Open letter to TV broadcasters: listen, your audience is talking

Matteo Berlucchi on a new dynamic in which news is being consumed

05 March 2009

A new dynamic has entered the way news is being produced and consumed, and the implications could lead to a far richer reflection of society with real time checks and balances, varied perspectives, and a dramatic shift in how media organisations relate to their audiences.

We saw it during the final Obama/McCain debate when live instant chat involving people watching the live streaming of the event in the Livestation player took on a life of its own.

As the post-debate studio discussion got underway, people in the chat room, from all corners of the world, gave their responses. Not only that, but they posted web links either backing what the candidates had said or revealing contradictions from earlier speeches.

Then, during the height of the Gaza conflict, hundreds of people discussed the breaking news in real time in the Livestation Live Chat rooms, as they watched the news reports on their computer screens. Not surprisingly, there was a fair amount of anger vented, but through it all emerged a selection of perspectives not always revealed on the traditional TV screen.

And more and more Livestation’s partner broadcasters began to realise that here was a new audience consuming news in a new way and demanding a say in how that news was analysed and presented.

One partner in particular, Al Jazeera English, grabbed this opportunity by the horns and used the Live Chat to enlist the audience in the programme production, placing producers in the chat room to stimulate debate, sift through the comments and use the most interesting in the live output. The Riz Khan show was particularly active in this area and has now built that inter-activity into its regular programme output.

And then there is Live Panel, where the producers of the programme can take an instant poll on the key issue of the day and set its global online audience a multiple-choice answer. One minute later a graph appears showing what that audience voted, with the percentage response on each option.

What we are seeing here is a new source of input for live programming. It is refreshing, valid, instant and it is where a large part of the audience is heading. They expect to have a say, they want to be part of the news process and the smart broadcasters will welcome them and engage with them in new ways.

We believe that Livestation, and the interactive tools it includes, offers broadcasters the way of doing this. For the first time it transports the viewer into the action. It offers that audience a ‘be there now’ experience. Not only that, it is offering the newsgathering teams of the major broadcasters a fresh and vibrant source of fresh perspectives. They can choose to ignore this if they wish, but they may be losing out on an important and influential audience.

The old ‘broadcast at model’, although important for informing the public debate with high-quality news and programming, is no longer relevant in a society that wants to answer back. Gone are the days when it would be acceptable for a broadcaster and publisher to deliver what it thinks is important without taking into account what the audience wants.

The ‘engage with on our terms’ model really came alive with the growth of the web, although it was always present in the newspapers’ letters-to-the-editor columns, radio phone-ins, audience vox pops, and studio discussions; however these were always conducted and presented on the broadcasters’ and publishers’ terms. They would allow the audience to talk about the topics they wanted them to talk about and would only publish the comments they thought were the best or most relevant to the news picture they were attempting to construct.

Now the ‘engage with on our terms’ model is in its death throes, too. The new social networking generation doesn’t want to be told what to think. They want to consume their news in different ways. They don’t necessarily want to follow the news agenda fed to them by the mainstream media. They want to make their own news, select bits and pieces from what is gathered on their behalf by traditional media and take it away, work on it by adding their own perspectives, make it relevant to their situations, discuss it with their own community of friends and, possibly, offer that back to the mainstream media to absorb and reflect, if appropriate. And in that model, the broadcasters’ role is simply to stimulate the public debate. They can no longer control it.

So we have now moved to the ‘participate in, be there now’ model, where consumers of news want more of a say about what is important and why. That leaves mainstream media with two choices. They can ignore the audience that is moving towards a participatory consumption of news, or they can adapt, embrace the change and join the party. However, to do so they need the tools, here again there are two choices, build their own proprietary tools and do it alone, wasting time and resources in piecing together a technical solution, or they can turn to those who are expert in this field and have already built tried and tested solutions in order to stream live TV over broadband and marry it to a fully interactive, social networking focused platform that can help the broadcasters meet its changing audience on neutral ground.

Livestation takes both the broadcasters and the audience to a new place and creates the tools for the two to engage in new ways. For the viewers it is about empowering them and enabling them to impact the live output, for the broadcasters it ensures they remain relevant to the lives of a changing audience.

5 March 2009

Matteo Berlucchi, CEO, Livestation

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Tags

News, audience participation, Telepresence, journalism, live chat, Live Panel, Al Jazeera, Riz Khan