The Future of Broadcast: Allcast

The digital world is evolving rapidly. Besides others, the media and entertainment industry has felt the impact of digital evolution very strongly.

Around the world, broadcasters are seeing viewership shift to digital mediums and are increasingly offering content there. With time, digital media consumption will outgrow TV, and it will no longer make sense for broadcasters to… broadcast. By then, most of them will have thriving digital businesses. All the cable players too may have already completely morphed into ISPs or telcos or even vertically integrated into content creation and OTT businesses, as is already happening.

Broadcasters have for long identified themselves as content creators and story tellers rather than just broadcasters. Today, more than ever, that holds good because cable and satellite broadcast is far from being the only mass distribution channel. Whether they intend it or not, their content will find its way into the digital universe, hence the swift steps taken to start monitoring, controlling, and monetizing their content on digital platforms. But the way forward will be to give up all control. Shift from Broadcast to what I like to call, Allcast.

In the Allcast future four entities will exist – content creators, portals/apps, the system, screens. Content creators will simply create content and upload it to the system. A content creator could be anybody, it could a small indie creator or a big media house – the system is open to everybody, much like YouTube today. But unlike YouTube, top quality premium content can be legally accessed by any one through any client app not just the YouTube app. Like flight booking portals have access to the inventory of all the airlines, there will be content portals which, unlike the content aggregators of today, will not have to buy content at exorbitant costs from different studios, they just need to tap into the system.

The big shift will happen in choice. Content creators will no longer choose what content goes into which pipe. They will not decide whether their content should go on YouTube or cable TV or movie theaters or wherever. In a connected world, that choice will shift to the consumer. Some content will get pulled into mobile screens, some into laptop screens, some into theater screens, and some to TV screens. The consumer will ‘ask’ the screen for certain content and that screen will ‘pull’ that content out from the system. Content creators (unless they wish to target only specific screens) will need to create different versions of the same content – for TV, for theater, for mobile, for tablet, for laptop, for wristwatches, and whatever other screens might develop in the future. Depending on the screen making the request and the available bandwidth, the appropriate file version will be pulled from the system.

As more and more traditional devices like TVs get connected, and connectivity itself improves, these portals will be able to deliver content to any screen using the Internet as the underlying delivery network. ISPs and telcos will be the cable guys and might want the same kind of deals from content creators (the Netflix-Comcast deal is the first of many to come).

Initially there will be multiple systems and then over a series of mergers and acquisitions five to six major global players will remain who may further consolidate into single systems in some parts of the world. Systems will charge portals an access fee. Some carrier flights cannot be booked on some OTPs and so will also be the case with the content portals, there will be different system-access fees charged to the portals for different levels of content access.

Or, there might emerge a dominant Google-like ad-exchange entity making all entertainment content accessible to consumers. Essentially, all content sitting with individual studios will be thrown open to the WWW to discover.

Traditional screens will not get obsolete, TVs and theaters will continue to exist each fulfilling a unique consumer need. To the system, every device is just a screen, and screens are content-agnostic. Consumer preferences will determine what plays on which screen. The content creator will not decide what content gets to play on which screen. That power will rest completely in the hands of the consumer. As an example, an interesting disruption out of this system will be movie theater operations: today we buy a ticket and watch a movie. Sometimes, if there are too few tickets sold (assume less than 7) the show gets cancelled. In the future, we will buy requests, not tickets, at the theater. The theater will need at least (let’s assume 7) confirmed requests, in order to ‘pull’ that content to the big screen from the system at the time stipulated. Theater show timings themselves will get auctioned, if more people pay for another available time slot then the show time will shift and lock after reaching a certain criteria (let’s say bidding stops one day before the show). The losers in the bid can either choose to watch the content at the revised show time or get an immediate refund. Similarly, the show time can remain fixed but bidding can be opened up for content. The content that gets more requests is the one that will get shown at that time. (Considering the current trend, you might find 7 cat lovers watching a 2 hour HD cat-videos compilation in the theater, since it is the consumer’s decision, unless the theater proprietor wishes to put his own restrictions. On personal mobiles and TV screens with no 3rd party proprietor, the content viewed will be completely the consumer’s choice)

Initially advertisers will be charged rates based on traditional understandings. But with time the system will reveal what content is consumed more on which screens. Live events and sports might get pulled more on bigger screens. Short videos, comedy, live news might get pulled more on smaller screens. The same live event might charge higher on a TV screen and lesser on the mobile screen. Advertising rates will vary from one content to another and for the same content from screen to screen.

This monetization model will get complex and interesting: depending on the advertising objective, content with high reach but viewed only on mobile screens may not earn as much money as content getting the same reach across multiple screens, where awareness might be the objective. Where interactivity might be the objective, content more popular on handheld screens might have more earning potential. Still, I oversimplify; there will be numerous factors, permutations and combinations to determine how advertisers can allocate their budgets. All the content on all screens will be available for advertising through system-driven auctions and programmatic buying. Reservation buys/sponsorships will continue to happen for the same reasons they happen today but different sponsorships will be sold for different screens. It will also be interesting to see how the monies get paid out in the value chain when the portals decide to offer premium services for a subscription fee.

Show launches and premieres will follow the Netflix model rather than the TV model – all the content just becomes available. Marketing initiatives for big launches will strive to drive consumers to the most valuable screen for that content. The advertiser will be charged for all the eyeballs across all the screens as one consolidated reach to consumers, paying different rates for the ad appearing on different screens.

Content gets created and finds its own audience: sometimes niche, sometimes mass. With time content creators can predict what content will work better in which markets and with which audiences. But with all consumption shifting to digital, an Allcast model will evolve where the system will predict the audience and the screen for the content and allow advertisers to bid. Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, iTunes, Pandora, Spotify etc. are all early versions of these systems. Content creators still hold back content and make it available only on specific digital and traditional platforms based on their business deals. In the future Allcast paradigm they will not make that choice. The content is simply made available for consumption and the king shall be crowned through democratic consumption. There will be portals serving mass and niche tastes, just like television and YouTube channels today. Across genres those creators that consistently churn out great content shall emerge winners. Some rules don’t change.

[EDIT added] I had a chat with Mr. Bharat Ranga, industry veteran and founder of RanCorp Media Private Limited, about my thoughts in this article. He pointed out another important disruption that I had missed out here, that of measurement. Sure enough, in the Allcast world measurement will no longer be based on samples. Since TV will become just another screen connected to the digital network, measurement will become accurate down to the last individual - and CPMs, CPCs, CPEs, CPVs, CPCVs etc. will replace GRPs as the currency for TV advertising as well!