As the broadband era fast approaches the whole broadcasting environment is changing, and TV genres will have to change with it. The laws of evolution apply - adapt or die
Broadband TV changes the relationship between the viewer and the screen and every genre will be affected, for better or for worse, writes Peter Keighron.
Top of the endangered species list is the magazine format. The magazine has always been something of a misnomer when applied to television because, unlike a print magazine, you can't flick through a TV programme. You have to sit through the dull articles to wait for the bits you really want.
According to GMG Endemol creative director and legendary lifestyle guru Peter Bazalgette the genre is already suffering. 'I wouldn't say the [TV] magazine is dead,' he says, 'but I would say it is somewhat eclipsed'. Bazalgette points to the way leisure programmes have evolved from a 'how to' genre to more narrative led formats, like Ground Force or Changing Rooms. Strong narratives have become essential. 'The thing about magazine programmes is they don't deliver that,' says Bazalgette. 'They might deliver it in one item but the whole half hour isn't compelling enough.'
For the sports genre, broadband survival is assured. This genre is already ahead of the game. Sport is already experimenting with interactive elements, such as allowing viewers to choose camera angles and pull up stats and info on screen. BBC controller of interactive and navigation Katharine Everett confirms that sports is the ideal genre for broadband. 'Where there is, if you like, a slightly obsessive nature in the viewer you can really add a lot. The BBC have recently done interactive applications for Wimbledon and Open Golf Championships.'
But with drama, Everett is more sceptical about the number of viewers who will want interactivity. 'I don't see a huge market for alternative endings,' she says. 'Theoretically you could make a number of sequences available on demand and [the viewer] could construct the whole programme. One or two people might want to do that but that meets a very different need from the desire to sit down, curl up in front of a story and not have to do anything.'
Bazalgette believes the non-interactive drama will never die. 'People are always going to want to be told stories,' he says. 'They may want to interact with it, they may not want to interact with it, but they all want to be told stories.'
Andrew Chitty, md of digital media outfit Illumina, which produces Sky's interactive animation The Smithsons, suggests that soaps have more interactive potential. 'I think soap will work in broadband if people build the right kind of communities around them,' he argues. Chitty points to various internet soaps as possible models. 'In "East Village", a New York based online soap, you could select one of the characters and join their clique and get extra information on them, but you could only join one clique.'
In factual broadband offers big potential for more in-depth coverage. The forthcoming BBC series on genetics - How to Make a Human Being - will have an interactive production unit on board. The idea is that the while the TV series will stick to a strong narrative drive there are all sorts of issues - ethics, GM issues, heredity, etc - that won't be fully dealt with but could be made available in a broadband format.
Similarly existing series are being reversioned for broadband. Take the BBC's natural history unit for example, which is 'shattering' existing programmes such as X-Creatures and UK Wild to producer short video clips - effectively serving up the same information in different ways.
But it's the hard core education genre that looks most suited to survive and prosper in a broadband environment. 'If there's one thing that broadband can do that television can't it's education,' insists Chitty, 'and broadband should make things like the GCSE channel that Granada or Anglia are doing and the health channel that the Department of Health are commissioning completely pointless. In that sense digital TV is a pointless halfway house, it's like old fashioned TV on a big carousel.'
Chitty raises the prospect of university-branded broadband TV. 'I think you'll see a lot of distance learning. I fully expect to get my MBA from Harvard on broadband system watching their lectures.'
Of course, any genre can survive in a broadband environment if it adapts itself but the question is will the viewer let it survive, or, more accurately, will the viewer pay to see it survive?
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