The Evolution of TV — Getting Ready for the New Viewing Experience

Television. Perhaps more than any other medium, TV has captured the hearts of people since first becoming available in the late 1930s. And while the power of television has only increased over time, its evolution over the past 80 years clearly illustrates how technology influences consumer behavior, while this change in consumption drives the TV industry to take on new forms that radically alter the way we experience the medium.

Television has certainly changed a lot since its inception. Back in 1948, only one in ten Americans had seen a television set. However, TV’s popularity exploded by 1960, when 70 million U.S. viewers tuned in to watch Senator John Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon in the first-ever televised presidential debate. By the end of the 1980s, almost 53 million households subscribed to cable, while the number of cable program networks increased from 28 in 1980 to 79 by 1989. Jumping ahead just 9 years, the number of national cable video networks had grown to 171, while at the end of 1999 approximately 7 out of 10 television households (more than 65 million) were cable subscribers. This was the same year that Netflix first launched its subscription service providing unlimited rentals for a monthly fee. And just ten years later, in 2009, a Nielsen study found that the average American watched approximately 153 hours of television every month.

But wait. A 2013 Nielsen study found that the number of American households with TVs had been dropping since 2011, as a growing number of people were “cord-cutting” by making the switch from traditional cable companies to watching videos online via their mobile phones or through streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and others. Incredibly, by 2013, there were more than five million American households without TVs, up from just over 2 million in 2007. And this trend has definitely been continuing. Clearly, a growing number of people are taking a technological leap from traditional television services to new offerings, creating an exciting time in the industry for massive changes and innovations in content delivery.

So, where do we go from here?

Most industry experts agree that interactive OTT is the way of the future, with the expectation that TV with non-touchable graphics will be a thing of the past in just a few years time. The functionality of interactive platforms carries the potential to take video consumption to a whole other level of engagement, such as the ability to post favorite Tweets directly from inside a video, swipe news tickers backwards, purchase products, and much, much more. We are truly on the cusp of a new world of video creation and consumption, with spectacular direct-to-consumer possibilities to generate new revenue streams, including shoppable videos and individually targeted advertising.

The future of video consumption is only limited by the imaginations of developers, while those who are able to deliver exceptional user experiences through innovative technological creations will lead the way.

By Sergey Bludov
Senior Vice President, Media and Entertainment at DataArt