TV is dead

This title is not just a click-bait, it is something that has been around my mind for some time. But I can be a little bit more precise and state that linear TV is dead because it only adds value to some live events.

Since technologies like TiVo and on-demand TV appear, younger audiences have been shifting to this mode of video consumption. And this means that the main income of broadcasters, the advertisements, is decreasing. But media consumption is not decreasing is just moving to mobile. According to Zenith media this year 24% of all media traffic tracked will be on mobile.

With the proliferation of mobile devices, connectivity, and alternative digital media platforms: the audience is having the power to chose and gaining control over what they watch. They have increased their freedom when it comes to selecting media and entertainment options and their expectations are at an all-time high. So linear TV has to compete with multiple new contenders for the attention of the user.

In the previous graphic, we can also see that young adults are viewing significant less the TV content. And they are moving to VoD or watching their social media on mobile. You can read a bit more about VoD and streaming challenges in this interview to Pablo Hesse, Teltoo’s CEO.

Not only the rise in streaming video is growing rapidly so does the percentage of visualization on mobile devices. It is growing because “new generations” are getting the advantage of the availability of more unlimited data plans and the increased number of OTT platforms.

One of the last factors to take into account is news and breaking events. If we take a closer look where people are informed by its age. We can see that new generations are watching less and less of this type of content.

Reuters Institute Digital News report 2017

One easy conclusion we can get is that if broadcasters don’t adapt to this new paradigm they are going to disappear as their audience grow older and in less than 10 years traditional media won’t be able to be sustainable.

DISCLAIMER This is only my personal opinion based on my experience and last years working with broadcasters with my company and our product vimojo.co