2014 is being hailed
as the Year of Social TV, but will our programming really change? Carl Richter,
Co-Founder of Spacecraft TV, thinks it will in 3 key ways.
For a long time now, Facebook apps and Twitter feeds have been
bolted onto TV shows, pretty much as afterthoughts, demonstrating that
broadcasters have an awareness of social media, but without dramatically
shaping or influencing the core content itself. Sure, sometimes these add-ons
have unlocked extra webisodes or spin-off games, but in very few cases have
they enabled viewers to participate in and help build the actual show. On three
ever-more-impactful levels, this is where the grid is going to change.
While there have been great "fully interactive" TV
pitches in the past, if these ideas have made it off paper and onto the screen
then they've all been all watered down. Now, the full convergence of TV and
social media is happening and resistance is almost gone. Rather than social
media content being seen as "add-on", it's now being viewed as
central, which means the most forward-thinking and innovative TV shows are
being created the other way around.
What's really changed is that broadcasters have had to
overcome their fear of the "live". When the first wave of "participation"
TV shows was being pitched, they were telephony- and web-based, which severely
limited their interactive impact since both mechanisms depended on the insertion
of "live" content into traditional (mostly pre-taped) TV packages.
So, at the lower end of the schedule, a viewer could SMS a number advertised on
a pre-taped gameshow, for example, and win a daily prize, with their name
appearing on a superimposed graphic at the end. And even at the higher unscripted
end, in the "live" primetime versions of these formats, there was
still massive reserve on the broadcaster's part in enabling too much
interaction, too many variables, too much "live".
Now, because social media networks are always "live",
always on-air, things have inevitably had to give at the broadcast end of the
convergence. Of course, no major channel is seriously going to consider rolling,
unplanned, "anything goes" TV, but the structure of primetime TV
formats is changing, and will continue to do so, due to input from the social
media side of the equation.
The first thing we're already seeing happening (and will see
a whole lot more of) is Sourcing replacing traditional Casting methods. Instead
of social media like Twitter being used to post calls for contestants on a
reality gameshow, say, which isn't much different to placing a classified ad,
we're going to see more and more unscripted shows Sourcing their participants
from targeted social media clouds. Take Spacecraft's own format Out To Lunch, for example, which has
been billed as social TV's "Come Dine With Me".
Every day, two
restaurants must provide set menus for 50 diners on a fixed budget. The
locations are secret, until posted on Twitter, when locals have the chance to
win a free lunch and participate as competition judges. The show is recorded
and edited in the afternoon, then sent out live from the featured locations in
the evening, so Sourced participants can watch themselves on TV during access
or primetime that same night.
Which leads into the second big step-change: Sharing. In its
first-wave incarnation this used to be similar to posting recommendations on a
forum, but if Sourcing is going to replace Casting, then Sharing is going to
change Consumption. We're becoming accustomed to Tweet tickers and hashtags in
the corner of the screen, but this is just the start. Sharing is going to
explode through the cyber ceiling of your Follower count and directly influence
what huge audiences see on their TVs.
Windfall is an example of a live, primetime entertainment format, which not only Sources
contestants but creates a second wave of in-show participants through massive
Sharing. To build pre-show momentum, a transparent box filled with cash has
been suspended in a public building for 7 days. As time counts down, viewers
share content for an opportunity to be in the audience when a trapdoor in the
box is opened and cash rains down. But there's a twist to the format mechanic
that comes into effect on-air, allowing the entire social cloud to participate
right up to the money-shot at the end. Sharing achieves a true integration of
first and second screens.
The third, and perhaps most impactful change, though, is
that a whole swathe of Socialites are going to be the new Celebrities (see how
I've been using those social "S"s to replace closed-off
"C"s?). We´ll always have and need well-known faces as anchors, but
recent phenomena ("Red Tie Guy", Charles Ramsey's "Dead
Giveaway" meme, "Zero-Distancing") have illustrated huge
audience desire to discover "ordinary" - meaning extraordinary - stars.
Not stars for a lifetime, perhaps, but that isn't what social TV is about. It's
about the moment, and the moment is always changing, and all the TV channels
out there that don't carry rolling news are having to catch up.
To wrap, social media is the new way into TV through
Sourcing, will shape what we see on TV through Sharing, and will be sustained
by a rolling wave of Socialites-turned-Celebrities which everyone can surf. And
some people think Social TV is just about advertising, Twitter ratings and
heightened brand exposure: without great content none of these things mean
much.
