Staying ahead of the game

Last week, Facebook was labelled a ‘digital gangster’ by a Parliamentary select committee and denounced by the Labour Party as epitomising the worst excesses of “surveillance capitalism”.

With this in mind, it is important to remember that 2 billion people continue to use the social media giant’s platform, or one of its affiliates – WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger – every day.

That Facebook and social media generally needs better regulation is clear, but their underlying consumer appeal is not going away, and that is because they offer something alternative to other media.

Last week, Viacom announced a new ‘live and interactive’ quiz gameshow called MTV Stax, developed for Facebook Watch. It will be broadcast live at scheduled times of the week.

By taking its quiz to the Facebook universe, Viacom is leveraging the social nature of the platform and allowing consumers to ‘play’ in new ways. Notifications about MTV Stax will be pushed to MTV UK’s 5 million Facebook subscribers and promoted on MTV’s websites.

Viacom has realised that grabbing attention is the game of 21st-century media. And it’s a game that’s all about the newly coined ‘Knowing Your Customer’ (KYC) business approach.

If you work in gaming or for a company like Google, you eat, drink and sleep KYC. But for more traditional media players, it’s an approach that is just being adopted.

As the FAANGs ramp up original commissioning to create programming that “cuts through the media clutter”, traditional broadcasters are having to do the same.

Finding the right scripts and talent is key, of course, but ITV’s mantra of “more than TV” is an illustration of smart broadcasters repositioning, and its upcoming ‘British Netflix’ (which we’ll know more about by the time you read this) will be driven by KYC.

Elsewhere in the KYC world, success is about getting the content and delivery platform right. For decades, TV was the monster that gobbled up our attention, but in the digital world, the game has changed.

Not only do 11.7 million UK homes subscribe to at least one SVoD service but, according to a recent Barb report, 19% of all TV set activity in the UK is now devoted to non-TV services – most notably gaming, which is an interesting place to look for clues about what may be next.

“The definition of entertainment is evolving… Ignore the power of social interaction, of consumer control and commerce at your peril”

Gaming’s evolution from consoles to mobile phones and social media platforms has now moved on to embrace blockchain. CryptoKitties, in which the player buys and breeds cats, is one of the fi rst blockchain-powered games to really take off, combining competitive breeding and commerce with our ever-popular feline friends

What has this got to do with TV, you ask? In a world of KYC and rising competition for viewer attention, the definition of entertainment and what the consumer wants is evolving.

Ignore the power of social interaction, consumer control and commerce at your peril. In online gaming, not only is blockchain going to allow gamers to take their digital assets with them from game to game, but there is a company called Gamesdaq that is creating the first dedicated cryptocurrency exchange for gamers.

These developments are what I call a digital attention-grabbing strategy: make games more compelling because people can shop more easily and carry their purchases around.

Translated to the TV world, the future is about more than trying to preserve linear channel viewing by, for example, broadcasting the new series of youth-skewing hit Fleabag on older-skewing BBC1. Where is the KYC in that?

In TV, we talk a lot about the power of the story to cut through. You have to admire a show like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, but it is no surprise that it took one of the FAANGs to fund it.

There are many more innovations out there, and Charlie Brooker’s standout should be only the beginning. Perhaps it’s simply a question of where we choose to put our attention.

• Kate Bulkley is a print and TV journalist and awards secretary of the Broadcasting Press Guild