For awhile, I’ve been pitching that IPTV needs to be as interactive as possible. After hearing Clay Shirky’s speech about cognitive surplus (through Chris Andersons’ The Long Tail blog), it becomes easy to understand why IPTV can only work well by being interactive.
Clay makes a point that television was there when, all of a sudden, society had too much free time in hand, due to the move towards a five day work week. And now, that we are accustomed to this change, it is time to start using this additional time constructively instead of being glued to the television:
“I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she’s going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn’t what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, “What you doing?” And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, “Looking for the mouse.”
Here’s something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here’s something four-year-olds know: Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change.”
I’d like to emphasize here: “Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for“.
Clay goes on to show what can be done if people start using their time for productivity purposes, instead of watching television. TV producers need to change their mindset because their audience is starting to go elsewhere.
Now, IPTV started simply as a means to pass television over IP. The question is why bother? Why do we need to replace our televisions just to have it run over IP? Well, we don’t unless we change the usage paradigm while we’re at it.
IPTV is starting to be deployed. It will only succeed if it becomes interactive.
