Survey Reveals Responding to Changing Viewing Habits is No. Challenge Facing Broadcasters

Survey Reveals Responding to Changing Viewing Habits is No.1 Challenge Facing Broadcasters 10 June 2014

By Andrew Ioannou, Partner, Marquis Media Partners

A recent survey conducted at the end of 2013, by consulting group, Marquis Media Partners, questioned 30 European CTOs, directors, VP's and other senior executives employed in the broadcast industry to find out the most pressing issues facing the sector today. Changes in consumer viewing habits' was shown to be their greatest business challenge, while content management and distribution across multiple platforms' led in terms of the greatest operational and technology challenges faced by the industry today.

This information and survey reveals some important data about the industry as a whole, broadcasters 'focus and their concerns. It showed that responding to viewers' changing demands for content: whether that is the variety of material or distribution platform preferences, is broadcasters' main worry over other issues such as cost or resource management for example.

In fact, 55% of the respondents said changes in consumer viewing habits and preferences' was the greatest business challenge facing their organisation compared with 32% who stated it was the increasing cost of servicing and maintaining the expanding variety of consumer platforms. As one respondent put it: changes in consumer viewing habits are, for the most part, out of our control.

Clearly the issues of viewing habits and maintaining platforms are closely linked, which illustrates that coping with the changing nature of the industry and not knowing what the future holds, is currently at the top of the agenda.

One respondent elaborated: [changing] viewer habits and moving to new devices and platforms could erode revenues through traditional advertising. Additionally there is becoming more and more of an expectation that consumption should be free while the means to evade advertising continues apace. Combined with the fast pace of new devices and platforms, maintaining commercially beneficial means to deliver on any and all devices all add up to a significant business challenge.

In fact, several respondents noted the link between content delivery and cost:

Content is expected by the viewers to be delivered on all available platforms but [this creates] little additional revenue hence pressure on minimising operational costs.

[Content distribution to multi-platforms is a matter of] cost of distribution versus resources

However, cost control seems to be linked with the challenges of delivery rather than merely streamlining the whole operation. For example: only 3% ranked in sourcing versus outsourcing as their number one issue again confirming that broadcasters are still most interested in satisfying their customers' needs and streamlining costs and attempting to gain efficiencies is only part of the story.

The survey also covered business challenges as well as operational management issues. From an operational perspective, 25% of respondents cited content distribution to multiplatforms' as the most significant challenge facing their organisation, compared with 18% who selected managing change in the broadcast IT world'. Senior executives were also asked about technology issues and again content management across multiple platforms' was the number one challenge,with 55% ranking this as their top IT headache, followed by end to end integration and standards from commissioning through production to consumer delivery' (15%), servicing regionalisation requirements long-form and advertising' (7%) and content security (7%).

Respondents comments included: [Changes in consumer viewing habits and preferences] is about predicting the future and putting resource into the right place-there are so many options open that it would be reckless to pursue every avenue yet if we don't, we risk missing the next big thing.

Delivering across multi platforms is difficult, application development is resource heavy and skills are often hard to find in our area.

[Our] entire financial model is based on old business.

The data from our survey, perhaps not surprisingly, clearly demonstrates that broadcasters' main concerns are with delivering the right product in the right format to viewers and this customer focused way of thinking is driving their business and operational management.Meeting demand is a key element of running a successful (and profitable) broadcast operation and it is the uncertainty about the future that seems to create challenges about where resources can and should be channelled to be most effective.

Respondents stated: As production and delivery options multiply,requiring budgets to meet the need created balloon out of range. We need cost effective solutions.

Incompatible formats at the various stages of end-to-end production are hampering workflow and require expensive transcoding reformatting negating some of the efficiencies.

For manufacturers,providing the right products and solutions will help but only if improving the efficiency of content workflow for multiple platforms and channel management projects is undertaken at the same time.This combination of factors,we believe will be key to addressing the issues highlighted over the long term.

One respondent sums up: our viewers are moving to other platforms, we need to change.

Marquis Media Partners works in partnership with its broadcast clients to ensure that streamlined workflows are combined with the correct mix of content delivered over the right platforms, in order to respond to the changing needs of viewing habits. For further information about please go to http://marquisbroadcast.com

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