Trendsurfing: Slivercasting (The Times)
By David Rowan
Still watching that luminous box in the corner of the living room? Don’t tell the schedulers, but the television set is no longer where the action is. With broadband penetration reaching critical mass, broadcasters find themselves competing with an endless number of low-cost online pretenders. As costs come down and image quality improves, niche TV channels and video-sharing services are fast turning into yet another significant entertainment medium – offering new commercial opportunities that are already causing marketers to salivate.
London’s tourist-promotion body has its own broadband channel – programme highlights include "Hoxton Bars" – as do fans of extreme sports, golf and amateur sailing. At the European Affairs Channel you can tune into interminable speeches from the president of Poland’s central bank; should that prove too racy, Real Estate TV will advise on buy-to-let opportunities in Turkey. Brought to "air" by specialist broadband firms such as NarrowStep, the new channels are being created with a fraction of the set-up costs required by satellite or terrestrial stations. Advertising and subscription- supported, the channels are viable with just a few thousand viewers. Their narrow reach led The New York Times to call the phenomenon "slivercasting", with channels targeting just a sliver of the mainstream audience.
The label may not roll off the tongue, but the trend seems unstoppable. Alongside quirky start-ups targeting ex-pat and hobbyist niches, broadband is also appealing to the broadcast networks. ITV Local has begun offering all the news viewers could want from the Thames Valley; and when NBC Universal closed down its Trio cable network last year, the highlights found a home at trioplus.tv. One of the latter’s cleverest programming ideas is called "Brilliant But Cancelled" – acclaimed network shows such as Johnny Staccato that were binned when they failed to attract enough millions of viewers first time round.
For old-style TV advertisers, this further atomisation of the mainstream audience only adds to the confusion over where to pitch their wares. The increasingly elusive viewer may be watching anything from a broadband darts channel to an amateur video podcast, with the added distractions of links doing the e-mail rounds to viral clips on video-hosting sites such as YouTube.
Rocketboom, a popular amateur video blog previously mentioned here, recently used eBay to auction five 15-second advertising slots in its three-minute daily web show. The novelty clearly offered PR benefits, but a cash-machine firm paid the distinctly un-amateur sum of $40,000 to clinch the deal. Conventional TV advertisers such as Volkswagen, meanwhile, are designing edgy online-only commercials specifically to be talked about and downloaded. Sky scored plenty of buzz recently by releasing a video clip parodying The Simpsons but using real actors. Within a few days, more than a million people had watched what was effectively an advert for the latest series.
This column can see where the wind is blowing. So we are now inviting applications to advertise on Trendsurfing’s inevitable broadband channel. We’re looking to work with the likes of Porsche and Armani, but if they fail to grasp the opportunity, we may consider renting space to my mother to berate me for never calling...
(The Times Magazine, April 1 2006)
Still watching that luminous box in the corner of the living room? Don’t tell the schedulers, but the television set is no longer where the action is. With broadband penetration reaching critical mass, broadcasters find themselves competing with an endless number of low-cost online pretenders. As costs come down and image quality improves, niche TV channels and video-sharing services are fast turning into yet another significant entertainment medium – offering new commercial opportunities that are already causing marketers to salivate.
London’s tourist-promotion body has its own broadband channel – programme highlights include "Hoxton Bars" – as do fans of extreme sports, golf and amateur sailing. At the European Affairs Channel you can tune into interminable speeches from the president of Poland’s central bank; should that prove too racy, Real Estate TV will advise on buy-to-let opportunities in Turkey. Brought to "air" by specialist broadband firms such as NarrowStep, the new channels are being created with a fraction of the set-up costs required by satellite or terrestrial stations. Advertising and subscription- supported, the channels are viable with just a few thousand viewers. Their narrow reach led The New York Times to call the phenomenon "slivercasting", with channels targeting just a sliver of the mainstream audience.
The label may not roll off the tongue, but the trend seems unstoppable. Alongside quirky start-ups targeting ex-pat and hobbyist niches, broadband is also appealing to the broadcast networks. ITV Local has begun offering all the news viewers could want from the Thames Valley; and when NBC Universal closed down its Trio cable network last year, the highlights found a home at trioplus.tv. One of the latter’s cleverest programming ideas is called "Brilliant But Cancelled" – acclaimed network shows such as Johnny Staccato that were binned when they failed to attract enough millions of viewers first time round.
For old-style TV advertisers, this further atomisation of the mainstream audience only adds to the confusion over where to pitch their wares. The increasingly elusive viewer may be watching anything from a broadband darts channel to an amateur video podcast, with the added distractions of links doing the e-mail rounds to viral clips on video-hosting sites such as YouTube.
Rocketboom, a popular amateur video blog previously mentioned here, recently used eBay to auction five 15-second advertising slots in its three-minute daily web show. The novelty clearly offered PR benefits, but a cash-machine firm paid the distinctly un-amateur sum of $40,000 to clinch the deal. Conventional TV advertisers such as Volkswagen, meanwhile, are designing edgy online-only commercials specifically to be talked about and downloaded. Sky scored plenty of buzz recently by releasing a video clip parodying The Simpsons but using real actors. Within a few days, more than a million people had watched what was effectively an advert for the latest series.
This column can see where the wind is blowing. So we are now inviting applications to advertise on Trendsurfing’s inevitable broadband channel. We’re looking to work with the likes of Porsche and Armani, but if they fail to grasp the opportunity, we may consider renting space to my mother to berate me for never calling...
(The Times Magazine, April 1 2006)
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