters are actually looking at creating content specifically for the PVR; in other words, broadcasting content that is not meant to be watched in real time but consumed later, which sounds to me like a hot opportunity.

We believe – of course – that the public broadcasters have a crucial role to play in stimulating the digital television industry as a whole. At the same time, we recognise the increasing fragmentation of audiences and platforms and work hard in all areas to honour our remit of making our reporting, our ideas and our stories available to all Australians.

ABC Online for example makes important complementary contributions to the work of our television and radio colleagues; over the last two years the Corporation has explored the interactive TV space in its work with Optus and Austar – last year’s Walking With Beasts and Long Way To The Top in particular have shown just how rich a new kind of television can be – and how much the audiences enjoyed both those programs. Broadband is becoming more and more important for us -- with some examples of work originating online and then moving to television.

This year it’s Fat Cow Motel – a major cross media exercise – with television, online, SMS, voice mail, email and iTV all playing a part in the narrative. The level of engagement with the audience has been substantial. The online activity has exceeded almost everything in our experience. It’s a thirteen part series – you can catch the linear version on Thursday nights on the ABC at 9.30 – or go to www.fatcowmotel.com.au any time.

It’s fair to say we are consumed by cross-media work and its importance for our future as a broadcaster – dare I say publisher? -- and keeping a close eye on the technologies that will aid and abet our creations, and/or distract our audiences. One of the fascinating things about new technologies, especially those associated with the media and communication, is how we can either completely miss the point, or fail to anticipate what might become of them – very often it is the public who tell us what works, and what they want.

Audiocassettes are an early example, SMS a more recent one, the extraordinary success of DVDs possibly another – enjoying perhaps the fastest take-up of any consumer technology ever. They are having a profound effect – home theatre systems, once so niche, are being made for the mass market. DVD players, average price well below $300, play every optical format you can think of; sales of radio tuners and CD players are declining, and CDs themselves may well be challenged as DVD-As start to appear on the market at the same price as CDs – but with surround sound, pictures and short movies. Interestingly, the initial interest in the quality of picture provided by the DVD-Video format is being replaced by an interest in surround sound.

Other consumer devices are continuously expanding their cross-platform capabilities – probably aggregating around something like the home media hub, home media server, or maybe even the home theatre…. next year’s version of the Play Station will apparently include PVR functionality, which some believe will be the base-line functionality for the following generation of game consoles.

In finishing I’d like to quote our director Lynley Marshall from a conference earlier this year when she summarised the four key functions that the ABC could perform on behalf of the progress of digital television:

  • Attract new audiences to digital services by developing new content
  • Attract a broad range of viewers across all demographics, cultures and regions within Australia
  • Play an R&D role within the industry, and feeding research findings back to the wider industry to inform overall development of digital and interactive services.
  • Educate and train audiences in how to use digital and interactive services, through pioneering programs for audiences.

Audiences are terribly important to us; it's about "getting, keeping, stroking and loving our audiences. It preoccupies our every waking business hour." It’s just getting more complicated, but we ignore them – the audience -- at our peril.

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