The milestones of televison have been inspiring, going back to 1831 when Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction. Television came of age in the 1950’s with popular shows like I Love Lucy, the 1954 World Soccer Championships. By the late 1960s and early 1970 colour television had become widely adopted and then the beloved remote control.

For generations the TV audience happily embraced scheduled programming. For the industry, making a  connection with the consumer was pretty straight forward, one-to-many experience… until recently.

Audiences today have some many media choices and are becoming increasling fragmented, splicing their time amongst the myriad of channels and platforms. Many consumers have migrated to more specialised, niche content via cable and multichannel offerings. Now with the growing availability of on demand, self programming and search features these niche users are moving to individualised viewing.

The are two market drivers that will drive evolution:
– Openness of access channels
– Levels of consumers involvement with media

There will be huge movement of these over the next five to seven years – but not uniformly. It will be marked with consumer bimodality, a coexistence of two types of users with disparate channel requirements. One segment remainly largely passive in the living room, whilst the other will force radical change in business models. The search for anytime anywhere content, leading us to a world of platform agnostic content, fluid mobility and the end of traditional concepts.

This is the beginning of “the end of TV as we know it”

Which category of user are you?