Commentary: The Television Paradigm Shift
A simplified version of the workflow includes an independent creative team that develops product, an independent sales team that sells product, and an independent marketing team that promotes product. It is very linear and makes for an efficient and profitable workflow—for television.
A slightly more updated version of the workflow tacks on a "new media" or technology team at the end of the existing workflow. Sometimes new media is considered part of the marketing department. A typical new media department is responsible for figuring out everything digital that is not on television. Since new media is at the far end of the creative workflow, new media executives often find themselves repurposing content from television or creating one-off experiences online that don’t scale or create much original entertainment value. You can see how difficult it can be to create good product when you add broadband, interactive TV, mobile devices, video games, and all things emerging to the end of the creative process.
Even with these constraints placed on new media, some programmers have had semi-successes in the multiplatform storytelling space.
A marketing campaign for ABC’s Lost used Easter eggs in the television show to draw people to the web, to mobile, and to retail locations. The experience was done rather cleverly and played to the curiosity of Lost fans. Heroes, on NBC, created a similar campaign (which also has a sci-fi spin to it and is littered with clues) to drive people from the TV show to the web and to mobile.
Other shows, like The Office, use the web to allow fans to see never-before-seen footage and additional storylines of show characters. Saturday Night Live has been using the web to release uncensored viral video versions of skits that were censored on the TV broadcast. American Idol has mastered using SMS text messages to allow fans to vote for their favorite contestants.
An interesting (and seemingly unintentional) multiplatform experience is Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report. Stephen Colbert plays the host of a typical news talk show format program. What makes Colbert atypical (besides his character) is his ability to use emerging technologies as part of his show format. For example, at one point Colbert encouraged his audience to go online and vote for a bridge in Hungary to be named after him. He also scours the web and user generated sites to fill his television segments. He has had segments such as his "Greenscreen Challenge"—which asked viewers to take a video of Colbert wielding a Star Wars lightsaber and "remix" it with their own backgrounds—and "play with Wikipedia, " which encouraged users to post bogus information on the Wikipedia website. Colbert breaks the mold of television and creates an experience that is very much in line with multiplatform consumer behavior. He has also used the web to build an online community that makes his viewers feel like they are part of the show.
The Colbert Report gives us hope that, even though the television creative workflow is flawed for a multiplatform world, the creative process will thrive once it evolves to include multiple platforms and adapt to consumer behavior.
The Future of Content Development
Without even knowing it, Stephen Colbert and his staff may have solved the priority discrepancy between programmers and consumers. If we were to push all new media, multiplatform, and interactive responsibility upstream in the creative workflow all the way to the writers and producers of television shows, the end product might start to feel a little more natural and a lot less forced. The difference between The Colbert Report and Lost or Heroes is that, from a multiplatform perspective, the Colbert experience is much more organic than the Lost Experience or Heroes 360. The Colbert experience feels genuine rather than contrived for the sole purpose of generating incremental revenue. While Lost and Heroes convert their existing television fanbase across platforms, Colbert uses the other platforms to grow his audience and keep his existing fans engaged long after his show airs.
By creating content that is inherently designed for multiple platforms, we lessen the priority gap between programmer and consumer. There will still be an economic issue for programmers, but if producers start creating multiplatform content, programmers will be forced to adapt, accommodate, and optimize their systems and workflow. This will address the priority discrepancy directly, and new business models will begin to emerge.
The biggest step that needs to be taken by the industry right now is upgrading the legacy television-centric system to a one that can handle multiplatform production, consumption, and cash flow. If this paradigm shift can happen, not only will television get better, but the video industry will have "future-proofed" itself for several generations of new devices, screens, and platforms.