I’m a strong believer in the need for and importance of free-to-view television services, as a foundation of TV ecosystems around the world. These free-to-view services are going through a major transition as television delivery moves from being primarily broadcast delivered (DTT and satellite) to being primarily internet delivered. Continue reading

This week TalkTV announced that they are taking their channel off air and moving online. This could be interpreted as a sign of the decline of broadcast TV, that it just doesn’t matter anymore and reading the BBC News article on this last night you could be led to that conclusion. However, I believe this is not the case and that TalkTV simply lost to GB News. Which may be the first time I’ve seen this happen to a Murdoch company. There had been talk for many years about the launch of a right leaning news channel in the UK... Continue reading

You can probably guess that generative AI and its impact on the media industry, was one of the main topics of conversion at the recent Connecting the Dot Summit on the Summit organised by Andreas Waltenspiel . Since then, I’ve been thinking more on the subject and, building on the conversations in the Austrian Alps, have three initial predictions that I would like to share with you. As well as sharing the prediction, I'd like to give some historical background that leads to them. After all change doesn’t happen in one big moment, but with small incremental changes. Though often... Continue reading

A scratch cook is someone who likes to cook from scratch most days of the week. Cooking from scratch is bringing together basic ingredients to produce delicious and nutritious meals. In the era of supermarket ready meals and Uber eats why be a scratch cook? It is health, it enables... Continue reading

In September Everyone TV announced the development of Freely, a new free TV service, launching in 2024, that will deliver live TV over broadband here in the UK. I’ve had a several people ask me what exactly it is, so I thought it would be helpful to explain what I think it will be and why I think it is important. Continue reading

Visit the Scratch application site. Me I like to feed my family, serving up interesting, nutritious meals that I have cooked. It makes me happy and fulfils me. Cooking for me should be done from fresh, raw ingredients, that way I know what I’m feeding my family and I can,... Continue reading

When I first heard the rumours about Sky Glass just before its launch in October 2021, I was really quite surprised and I have to say a bit confused. Sky was about to launch their very long-awaited and anticipated Sky Q over IP product and it was not a set-top box but a whole television. What’s more is that it wasn’t actually part of the Sky Q ecosystem. It took me a couple of days to recover, reflect and realise the strategic brilliance behind this bold move. It positioned Sky against their future competition pivoting away from the battles with their past competitors. Continue reading

Recently I have found myself doing a Mandalorian. This does not mean I have become an inter-galactic bounty hunter or started walking around with a bucket on my head that I refused to take off in public. I'm referring to how I consume subscription VOD services. Continue reading

A route map of 'The Running Book' by John Connell. Continue reading

March is a bit late to offer up a retrospective on the previous year, but I’ve wanted to write about what I think was the most interesting TV event of 2018, for a while. For the me the most interesting event was Bodyguard. This was a BBC 1 drama starring Keeley Hawes and Ricard Madden. Keeley is currently one the UK’s best actresses and is in everything that Oliva Coleman isn’t. Richard Madden is best known for Game of Thrones where he was last seen being dispatched during the Red Wedding. The first thing to note about Bodyguard is the... Continue reading

In this article in the Future of TV Tech series, I’m looking at the future of television remote control. Note, this is not about TV remote control devices, as I don’t believe the future will involve dedicated handheld devices, So the headline picture is wrong. I believe the future of TV control will be voice (which will be obvious to most readers) and micro-gestures (maybe not so obvious). Continue reading

Last week I had the privilege of attending the Sky Tech Summit, now in its 3rd year. The agenda had multiple tracks covering content innovation, superior streaming, people & skills and emerging tech. But, for me, across these there were two bigger themes linking them all together, which were Artificial Intelligence and Inclusion. #skytech2018 Continue reading

It is hard to have missed the fact that Amazon have scored one of the two remaining English Premiere League TV packages. The other being picked up by BT. But just scanning the headlines can mean you may have missed what package they actually picked up. The article is a follow-on from my article back in February: Will the Internet Giants Ever Take the Rights to English Premiership Football? Amazon has acquired package F which is a total of 20 games a year for the next three seasons. The UK rights consist of 200 live matches per season split into... Continue reading

Last week I attended the DTG summit at the Royal School of Medicine. This article is a review of the event, looking at the key themes discussed. For those who don’t know, the DTG is the Digital Television Group, an industry association for anyone involved in the delivery of digital TV in the UK, including broadcasters, operators, television equipment manufacturers and technology vendors. The DTG sees itself as the centre for collaboration amongst its 125 members. The DTG summit brings its members together to discuss trends, consider direction and to celebrate success stories. This year’s theme was “Transforming TV”. Continue reading

Pretty much since the launch of the Apple App store back in 2008, there has been a consensus that the future of TV interface was app stores. App Stores provide a model for personalization, innovation and protection of content owner’s brand identity. But does the app store model and applications in general really work for TV? Is there an alternative? Given the success of app stores for mobile devices it is hard to challenge them, but I don’t think they work well enough and are not the future of TV interfaces. I do however have an alternative. Continue reading

Today, amongst TV service providers, there is an ever-increasing focus on content discovery and recommendations. Some say that content discovery is the new battle ground for TV service providers, both traditional and new entrant. I still strongly believe that the content itself is still king, but service providers need to work to keep consumers finding and viewing the content that differentiates them. This article looks at TV recommendations, do they work, what is the future for them and how this affects the TV service provider landscape. Alert: In this article a media executive looks at his own behaviour and uses... Continue reading

Back in December 2009 I attended two-day a user experience workshop in a Chateau near Paris. It was a great session where pay-TV executives from across Europe looked at user interface issues and discussed solutions to challenges they faced. This workshop was the first time I had been presented in-depth research on digital natives. The research looked at their changes in behaviour and their changing relationship with media. I was captivated by this very real shift in human behaviour and the impact it was going to have as these digital natives joined the workforce and gain purchasing power. The term... Continue reading

This week I had the privilege to attended Mediatel’s Connect TV World Summit at the Royal College of Physicians in London. I’ve attended this event for many years, though it has been some years since I had the luxury of attending all the conference. There were many newsworthy presentation and discussions at the event that have already been picked over by industry journalists. I wanted in this article to just dig into a handful of themes that emerged from the two days. It is worth noting the excellent gender mix of the presenters and in the panels at the conference.... Continue reading

As tech leaders, we know what Agile and Scrum are, most of us will be using it in some form. But do we know what it really means for our organisations? Continue reading

Version 3 of babysitter Calc has just been released to the Apple App Store. This is the first update in over a year and the first major one for three years. An Android version will follow if the iOS version does well. This version includes a slight re-design of the... Continue reading

In this series “The Future of TV”, I will explore concepts that I believe could have a big impact on television. Concepts beyond what most people are thinking about today. People often ask me what is the “next big thing” is for television? They sometimes ask this for true insight but generally it is just as an ice breaker. As with any industry, the history of the “next big thing” is full of successes and failures. For a while the “next big thing” was thought to be 3D. Early in the hype cycle for 3D I rejected it for being... Continue reading

I've taken a look at the numbers to determine if the Internet Giants (Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Netflix) could take a big chunk of the English Premiership Football rights any time soon. Continue reading

What is significant about the Apple TV App? Why is it worth writing about? Well, it does much of what TV operators have been trying to achieve for years and, maybe more importantly, it also does something the UK broadcasters should be doing without Apple. Continue reading

Babysitter Calc is two years old. In that time we have managed two major releases and numerous minor ones to improve the service. It has been downloaded 3,836 times across Apple, Google and Kindle. On average we have 300 monthly users. 4,576 babysitters have been added to the application, giving... Continue reading

We have been collecting statistics on how much people pay babysitters per hour from around the world. This first set of data covers the USA. This puts New Jersey as the state which pays babysitters the most at $12.13 and Idaho the lowest at $3.69. State Avg. Value New Jersey... Continue reading