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2017-09-05 04:27:26
Tech firms are splashing out on new series
ON AUGUST 27th the season finale of HBO s Game of Thrones , one of the most
expensively produced series in television history, will air to an audience of
more than 10m Americans. When it ends, viewers can switch to one of the most
inexpensively produced shows in the industry, Talk the Thrones , in which
boffins sit around and discuss HBO s show. Hundreds of thousands are expected
to watch.
Besides the obvious gap in entertainment value (one has dragons, the other has
people talking about them), there is another distinction between the series.
Game of Thrones is available only for a subscription on pay TV. Talk the
Thrones is free on Twitter, produced by a digital site called The Ringer and
sponsored by Verizon, a telecommunications giant. Although the HBO series is
more popular, Talk the Thrones may be a better sign of how the TV industry
might evolve.
A new generation of TV shows is being made for smartphones, tablets and other
internet-connected screens. Netflix and Amazon have been at this for some time.
But other technology companies are now joining them, splashing out on new
series and testing different formats.
This month Facebook introduced a small number of its users to TV shows under a
new tab called Watch , which should soon become more widely available. The
social-media platform is streaming live sports such as Major League Baseball
and Mexican football. Twitter in May announced deals to stream more live sport
and other content, including a 24-hour feed from Bloomberg, a news company; a
morning show with BuzzFeed, a digital-news firm; and a daily entertainment show
called #WhatsHappening from Propagate, a production company in Los Angeles.
Snap has commissioned a number of short shows that target the young users of
its Snapchat messaging app.
Many of the new series are inexpensive: an episode might cost tens of thousands
of dollars to make, compared with up to $20m for an action-packed hour of Game
of Thrones . But more costly shows for apps are on the way.
Apple recently hired a pair of executives from Sony s television studio, with
reported plans to shell out up to $1bn on TV shows. Facebook has suggested to
possible partners in Hollywood that it will splurge on future series, spending
as much as $100,000 a minute. Google s YouTube, which has already invested
heavily in shows featuring social-media stars, is now planning to make more
mainstream fare. And Jeffrey Katzenberg, a former Disney executive and
co-founder of DreamWorks Animation, is seeking $2bn for a venture to produce
top-quality shows that are just minutes long. Imagine Netflix, but for shorter
attention spans.
The success of these attempts is uncertain. For all the time people spend
gawping at their phones (see chart), they do not often use them to watch video.
American adults consume 47 minutes of video each week on a smartphone,
according to Nielsen, a research firm; those aged 18-24 watch more, 83 minutes
per week. An early, expensive foray into TV made for phones, Verizon s go90
app, has struggled since its launch two years ago; the shows have not proved
compelling enough to attract a wide audience. But that has not dissuaded the
technology companies. Firms such as Facebook, Snap and Twitter are keen for
users to spend even more time on their platforms. New shows are potentially a
good way to attract them.
This surge of investment will force a fast-changing industry to adapt even more
quickly, says Ben Silverman, a former co-chairman of NBC Entertainment who now
runs Propagate. Old-fashioned TV looks more vulnerable by the day. The amount
of time Americans aged 18-24 spend watching pay TV has plunged by almost half
in this decade. Many viewers are shifting to Netflix, which is itself pouring
money into its business. This summer it lured Shonda Rhimes, a famous TV
producer, from ABC, a conventional network. But other tech firms smell ample
opportunity for their own apps. Competition in the TV business is already
intense. An even fiercer fight is coming to a phone near you.