Simon Canning's recent article 'Hubert Kjellberg eyes TV offcuts', tells how innovative groups are looking to recycle media content for mobile phones and online realms. The article states that massive amounts of TV content that now goes to waste will be mopped up by the mobile and online industries as new media technologies move further into providing content, the global head of digital media for Ericsson predicts.
He says Ericsson's experience - shifting from being a phone company to dealing with TV companies, and helping format content for multiple devices (i.e. mobile phones, online web browsers) is being repeated throughout the communications world.
"What we think will happen is, if you look at traditional (TV) production, you have (lots of) cameras providing this content and 95 per cent of it is never used.
"This is where we see the big changes. If there is an interview with a sportsman, then maybe 15 seconds of that gets used on TV, but through another platform you might watch the full three minutes.
Of course this would extend the role of editors; they would have to evolve to consider the best platform to deliver any particular slice of content, working out which is the best for mobiles, online and TV.
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For the telecom operators, it is content and advertisers they are after - according to some research, there is an ever emerging market for these services (Kjellberg 2008).
Will this mean that telecom operators begin to look more like traditional television companies?
Kjellberg states that the under 35 market is the one that will grow content aggregation across platforms, from mobile to TV and online, and says terrestrial TV is not under as much threat as many people believe.
Kjellberg says eventually all content will be aggregated on a single platform, although the platform itself will come in many different guises. But in such a diverse and future innovation hungry industry as the media, to suggest a single platform (i.e. mediums, file types, coding, think screen ratios etc, e.g. Standard vs Widescreen, PAL vs NTSC, Terrestrial vs Digital, mpeg vs mpegII, III or IV) could be successfully implemented, is somewhat of a lofty ambitious statement.
"It is going to be a very interesting time because phone companies are going from just providing communication to providing entertainment." (Kjellberg 2008)
Predicting the future, particularly in an era of furious technological change, is impossible, but companies can position themselves to react to what the future brings - it seems fitting that Ericsson's tag line is "Taking you Forward". The shift in the way consumers use media is forcing everyone from telecommunications providers to production companies to redefine how they go about their business and what they offer.
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