Last night saw the the first convergence conversation event to be hosted in BT's iconic tower building. 65 people congregated to discuss the problematic issue of the future of broadcasting around the rather provocative title 'Is broadcasting dead or merely taking a break?'. For the big commercial broadcasters the landscape does indeed look bleak: share prices are falling rapidly under pressure from audience fragmentation and the migration of advertising spend  to different platforms. What can be done to reverse these trends, who will pay for the production of the content and how will future generations want to interact with it? The disruptive influence of the internet was identified as a game changer in audience behaviour and  it was felt that at this stage nobody had the solutions to the problems.
   

And yet and yet. Change in these sort of deep rooted behavioural matters is slow, incremental and generational. According to recent stats we are watching 11 minutes more television than we were last year. The Nadal/Federer Wimbledon tennis final was watched by more than 15 million people in the UK, in over 150 countries worldwide and itv.com just announced an 362% increase in video usage across its website. The landscape doesn't look so bleak now does it?

For a significant percentage of the population the passive experience is the one they still want: both comforting and conventional. Good content will always attract huge audiences, the mega event is still the thing that broadcasters, audiences and advertisers can all group around and extract their own value from. Outside of these events though it must be expected that people will go and explore the long tail for the content that interests them. So then, not dieing but evolving, not drowning but waving. The changes will be slow and the opportunities to capitalise on them are at least commensurate to the threats.

By Sam Ingleby, Digital Communications Programme Manager