Active TV slowly emerging
A shift is underway in television in Australia and it has nothing to do with digital versus analogue or the pay versus free shifts. Instead we are finally seeing the promise of TV as a medium of engagement. That promise sees a shift from the passive watching of TV (a ‘push’ approach) to the active engagement of TV (a ‘pull’ approach). The initial signs began a few years ago with the rise of voting lines for the ‘so you think you can take two big idol brothers’ TV shows. At that point TV producers began handing control of their shows over to the crowds that watched them, though not completely. The active-ness saw the viewer become physically involved albeit in a small way by getting out of their couches to grab their phones to express their choice of who to keep on the show they were watching. I’m waiting for a similar approach to a murder mystery, but I digress.
The next impetus for the push came less from the TV shows themselves and more from the makers of gaming sets – the Wii being the first dominant model with both Nintendo and X Box following suit. The shift toward using the TV screen in conjunction with a software program saw Wii Fit and similar offerings encourage people to get off the couch and exercise. The difference between this approach and that of the VHS/DVD fitness programs is that a small camera puts the end user ON the screen. The passive, became active and the active then started to engage. And customers across all industries WANT to engage.
Last week the ante was upped again with Junior Masterchef conducting an on screen, real time cooking class. Both my 5 year old and 8 year old ‘wanted to cook’ and I spent a frantic 15 minutes prior to the start of the show collecting ingredients from our supermarket (not the show sponsor). Thankfully the other significant adult in the household is a gun at cooking and took the reins whilst I watched or cleaned up on the run. The active viewer became the engaged viewer and this is the type of shift that TV programs need to make to stay relevant – first hand control of the program over to the audience and then get the audience actively engaged.
A few tips for the producers of Junior Masterchef – next year start the program earlier – it finished too late for most younger kids to either partake or meant a late additional (sweet) meal which was no good. And the online instructions were small and clumsy – that was a layout problem with the page and should have been picked up – make the instructions easy for kids to follow – that wasn’t the case. And for the rest of us the lessons are huge – regardless of your industry work out how to get your potential customers to engage with your products, rather than be passive users.
Futurist Marcus Barber will be joining ABC’s Vicki Kerrigan in Darwin for the first of an ongoing discussion about the future this Wednesday. Each week on Wednesday afternoon’s, Vicki and Marcus will discuss the future of something, how we prepare for the future, what the future looks like for some industries and other related futures…
Read More >The panel session at the National Manufacturing Week 2011 went well though with four of us on the panel, time was quite compressed. Some really good thoughts from Phillip Chindamo from AIG, Damon Cantwell from Deloitte and Erol Harvey from Minifab, delightfully chaired by Sandra George from SEBN at the City of Greater Dandenong. Rather…
Read More >On Thursday I’ll be part of the panel that wraps up the National Manufacturing Week 2011 in Melbourne at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre under the theme of Meeting the challenges of the next generation of manufacturing with a focus on Innovation and Sustainability. It should be an interesting chat as we consider what…
Read More >There’s lots to like about borrowing ideas from other areas especially where those ideas can lead to a significant positive shift. In the link below, Zaid Ali Alsagoff an educational blogging specialist highlights why the Finnish Education system stands as a potential model to embrace. And whilst there are examples of this type of thinking…
Read More >Environmental Scanning (ES) is the process of paying attention to the world in which you operate in order to identify and gain a sense of potential signals of change in how your world is developing. When discussing the idea of ‘change’ we need to be clear – a potential signal of change is likely to…
Read More >When it comes to water management, there’s something of potential value that Victoria could learn from Western Australia’s weather given discussions about new dams If you have almost 60 days straight of above 30 degree days with pretty much no rain, how do you fill the dam? Well you don’t but you’ve put all of…
Read More >The natural disasters we’ve seen recently around the world have shown us much about the communities in which they’ve occurred. The images emerging from Japan, New Zealand and Australia as they’ve faced earthquakes, tsumanis, floods and fires stands on stark contrast to the mainstream media stories that suggests people of the world are not willing…
Read More >Hi everyone – a quick note to let you know that our phones lines have been down for a while now and we are working on getting them fixed. Our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you. In the meantime, try using either our 1800 number where you can leave a message only…
Read More >ABC journalist Adam Stephen interviews Marcus Barber on the subject of GM foods and whether they might be more widely embraced as part of the global food requirements The interview (about 3& 1/2 mins) is available in MP3 format here and a link to the shorter web article is here. Some key points –…
Read More >South East Business Networks, the City of Greater Dandenong’s longest running business development program, is an exceptional avenue for learning about issues to do with Manufacturing. This week they provided one ‘out of the box’ with an excellent presentation by Professor Goran Roos, a worldclass expert on Manufacturing and currently South Australia’s Thinker in Residence.…
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