The Untapped Frontier for the New Apple TV: Superfan Apps

By: Dan Murrell

A seismic shift is underway in television, comparable to the explosion of cable television in the 1970’s and 80’s. Cable TV freed the majority of urban and suburban families from the dullness of 13 channels and 3 networks, with satellite subsequently bringing rural viewers out of the Television Stone Age. Now, thanks to the Internet Age, affordable, excessive bandwidth has put a new revolution within our grasp.

Each successive evolution of how we watch TV brought the same thing: choice. From 3 channels, to 13 channels, to 57 channels with nothing on, to 500 channels and video on demand. Now, choice is on the verge of becoming limitless — the Internet and television are finally merging for good.

Cord-cutting has become such a common practice, that in addition to content sources like iTunes and Netflix, even cable companies and networks are embracing Internet distribution to make sure people still watch television, no matter what size the screen.

Streaming devices such as Apple TV, Roku, Chromecast, and Amazon Fire TV have been available for a few years, and upgraded hardware like the new Apple TV is arriving now, but for the most part these devices have been completely passive, only giving you another way to watch the same old things.

However, these new devices add a new trick: fan interactivity through apps.

Apple TV is poised to recreate interactivity for the big screen

In its announcement of the new Apple TV, the company declared, “apps are the future of television.” Think about it. For almost a decade, the company has taught users how to interact with content on touch screens in their hands, and now want to do the same for television. But instead of touching that screen directly, the new remote has it’s own touch screen for direct manipulation of content. In other words, Apple TV is poised to recreate the interactivity of the iPhone for television.

Interactivity adds a whole new dimension to content on a big screen. When television was passive, it was easy for viewers to disengage, but with interactive television, they have a lot more reasons to play closer attention.

All of these features — ubiquitous Internet connections with excessive bandwidth, choice, interactivity, and a very large screen typically placed in communal living areas — combine to create ideal conditions for exciting new uses for TV. One of the most interesting cases, creating apps for superfans, springs from having so much choice.

Super fandom can be defined as wide or as narrow as you want, and today the audience is large at nearly every level. Whether you’re a fan of science fiction in general, or the X-Files in particular, there’s a community for you. Whether you’re a fan of American football, college football, or the Southeastern Conference, you can find friends online. Professional wrestling, or WWE. The Howard Stern Show. Drake. You get the idea. Everything has an active community.

The two common characteristics of all these are incredibly well-suited for television: large libraries of browsable, searchable content, and a community that would enjoy more interaction with and around it.

Conversation and community

Twitter has become our medium for conversation during live events, whether the premiere of a new season of The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones, a presidential debate, or the Super Bowl. An app for superfans of these shows puts that conversation only a swipe away.

Pre-recorded content such as videos published by immensely popular YouTube stars, highly anticipated movie trailers, or even a classic soccer match can also have a fan conversation going behind the scenes.

Interestingly, a model for persisting that conversation has been shown with services like Periscope that capture the immediacy of an original viewing. Viewers watching an event minutes, days, or even years later can feel the excitement of that first-time viewing experience — a neat emotional trick.

More to the story

Interactive content also allows even more engagement for the superfan. Some TV shows use StorySync technology, where the viewer is invited to load a website when the show begins. The site features additional actor information, trivia, and backstory synchronized with the show. In a superfan app, this could be embedded in the content itself, allowing the viewer to pause the show and dive into that metadata to her heart’s content.

Another great use of this technology could be a built in viewer feedback system. Some live programs use systems like 800 numbers, websites, and Twitter to gather instant feedback from viewers that become part of the program. Talking Dead, a recap talk show that follows a new episode of The Walking Dead on AMC, uses instant surveys and quizzes to great effect that drives the conversation on the show. This could easily be integrated into an app on the Apple TV, so that the viewer could stay engaged with the show and not have to look away to their tablet or phone where one notification could steal them away.

Wonks of the world, unite!

Stats-heavy programs like sporting events, debates, and election coverage take on a whole new dimension with interactivity that can be swiped in from the edges.

That being said, the opportunities are endless:

• Imagine being able to engage with a live baseball card of the pitcher on the mound of the World Series, and instantly see the result of every meeting between him and the player at the plate. With an interactive baseball superfan app, that kind of information can be only a swipe away.
• During a debate, an app for a site like FactCheck.org could simultaneously stream both the debate, and live fact-checking of every boast some politician makes on stage.
• On election night next year, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Huffington Post, and Vox can offer highly detailed digital coverage alongside analysts on their TV and streaming shows. Echoing the experience of Periscope, those talking heads can react live to feedback from viewers, such as polls and comments.

In all these cases, keeping the content and the coverage together keeps the viewer engaged, and reduces the chance that they could be distracted away by the latest flame war on Twitter or Facebook.

The new Apple TV will begin arriving in homes around Halloween 2015. As the App Store opens, we’ll get our first look at the possibilities of the new platform and see what new tricks our televisions have learned, but considering what this platform will bring with it, superfans around the world may be in for the biggest treat of all.

Originally published on Mutual Mobile, “The Untapped Frontier for the New Apple TV: Superfan Apps”