Social TV won't take off until there is a change of mindset amongst broadcasters, ex-ITV project director SMWF
Social TV will not take off until there is a change of mindset amongst broadcasters, warned Eric Guillaume, ex-freelance project director for ITV.
Speaking at Social Media World Forum, Guillaume praised the partnership with Google, claiming that the most important aspect was the distribution of the broadcaster's content to an audience, following the broadcaster's precious hesitancy to work with YouTube.
In discussing social TV, he said that "it wasn't quite there yet" in terms of quality and success, highlighting two issue that it had yet to overcome.
The first issue was that of user experience; "lots of companies are trying a lot of things that is fragmenting the industry...if user experience is good, it will take off."
The second challenge highlighted by Guillaume was that mindset within broadcasters who still think 'TV first'.
"Content consumption is still being done in a very tradition way," he said. "Social is still an afterthought. What will be do with Twitter? etc. There is still an embryonic sense of social. The main idea is still not thought about across all platforms.
"It's a question of culture. Senior commissioning people are still old school and continue to think 'TV first'.
"When content commissioners begins to see the effect with people increasingly coming to their content through social channels, then things will change."
Guillaume also highlighted the work of Zeebox as doing some 'useful' things.