From high definition screens through digital broadcasting and on to TV over the internet all the talk about the future of TV is focusing on the technology. But how are all these technological changes going to impact on the quality of programming available for us to actually watch?

New technology is, without doubt, changing the way we watch TV today and how we are going to watch TV in the future. The advent of the VCR created the concept of time-shift TV, enabling viewers to choose when to watch the latest episode of their favourite soap, instead of being tied to their TV at the time the channel scheduler chose to transmit a programme.

Today, digital-based recorders – personal video recorders, or PVRs for short – make the recording of TV transmissions easier, even for those people who had trouble enough setting their video’s clock. And with the rise of broadband and the arrival of BitTorrent-like file sharing software, would-be viewers don’t even need to have access to actual broadcast signals in order to watch what they want to watch. Once a programme has been transmitted in one territory, viewers in other territories can access it before their local broadcaster gets around to scheduling its transmission, simply by downloading a copy of the programme off the internet. Thus European fans of shows like 24 and Lost have been able to watch the latest episodes of these shows weeks – and sometimes months – ahead of their local airing.

But how is all this change going to impact on what we watch? Here, the history of the VCR offers us a useful analogy. The VCR didn’t just change how we watch TV, it impacted on what we watched. Not only did it allow us to schedule when we wanted to watch what the TV commissioning editors offered us, but it allowed us to become our own TV commissioning editors, simply by popping down to the local video store and seeing what they had to offer. The VCR created a whole new distribution channel for programme and film makers, and it doing so altered the economics of actually making such content.

Choice though does not always mean more quality. One look at the rising blogosphere confirms that. For every high quality blog – The Huffington Post, Gawker etc – there are uncountable numbers of sites of questionable (if any) quality. As the VCR revolution allowed the creation of more and more unwatchable content, so too is the internet flooding the marketplace with content which few if any can find something good to say about (as a visit to YouTube or Google Video will attest). Yet the quality content does still keep appearing. And – because technological changes allow for a greater democratisation of the market place – new voices are increasingly being heard. The VCR revolution allowed new – often younger and more exciting – filmmakers a voice through the rise of the likes of MiraMax. The technological changes taking place today will equally afford opportunities for new voices to be heard, new programme makers an opportunity to find their audience.

The other – often over-looked – result of the VCR revolution was that it forced existing programme makers to respond by raising their own game, often resulting in quality content which in earlier days would not have seen the light of day. The audience fragmentation heralded by the VCR allowed them to take more risks. Here, again, a look at what is happening on the internet with the blogosphere shows that the same is happening today in that medium, with newspaper sites responding to the challenge and introducing quality blogs such as the Comment Is Free site recently created by The Guardian. In any revolution, those who already hold the power are reluctant to surrender without a fight. And the commissioning editors of today are already responding to the new challenges facing them and raising their game accordingly.

The mechanics of TV commissioning have been in a constant state of flux since TV first arrived in our living rooms. In general though, they have followed a similar pattern, with commissioning editors relying on feeder channels where they can ‘test’ programmes and programme makers. Thus, for instance, radio has acted as an important feeder channel for the BBC, particularly in the area of comedy. Programmes like Chris Morris’ The Day Today and Chris Langham’s People Like Us started life on radio, before moving over to TV. Today, the BBC is using its digital channels – BBC3 and BBC4 – to feed into the main channels. In some cases, these new channels act as an extra buffer before a programme makes it to primetime (both The Mighty Boosh and Little Britain first appeared on BBC radio, before transferring to BBC 3 and then to BBC 2), allowing commissioning editors to take more risks when choosing what gets the green light and what doesn’t.

There will always be an audience – a demand – for quality programming and the basic laws of economics mean that that demand will always be met on the supply side. No matter how big the demand for lowest common denominator content, quality always has and always will out. In the new TV future, much of that quality may be relegated to more niche channels – the new digital channels or the internet – but the demand for it will always be met.

This fragmentation of the audience though will – ultimately – impact on the budgets available for quality programming. Audience fragmentation has meant that the broadcasters are no longer able to force-feed the masses with big budget productions that have only ever really appealed to a minority of the viewing audience. More than ever, programme makers – particularly those with aspirations of producing quality content – will have to consider the potential audience when calculating how much they can spend to make a programme and cut their cloth accordingly.

This is not always going to result in a reduction in available budgets – niche audiences are attractive to advertisers, allowing them to target their campaign budgets more effectively. Here all programme makers are going to have to learn from the likes of Big Brother and consider potential programme sponsors when preparing their pitches. Nor does a niche audience always mean a smaller audience – it may be one that is just more geographically diverse. Traditional broadcasters are tied to their territories, but the internet has no borders. Thus programmes that appeal to diaspora audiences will actually have more chance of being seen via internet broadcast than via the traditional channels.

New audience aggregators will rise to meet this challenge of bringing content to a geographically diverse audience and the traditional broadcasters – particularly those whose funding means they should not be competing in the commercial marketplace – will not be the only potential distributors programme makers can turn to. Changes wrought by the technological revolution we are currently going through will see considerable shifts in power in the media landscape. They will alter who supplies what we watch and how we watch it. But what we watch … that will be down to the consumer to choose. And the consumer will always choose quality. No amount of fast-food restaurants have driven the Michelin-starred establishments out of business. No matter how large the demand for fast-food, there will always also be a demand for quality cuisine. And no matter how much dross this technological revolution causes to be unleashed on the marketplace, viewers will still want to watch quality programming.

© Michael McMahon 2006
Michael McMahon is Chief Executive Officer of Molotov Digital, a Dublin-based IPTV company.