Should there be a balance between “ratings” and “felt-needs” concerns and perception of quality in media broadcasting?
Prof. Dr. A. Haluk YÜKSEL
Department of Communication Design and Management
Communication Sciences Faculty
Anadolu University-TURKEY
e-mail:
The Challenges of the broadcast industry
The industry of television broadcasting is changing. After the explosion of channels following the arrival of cable TV, content distribution toward the Internet and the various mobile platforms poses new challenges to the industry. Indeed, there is no standardization for the distribution format on these new platforms. Also, while advertising revenues are growing on the alternative channels, they are not at the same level as traditional media. At the same time, new workflows based on standard IT practices are emerging. Technologies and know-how specific to information technology are increasingly used in the broadcast industry: server virtualization, data storage, IP networking, etc. The broadcast industry includes companies that specialize in the production and/or distribution of audio-video content. Those working in production generally have a large content portfolio. The distribution of this portfolio to Internet and mobility poses several challenges:
· Rights Management
· Advertising revenues
· Viewing platforms
· Data distribution to end-users
Broadcasting rights associated with content should be taken into account before they are disseminated to the Internet. It is mainly at this level that the management of rights occurs as well as the company’s strategy for the valorization of its contents.
Advertising revenues related to Internet content are growing rapidly but remain marginal compared to traditional media. Efforts for the establishment of a web distribution channel depend on the potential advertising revenues. On traditional platforms such as radio and television, standard distribution formats are in place. In the context of broadcasting to the Internet, this standardization does not exist. In addition to changing web standards, broadcasting to mobile platforms (smartphones and tablets) requires a multiplication of file formats. In addition, to ensure the successful spreading of on-demand and live content to the Internet, the bandwidth required is considerable. This is especially true if the image quality is high and the number of listeners is large.
What are the most important opportunities and challenges facing the TV industry today?
To answer this question we need to look more broadly at consumer behaviour and the changing way people are consuming content. Viewers no longer solely want a passive experience with a TV programme in their front room. They want to watch catch-up TV on a laptop, download a phone app on the move engage with content on a tablet or talk about their experiences on social media sites. They want different experiences on each platform, different flavours of content, and they want it allon their personal schedules.
An ‘access anywhere, any time and on any platform’ consumer is having a profound impact on broadcasters, content owners and post houses – and they need to radically re-think how they set up and integrate their workflows and business processes.
While it’s clear that a multi-screen environment brings a wealth of opportunities for content owners, it also brings many challenges. Never has the phrase ‘content is king’ been truer. But with an explosion in content and platforms to view that media on, content owners have to fight much harder for the consumer’s attention. The winners will be the ones who have a strong brand identity, who can remain relevant and adapt best to how consumers want to engage with their brand. The quality of the user experience and the relevance of the content will ultimately determine who wins this battle of the eyeballs. Traditional broadcasters have had to re-think their business models as ad revenue is now dispersed across so many more channels and platforms diluting their traditional revenue stream. They can’t solely rely on TV advertising anymore and have to adapt to find new revenue opportunities.
This fast-moving, multi-platform landscape means fundamental change for broadcasters and post facilities. It dictates a better thought-through and more streamlined production process. No longer can media owners simply create a one-hour programme – the new media landscape demands multiple versions of the same thing.
Whereas once the mantra was ‘create once, watch once’, it’s moved on from ‘create once, use anywhere’ to today’s ‘create once, version anywhere’ environment. Consumers are becoming more demanding and have higher quality expectations from the media they interact with. It’s not just a question of repurposing a piece of TV content to fit a mobile phone screen. Consumers want a different experience with each piece of media depending on when and how they access it.
So broadcasters and post houses are faced with a conundrum - the amount of production effort has increased, specific viewership has gone down (although aggregate viewship is on an increase it is now spread over many more outlets), and budgets have been squeezed. They’re forced to do more for less. This means they have to work smarter using more adaptive and collaborative workflows.
What is the media industry doing to address these opportunities and challenges?
The key is establishing a truly collaborative environment, where all of this media and all of these platforms are interconnected. The consistency of the user experience is crucial, no matter where they come into contact with the brand. So, to help deliver on this experience, media companies need to improve intra-facility collaboration so everyone involved has better access to the core content. Facilities will have to rebalance their workflows so the functionality of a system can be geared around the role of the user. So we’re beginning to see the development of multi-role user production platforms. Unified toolsets, which present themselves in different ways depending on the application, function and user, will become the norm. For example, a journalist editor and craft editor need access to similar functions but the creative process and end product is slightly different. Facilities will need these flexible tools offering critical functions, and facility staff can be given different access to different features depending on their role. This also helps in the rebalancing of resources as needs change or as new business models are tested.
We’re also seeing greater reliance on media asset management systems and high-capacity storage, retrieval and archiving solutions to support this growing need to find, access, store, manage and monetise assets. The real question for broadcasters, post houses and content owners is how can they manage this content in the most cost-effective, efficient and profitable manner? How can they find a simple way to find, license and realise the value of each piece of content, whether it’s old archive footage or a recently shot field clip.
I must start by warning you that I have nothing new to say about either quality or standards in contemporary broadcasting, let alone anything philosophical. What I hope to do is to bring together a few by no means new but rather general considerations which may be relevant to broadcasting.
As an academic for more than 30 years I have been preoccupied a lot with the question of quality recently, though in the context of education, not broadcasting. I find irritating the word ‘quality’. ‘Quality’ means simply what is something like, the properties that it has. It can be thick or clear, sweet or dry, good, bad or indifferent. Since I became research assistant in my university we used to spend many hours discussing the question whether or not goodness was a property. We could just as well have asked whether it was a guality. We always concluded that it was not... that a thing was deemed good in terms of other qualities that it had. What we are concerned with today is the goodness of broadcasting, that is to say, what other properties broadcasting has to have if we are to think it good. If once we could find an answer to that question, we could set about discovering how to ensure that as much as possible of the broadcasting output had these properties; how, that is to say, we could ensure that standards of broadcasting were high.
I am sure that everyone means something different by ‘standards’ of broadcasting from what seems primarily to be meant by the regulatory boards if you have any in your country. When the government speak of standards they are referring almost exclusively to standards of taste or decency, and they seem to believe that it is possible to set such standards by a series of rules to be observed. As a result regulatory boards are at least seen by the outside world to the scanning the screens for pornography and the gratuitous depiction of violence, and are thought to be in the business of laying down rules designed to ensure that standards thus narrowly conceived are observed. It is rather as if the Universities instead of having any positive duties towards educating students were to be held to have fulfilled their function if they laid down rules to protect their students from coming to positive harm while they are student. They might invent rules against the taking or supplying of drugs, against smoking or drinking etc. In universities, once the book of rules had been produced and was enforceable what else happened would be a matter of indifference to the rule-makers. The new style of regulation in the world of broadcasting seems not to have much to do with the old three properties of information, education and entertainment. It has become instead a matter of protection of the viewer or listener as consumer. Does the product represent reasonable value for money? Could it be provided more cheaply? In a consumer-orientated society namely in capitalism it is natural that consumer-protection should be the magnificent value and should provide the border for the regulation of broadcasting and of quality.
I am far from ruining the need to protect the viewer against shock and inustice, or the need to have some notion of decency which will apply to broadcast output, and which may be different in some respects from the concepts that apply to the printed word. I can say that I would be the first person to feel inclined to complain if standards of taste and decency steeply declined. Even so, I do not think that broadcasting which complies with such standards is necessarily broadcasting of good quality.
There are other standards which are also important and these are technical standards. A high standard of technical expertise in the production, presentation and actual transmission of programmes is doubtless essential to good broadcasting. People who are listeners or viewers but lack of technical knowledge have doubtless come to take for granted high standards in this field, without knowing that we do so. Technical competence, even technical brilliance, may be a necessary condition of high-standard, high-quality broadcasting. The trouble is that by itself it is not enough and it is not sufficient condition. It does not seem to me that training is necessary to make good producers. It could be that the best programme-makers pick things up as they go along. It is certain that training is not enough to ensure a high quality of output. But this argument, like the last, may simply lead to the conclusion that we as audiences, have come to expect a degree of expertise and competence, without quite knowing how this expertise was acquired. If we lose it, we may notice, and switch off.
Good broadcasting is something else. It is more than broadcasting which does not offend; it is more than broadcasting which is technically efficient. It is broadcasting which is, in some sense worth receiving. This is perhaps a truism, but it is true all the same, and it merits consideration. What is on offer will be better worth receiving than what is offered now, but that it will be more various, and will thus constitute more choice (and because of this, and the forces of the market, it will ultimately be cheaper). But it hardly needs saying that, if it is to be a benefit, choice must be between things worth choosing. Commerciaily, the existence of different things to choose between, different brands, is generally supposed to elevate standards in those things that are chosen. The question is whether this maxim applies to broadcasting output. Asa Briggs wrote : “Whatever else competition in broadcasting is like, it is not like competition in commodities. Questions of content, presentation, appeal and quality sometimes arise there besides questions of price. But they always arise when we analyse or assess broadcasting output”. [Hoggart, Richard (Ed) 1982 : The Future of Broadcasting: Essays in aııthority, style and choice, Macmillan, pp 20-41]
Is it right for the people to be gloomy? Will the free market and the new light touch produce or fail to produce high-quality broadcasting? The answer lies in the question what it is that people want. One thing we can be certain of is that “good quality” cannot be precisely specified in advance; and this for the obvious reason that good broadcasting is creative and if it could be predicted, or ensured by the application of a set of fixed criteria then whatever the broadcasting was like. For the good must always be liable to surprise us. Fixed criteria lead to formulae, and the formula is death to broadcasting. Nothing good can be done by rule of thumb; nor can high-quality broadcasting be ensured by negative rules prohibiting such evils as bias, undue violence or bad language.