Beyond the long tail…

Fru Hazlitt discusses the anticipated and real impact of the digital age on TV production, transmission and revenue streams

EvEry so often a book comes along that so eloquently captures the media zeitgeist no self-respecting exec’s office is complete without a well-thumbed copy. Way back when, it might have been Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message, and more recently perhaps Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.

A few years ago, at the start of media’s digital journey, the seminal ‘must-read’ text was Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail. The argument was simple and seductive: digital would drive media distribution costs close to zero and there would be no cost barrier to making content available online. Therefore, any piece of content would have to compete against not only everything else being broadcast or published today but every bit of content ever.

At the same time, digital technology would allow publishers to leverage the economic power of committed niche audiences as never before. As a result, value would shift from the big blockbuster to the ‘long tail’, from ‘out now’ to archive. The knock-on consequences across all aspects of media – and indeed our lives – would be profound.

So far, so good. But some took Anderson’s argument even further. The trends identified in The Long Tail would mean the end of established media altogether. Mass would become passé, niche would be the new black.

Keeping it all in perspective

Taken to this extreme, I have to give The Long Tail short shrift. Mass media isn’t going anywhere. Indeed, people’s hunger for the big, live, shared communal experience is as voracious as ever. And one of the most establishment of established media – television – is able to satisfy that hunger unlike any other. In the past year alone, we’ve seen 18 million viewers gripped by The X Factor final and 15 million together celebrating Coronation Street’s 50th birthday.

What’s more these kinds of mass TV programmes have dominated all media – including digital. As well as wall-to-wall coverage on radio and press, The X Factor was the number-one subject for the Twitterati, Facebookers and most of the other denizens of the blogosphere. And it wasn’t just light entertainment: last year, we were promised the first general election to be fought online. Instead, the first leaders’ debate on TV drew ten million viewers and changed the course of the campaign.

Whether it is entertainment, religion, sport or news, the big, live event is something we all continue to want to be a part of and mass aggregators such as television help us fulfil that emotional need. The death of the mass aggregator and the audience it brings – which has been much discussed and widely predicted – has never been fulfilled, and never will be. This is because the human need to belong is and always will be one of the most powerful drivers of behaviour.

As the poet John Donne famously put it: ‘No man is an island, entire of itself.’ A consequence of that, in Deloittes’ slightly more prosaic language, is that television retains a ‘super-media’ status that isn’t going to change anytime soon. However, every part of the established TV value chain is being transformed – from transmission and production to the way viewers consume programming. What was once a simple business – one channel, one means of transmission, one revenue stream – is now more complicated. The TV advertising market may have bounced back in 2010, but that doesn’t mean that ITV can sidestep the digital revolution. We need to embrace it and make sure that our content is available wherever, whenever and however viewers want to consume it – from games consoles and internet-enabled TVs to smartphones and tablets.

The way we monetise that content is also changing. We need to maximise our share of the television advertising cake and continue to sell that ‘super medium’. The opportunities are significant. We’re building our content business in the UK and internationally; delivering greater scale in online advertising – video and display; leveraging transactional revenues from voting, competition entries and teleshopping; and looking to deliver content micro-payments and pay subscription revenues for the first time.

But such complexity does not mean fragmentation. Overall, UK TV viewing increased in 2010. ITV1 also increased its audience, with the big blockbuster shows in particular growing year on year. With the incremental reach delivered by growing digital channel and online viewing on top of this, the audience delivered across ITV is greater still. And it is a more engaged audience, seeking out ITV content on multiple devices, in the living room, on the laptop and on the move, and interacting directly with us, via phone voting, competition entries, or chatting online.

Forget the ‘long tail’. The engaged, mass digital audience delivered by TV could be marketing’s ‘holy grail’.

Fru Hazlitt is managing director of commercial, online and interactive at ITV.

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