Forget the TV, tomorrow’s screen of preference will probably be the Internet, AOL chief Jonathan Miller predicted at the influential "MIPTV featuring MILIA" trade show here.
"Video consumption is exploding on-line and on-demand is going to be the dominant way to consume content," Miller said in a keynote speech that must have sent shivers down the spines of the packed audience of TV executives.
Miller was set to be awarded the show’s inaugural Pioneer Prize at the first-ever International Interactive Emmy Awards ceremony for AOL’s innovative, high-quality live Web coverage of the 2005 global Live 8 rock concerts.
Live 8 "was the starting gun that showed that the Internet is a mass entertainment medium, very different from TV, because people could watch any of the concerts going on around the world," Miller told the conference.
The sheer numbers of people that chose to participate in the huge July 2 rock event rather than watch it on the television was staggering. That showed that TV over the Internet has the potential to be a "mass entertainment medium", Miller stressed.
Internet users are also showing that they want to consume and watch entertainment in different ways today, Miller said.
Live 8 triggered almost 15,000 Internet blogs on AOL between users watching the concerts and wanting to exchange their comments and feelings with others around the globe.
"The industry is in the middle of a truly massive change," Miller emphasized.
"We will see video-on-demand (VOD) becoming dominant in the next few years," he said, adding on-demand programming is clearly what viewers want.
Not only did AOL delivered 175,000 simultaneously high-quality video streams to users in 160 countries at the height of the concerts, but there were also 90 million video streams of concert footage watched by AOL users in the six weeks after the event.
His prediction was backed with the release of a new study ordered by France`s National Cinematography Centre which found that the video-on-demand market in Europe is gathering strength.
The economic stakes are high as the VOD market could "majorly transform the method of access to programmes" and create a major upheaval in the sector, the study said.
The revolution starting to sweep the audiovisual entertainment industry is pushing users firmly into the driving seat, Miller believes. The amount of different forms of media being consumed will all increase. "Prime (TV) time will morph into My Time" and everything will go portable, were Miller’s predictions.
From 2002 to 2005, the number of VOD suppliers increased 10 times, although availability varies hugely from country to country.
The strongest VOD markets in Europe are Britain and Germany, with at least 2,000 films and programmes available in both countries, compared with some 700 in France. This compares to a traditional rental shop which has around 400 titles to choose from.
The digital revolution, the increasing use of broadband and a better compression of data, are driving this "personalized television", the report said after studying the growth of VOD in 10 European countries.
According to the CNC report, VOD is attracting many new operators from telecoms companies to Internet search engines as well as the traditional players, the cable and satellite operators.
Miller demonstrated that AOL is successfully increasing the video quality of the massive Time Warner video library that it recently put online to its users.
Owned by entertainment giant Time Warner, AOL has been actively moving into the video space since its Live 8 scoop with its recently launched In2TV entertainment service.
That is good news for users but not so great for the TV world, which had been hoping the current poorer viewing experience on the Internet might persuade viewers to stay with more traditional screens.
For the operators VOD is an extra way of getting revenue by charging consumers, all-be-it at often low prices between 1.5 and 5 euros, while also keeping customers happy by offering them greater choice.
But Bruno Thibaudeau, director of development for the French group Canal+, said he was convinced new technologies were compatible with the traditional television set.
"Today`s technologies allow us to respond to a basic trend, that next to the traditional screen there will be an individual consumption on different screens from the PC, the portable phones and players," he said.
Big entertainment companies attending the show will also not be reassured to learn that AOL is financing its major foray into TV though advertising, the very heart blood of the TV industry.
Miller and reality TV guru Mark Burnett, the brains behind smash hit reality formats as "The Apprentice" and "Survivor" revealed that companies are lining up to switch their advertising budgets into the entertainment offerings of Internet giants like AOL.
Burnett has linked up with AOL to produce a new Internet-based entertainment format "Gold Rush", which will be launched shortly.
Set in the United States, "Gold Rush" will start off with trucks – ad-sponsored of course – driving away from Fort Knox laden with gold that will be buried at secret locations around the country. AOL players will have to try and locate the million-dollar stashes through clues left on the Internet.
So there will be a pot of gold at the end of the TV rainbow.
The burning question is who will win it!
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