Commentary

Search Won't Solve TV's Content Discovery Problem

by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, June 11, 2009

Nope, search is not going to be the silver bullet for television the way it was for online services. As we all know, television has a big problem with content discovery. According to The Accenture Global Broadcast Consumer Survey 2009, television viewers "face a significant bottleneck in discovering content that they like but have not seen before." The report goes on to state that "the proliferation of content options across devices is overwhelming to consumers."

Anyone who watches television today knows this to be true. And, anyone who sells or buys television advertising knows that the resulting audience fragmentation is a really big and growing problem -- one that threatens the ad-supported foundation of the industry.

Today, it is virtually impossible for the majority of television viewers to be actually aware of the program choices available to them at any one time. The explosion of new channels, programs, platforms, devices, content choices and ways to view video at home has seen to that. In the old days, tools like TV Guide, TV listings in the newspaper, and "lead-in, lead-out" on-air program promos provided all of the information and navigation guidance that viewers needed. Then, their choices could be counted on the ten fingers of their hands. No more. Those tools, and even their online equivalents, have not been able to keep pace with the volume and diversity of television viewing choices available today. Certainly, we have electronic programming guides today but, according to Accenture, even those are only relied upon by a minority of viewers. I don't know about you, but I myself find programming guides clunky to use and the information in them to be quite flat.

How to fix this? Should we just wait for someone to invent a new version of search for television, and solve this like we solved the problem online? I don't think so. Here is why:

Video, not text. Search works great for text, but not very well for video. Television is all about video. Over time, more robust video searching will be devloped, but I don't imagine that changing drastically over the next couple of years.

Little robust interactivity. Search works online because the primary interface to computers is a keyboard. Not so with TV. While remotes are getting more robust and cable TV infrastructure is getting smarter and more interactive, most Americans are not going to be typing search queries on their remote controls any time soon. Yes, I do imagine that smartphones may become remote controls themselves, I don't imagine that happening in a majority of American homes for many years.

Entertainment-driven, lean-back usage. Using online services on computers is primarily a utility-driven, "lean-forward" activity. Watching video on a television is primarily an entertainment-driven, "lean-back" activity. Search is very powerful in a utility-driven environment. It is not nearly as powerful in an entertainment one.

I think that this problem is going to be solved incrementally, with solutions built on top of -- or among -- existing tools. Like Accenture, I think that enhancing on-air program promotion with data-driven recommendations and targeting will make a big difference (I am biased here, of course, since that is the path my new company is pursuing).

I also think that we will see social media play a very big role. Word-of-mouth is critical to television viewing choices and the proliferation of smartphones and mobile computing means more and more viewers will also be tethered to the Internet while they watch TV. Finally, I believe that online program listings will get better, and become more personal. These two will benefit from the dual usage of TV and online services.

However, I don't think that when we turn our TVs on, the first thing we will see is a search box. That future I don't believe in. How about you?

commentary, search, tv

10 comments about "Search Won't Solve TV's Content Discovery Problem".

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Srinivas Kumar from StickerNation.com, June 11, 2009 at 4:18 p.m.

The search prompt was not always king !!!
Once upon a time, there was only ONTOLOGY.
That is the answer you are seeking.
Remember the early days of Yahoo ? OK a search prompt, but what it took was a tiny legion of human surfers, readily available in the wake of the '92-3 recession. You surfed around a ******very deep****** and well organized set of "links to content" (e.g. stored television episodes).
Let's say I like blondes !!! I should be able to drill down in this ontology to only see episodes with blonde leading actresses for instance. Other languages become more available.
The key is available content. It has been a presumption that scarcity is the key to audience involvement with the boob tube, but TV companies will find that if they can create new models for delivering ad content that actually work and solve whatever deliverability issues that might be inherent in supporting this interactive infrastructure, they will be free make their vast back catalog of content available. People will still tune in to "live" and "pseudo-live" content, but they will be able to stream RSS-like feeds of "TV-content-on-a-given-ontological-topic".
The key, of course, also would be that such an approach would be highly targeted. This would let TV either partner with Google or compete by offering TV advertising to more specific advertisers.
I'd be stoked to be in this industry right now. TV is one of the few American industries that is creating value - involving content that acts as a "salesman". This model would work worldwide if TV studios would only look outside the USA and see how lousy the TV the rest of the world has to watch is. TV should globalize in order to capture value, taking a page from the Ted Turner of the 80's.
- Srini
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Tim Macdonald from Babson College, June 11, 2009 at 4:28 p.m.

I think a lot comes down to who is motivated to make these improvements. Cable companies (nearly regional monopolies) have little incentive to enhance the user interface once you're a subscriber. Getting new subscribers is all about volume of content, not how to sift through it. Content providers would love better ways to search for media, but they don't necessarily have the resources or means to influence the cable providers. The only thing that can really influence this is user demand - if the customer threatens to switch because of poor user interface/search, then the cable providers have the incentive to upgrade.

I would personally like to see incremental changes like tagging and recommendations based on my viewing patterns.

James Min from Telos Advisors, June 11, 2009 at 5:21 p.m.

Actually, i do think search will go a long way in solving the content discovery issue and like you mentioned, not in the current framework we have now (text). It'll come from a company like SearchMe (www.searchme.com) that's completely over-hauled the current search experience.

Check out their demo on YouTube to see how how cool it'll be when this becomes reality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-ql9WyfPwY&fmt=22

Richard Bullwinkle from Macrovision, June 11, 2009 at 11:49 p.m.

You’re right Dave. There are far more “channels” than ever and I would agree that the guides today just can’t handle it (that’s a big confession coming from a guy that works at Macrovision. Macrovision creates guides for TVs and cable companies). I think you leave out one major point however -- that metadata is a key ingredient in the equation. As metadata improves, search, guidance and content navigation will get better. This will make TV viewing more entertaining.

I wouldn’t throw out the guide just yet. The next generation of guides will have better metadata and know the viewers’ preferences and make recommendations. We’ve already announced a guide that does some of this stuff: http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/01/10/macrovision-pushes-neon-tv-guide/. One additional thing to note, the guide doesn’t turn your TV into your computer.

This will get us back to the lean-back, drink in one hand / remote in the other -- TV as it should be.

Dave Morgan from Simulmedia, June 12, 2009 at 7:23 a.m.

Mike ... thanks. I am very hopeful for better guides. Hope that you folks and the cable companies are able to get robust guides deployed. I do, however, wonder, if most viewers really want to go to a "start" page before they begin most of the program viewing sessions.

Dave Morgan from Simulmedia, June 12, 2009 at 7:26 a.m.

Also, it is important to point out the value of recommendation services like Tivo. However, as Accenture's research noted, the use of those recommendations today for finding content by viewers is minuscule. Fortunately, there is a lot of research and development going on in this area and we will certainly see more broadly deployed services in this area from Tivo and others.

Paul Marcum from GenMouse, Inc, June 12, 2009 at 3:22 p.m.

I've actually been surprised to find myself using search on Fios a lot lately - it was impossible to figure out who was running the French Open when and search was the easiest way to track it down. That said, and to your point, Dave, I was only using it for content that I knew existed and that I wanted to see.

As for a "start page", one of the things I like least about traveling is the hotel TV barker page that greets/delays you every time hit the power on button. One would hope that the MSOs wouldn't quite make such a bad one for homes but to lose the ability to immediately hop to a numerical channel would be to risk the entire couch-TV-potato holy trinity.

For content discovery, I think it will come from a combination of primarily social and secondarily algorithmic recommendations, much like how I find content on the PC now. I think we might actually get a glimpse of this once Fios launches their Facebook widget this fall.

Richard Bullwinkle from Macrovision, June 12, 2009 at 6:04 p.m.

Good question, Dave. I do think that viewers want to start at a home page of sorts. We have seen that people with an excess of channels (choices) often start at a guide of some kind, and many come back over 10 times a night.

I also agree that the recommendation services are not as great as they could be... in fact, most TiVo users program once, and then watch whatever their Season Passes bring in. (I was at TiVo for a long time, too.) When you're hooked on a series, it's easy. You just don't want to miss an episode. However, it's times like this, when some of my favorites have left forever (Scrubs, Boston Legal, Battlestar Galactica, etc.) that I find myself a bit adrift in figuring out what I'll watch next. It turns out that social media might be the best bet for me -- What are my friends watching? -- but the current recommendation engines don't help much with that. I'm sure next generations will. Have you played with Boxee? When they have the right content lined up (legally), they have technologies that could be compelling.

Paula Lynn from Who Else Unlimited, June 13, 2009 at 9:39 a.m.

It is not just search - as in looking for police shows, or better looking for a specific show - it is about format. Although many people eschew appointment TV, hundreds of millions still depend upon time appointments to decide what to watch and what to save for another time for their later appointed time, hence format. Without a steady format, a vortex of TV programming chaos ensues with audience regularity and dependency becomes a nightmare for programmers and advertisers as well as consumers. (And if anyone thinks the industry is on its head now...) Meanwhile, the combination of a print version of where is what when and the TV Guide on the TV especially for DVRing works the best for the masses. The spastic and the "it's all about me" folk need more. Of course, the 2 can be coordinated on a particular channel or website or electronic reader site or in teeny miniature for the mini set on cell phones. None the less, it is the format with easy to find what and when that will consume the beast.

Dave Morgan from Simulmedia, June 13, 2009 at 11:50 a.m.

Richard, very good points. I agree with you that it's when viewers need to find shows to replace their old favorites - when their attention is "for sale" - that tools like guides have the potential to be very powerful. I am also a big fan of Boxee.