The murky cloud of IPTV

1. Glad you enjoyed it....

I think you are right in that the winners will be the ones who give users a unique experience relevant to this medium. As I was attempting to explain that night though, it is still very unclear as to what that should be, and thsu there is a huge amount of experimentation.

I've put up a tongue in cheek "IPTV bizniss model selecta" over on our blog Broadstuff <a href="http://broadstuff.com/archives/427-The-Broadstuff-Web-TV-Business-Plan-Selecta.html">

PS...if you guys aren't clear on what IPTV is, I'll be happy to run your workshop on September 18th ;)

3. I wasn't there so can't comment on the evening. Nor have I been following the IPTV scene of late, but I did use to work in TV.

Perhaps my view is simplistic but to me 'IP' is just a delivery mechanic. This is very important to the TV industry as a whole because it could radically shake up the current gatekeepers and controllers of the "airwaves" (free to air, satellite, cable etc.).

Not just the "airwave" controllers but the other gatekeepers to TV content which are, increasingly, the EPGs (Electronic Programming Guides) which Sky dominates.

In the long term I suspect that all content (TV and otherwise) will be IP-delivered (wired and wireless). And, if I had to bet, I reckon that Google will replace the broadcasters and the EPGs. They will become your interface to the world of information and content across all devices. And they'll be able to fund a lot of it via advertising. They're going to be doing it soon on mobile phones, they're already in print advertising, but TV is where the biggest ad dollars are, and they've been busy buying up the world's bandwidth in the name of supporting YouTube (a video site.. any coincidence there). But to me they're just busy securing the content delivery infrastructure of the future.

From a non-industry / TV-watcher's perspective no-one cares whether its "IPTV" or not. People will want to watch what they want to watch where they want to watch it on the device they want to watch it surely? And they'll tolerate different levels of quality and resolution and interactive for different situations. Some people will subscribe, some will pay per view, some will get it free as its ad-funded.

That's easy to say, of course, but will take a lot of figuring out and settling down to reach any kind of stability or maturity.

Either way, if I were a broadcaster I'd be very worried. There's no way you can rely on channel brands in the future. And there'll be little control you'll have of access to the audience. Ultimately it comes back to having great content. Which is why the BBC will be fine even if the licence fee were taken away. But ITV...? I couldn't understand why there were cutting all their in-house production capabilities, but I believe Michael Grade is reversing that.

Ashley