Commentary
Will Apple TV End Endless Search For Content?
- by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, October 5, 2015
I wish I could rediscover this news clip but I swear it’s true.
In the early days of television, the Waldorf-Astoria contemplated putting sets in rooms, but in anticipation, asked guests if they’d prefer calling downstairs to ask the front desk to switch the stations, or try to do it themselves. As I recall from reading a vintage story about it in Broadcasting magazine, the guests voted to have the hotel to do it for them.
That seems hard to believe, because operating a TV, even back then, was pretty easy. But if you didn’t know how and someone was offering, well, why not? Nobody wants to work hard to be entertained.
Online video viewing is, by comparison, a lot harder.
The user interfaces from various operators, are still awfully clunky and pretty uninformative. The hunt-and-peck search for content can be time consuming and, often, a wasted effort. Amazon’s voice-recognition service is pretty dandy--it does understand most queries--but it only selects movies or television shows that are in Amazon’s library, not in any of the other services, like Netflix or Hulu.
And that makes that Amazon service only half useful, if that.
That might be why the migration from cable to OTT devices is not a real stampede — yet.
It’s not easy. I don’t know if it’s more time-consuming if you access content via apps more frequently than you watch on a laptop or a connected TV, but in all those instances, that which should be fast, vast and liberating instead takes minutes of possibly fruitless searching.
And that’s why the new Apple Tv set-top box, out this month, will at least takes a giant step forward. According to BuzzFeed, Apple CEO Tim Cook says the new box will offer a universal search function. If you’re searching for something, Apple will tell you in one inquiry who’s got it, even if it's not them.
“I think that many, many people will want to be in that search,” he said. “And that’s great for users. Think about your experience today. Even if you’re fortunate enough to have the content you want to watch in an app, you sometimes don’t remember exactly where that show is, so you’re going to Netflix or Hulu or Showtime. You shouldn’t have to do that. It should be very simple.”
What’s more, since BuzzFeed asked, Cook said Apple will be able to distinguish between which service has Year 3 of series and which one has the other seasons, and be able to tell you that, again, in one inquiry. If that story is true, that’s great.
Apple TV will include Netflix, HBO Go, Hulu and Showtime on its service, but Cook told BuzzFeed that’s just for starters. That’s a pretty good start.
pj@mediapost.com
P.J. Bednarski has written for MediaPost since 2012 on media and marketing topics. He can be reached at pj@mediapost.com
I think this "search" is a dead end... Having done quite a bit of research into the problem, I find that it's an essentially restless human reality... What do people want to watch? They don't know. They'll know it when I see it... And that's why channel surfing has been so popular... And why no search feature can really solve that problem. For insight into this endless search we should read Sarte and Camus rather than BuzzFeed and Mashable.
Here's a bit I wrote 5 years ago when Google promised to provide the same thing. And we know how far that got them. https://dsgarnett.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/the-sound-fury-of-google-tv/
And all this worries me about Apple... They've gone from being able to identify and deliver radical change to making a big deal about incremental change to TV listings... They've Googlified Apple. A sad day.
That Sarte/Camus line is killer! And I don't know whether Apple is only grabbing low-hanging fruit, to mix up a cliche. The iPad wasn't radical; it was just a super-large smartphone that anticipated or created a market for an in-between screen. That was figuring out what people need/want, like this search function might be. I think Apple's great feat is branding and design but they often do nudge or push the market.
Thanks for enjoying the line... I write those things then kick myself for getting waaaaay too obscure. :-)
My only thought on the old Apple is that they took the iPad risk when no one else would do it. Of course, this may be the result of my market research/user interface design wu-wu background. But my sense is that it's technology might be an over-sized iPhone, but the value it delivers is far different (at least it is for me)...
I think this will be the type of incrementalism that makes consumers happy. Between 2008 and 2015 the number of conventional channels available to the average household grew +50% from 120 to 189. Yet despite the growth in selection the average monthly usage is still around 17 channels. We may surf, but we surf in waters we know. And indeed if one is an OTT multiple service subscriber one does need to check each individually to find exactly what is offered (Amazon Prime Instant Video being the worst bait and switch offender).
My guess is that those who are currently SVOD subscribers to multiple platforms will upgrade their Apple TV if it is one, or consider it as their next purchase.
Pricing will be clear factor.
When I did research in the 1990's we talked about the tremendous benefits of 200 channels. Consumer opinion was quite regularly: "I already have 70 channels - and I still can't find something to watch".
My interpretation of the reality is (a) the 17 comes from a limit of the human mind (how many apps do you actively use? My guess is usually between 10 and 15) and (b) that we have a restless search for something to satisfy what is, in fact, not satisfiable (call it the human condition or ennui or...).
For all these reasons, this fantasy of unlimited search with accurate, valuable results simply isn't ever going to be a powerful consumer tool.
That much quoted 17 channel figure that the "average person" watches is, in reality, a household, not a persons figure and it's based on a weekly time frame---a very arbitrary one at that. The average person watches five minutes or more of the content of only about 13-14 channels per week and Nielsen tallies, expanding the frame of reference to a month, show that this builds to over 20 channels per person over a four-week interval. Obviously, if we go into longer periods, still more channels are sampled, with some earning the status of "regular viewing" as a result while many fail this test. Meanwhile channels we once watched faithfully drop out of favor. So the whole process is, in reality, a combination of loyal viewing to some channels---with new favorites added from time to time while a few old ones lose out--- coupled with a good deal of sampling, more or less on a continuing basis.
Of course, except for certain thematic channels---all-weather, all-sports, all-news all-games---what really draws us is the appeal of individual shows, not the channel as an entity. For those who are interested in how various TV platforms develop their reach, our annual ,"TV Dimensions 2015", contains a whole section describing this process as well as how individual shows accumulate "new" viewers over time.
It's not the channels go out of favor; it's the programming.