Terrestrial TV to seek salvation in reality formats
ITV is already heavily reliant on reality TV and drama, since it is no longer subjected to the regulation that used to tightly control its output and these forms of entertainment are either cheap to produce or already draw in the punters. But let's take a closer look at the "digital equivalent of the four horsemen of the apocalypse for free-to-air broadcasters" claim to see if it can stand up to closer scrutiny.
First up is audience fragmentation, and whilst this is an obvious issue relating to the availability of more channels it still isn't as huge an issue as some might like to think. The majority of smaller channels lack the resources to provide entertainment of a quality that can compete with the major channels (all the good tried and tested reality TV formats are expensive and already claimed by the major broadcasters).
On top of this, reality TV still relies on a "watercooler" effect which even the likes of Sky One find very difficult to properly exploit due to their smaller viewing figures, so ironically it's the terrestrial channels with the greatest reach that can make the greatest use of this. Plus most households with digital satellite TV can only watch the channels on one set, therefore again it tends to be major channels that dominate the viewing.
Secondly there is the issue of PVR's. The PVR is potentially damaging to commercial broadcasters due to their ability to skip through the ads - though this facility has long existed (to a lesser extent) with VCR's - but some of the effect could be mitigated by having short ad breaks and randomly varying their length; people may soon get fed up with trying to skip through them without missing any of the programme.
Thirdly there's the much-hyped concept of "mobile media". This is possibly the weakest of the four threats, since it's unlikely that such a delivery method will be popular for anything except perhaps a news channel or something that ties in with a reality TV format (such as a 24 hour Big Brother channel) which you can dip in and out of without paying full attention to it; it's unlikely that many people will want to pay too much for this.
Finally there's the threat of broadband services providing video on demand, but ironically this might benefit the terrestrial channels in the long term. Why bother to subscribe to lots of satellite or cable entertainment channels when all you need are a small number of 'traditional' channels for live news, live events and entertainment because movies and archive television will be available on demand?
As for the claim that reality TV generates 'supersized' audiences, this isn't certain no matter how good the format looks on paper; Survivor was a dreadful disappointment for ITV despite the successful implementation of the same format in other countries, and even the most successful formats such as Big Brother are slowly losing their impact despite numerous attempts to reinvigorate them.
The future of reality TV may still look relatively healthy but there are strong signs that even the most ardent fans of the genre are starting to lose faith with anything other than a few tried and tested certainties such as the aforementioned Big Brother. And with the number of available future formats gradually dwindling, the opportunities for establishing the next big hit are becoming harder and harder.
