Google TV Implications For What Video Gets Produced
May 24th, 2010 by Seth Kenvin
Watching that long tail, while leaning back, from 10 feet away
It could be the end of the great TV vs PC truisms:
- Television is consumed from ten feet away versus two feet typically for computers
- We lean passively back in the glow of the boob-toob but lean attentively forward over our keyboards, mice & associated screens
- The long tail of computer content has progressed from software applications through CD-ROM and onto web fulfilling every niche, whereas the boundaries of the TV environment remain relatively tight, dominated by the largest media entities
These truisms have largely held through prior challenges — interactive TV, broadcasting over Internet, 500 cable & satellite channel line-ups, VOD. We still tend to get the more popular and mainstream content across the room from a couch. And even with video increasingly mixed in along with web pages, computers still tend to support more targeted efforts. Lately these tendencies are further challenged as in Netflix streaming blockbusters (small “b”) to the 2-foot environment, and TV ad buying becoming accessible to more small businesses. Google TV is a big bet that these lines continue to blur and that the TV hosts content as varried as what’s consumed on computers and phones. This forces consideration by the enterprises, institutions and other organizations that are making more long-tail video of how that video is consumed, with likely trending towards the richer visual panoramas, fuller sounds and more sophisticated production techniques to which we’re accustomed when catching a flick or a series finale.
