Television and the Second Screen

Interactive TV in the age of social participation

James Blake

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317428503
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Television

Television is changing almost beyond recognition. In the battle for consumers, social media sites, smart phones and tablets have become rivals to traditional linear TV. However, audiences and producers are also embracing mobile platforms to enhance TV viewing itself. This book examines the emerging phenomenon of the second screen: where users are increasingly engaging with content on two screens concurrently. The practice is transforming television into an interactive, participatory and social experience.

James Blake examines interactive television from three crucial angles: audience motivation and agency, advances in TV production and the monetisation of second screen content. He also tracks its evolution by bringing together interviews with more than 25 television industry professionals - across the major UK channels - including commissioning editors, digital directors, producers and advertising executives. These reveal the successes and failures of recent experiments and the innovations in second screen projects.

As the second screen becomes second nature for viewers and producers, the risks and opportunities for the future of television are slowly beginning to emerge. Television and the Second Screen will offer students and scholars of television theory, industry professionals and anyone with an abiding interest in television and technology, an accessible and illuminating guide to this important cultural shift.

1
The evolution of interactive TV

In 1953, American middle-class families noticed a sudden and unusual development in their children's behaviour: they had started drawing and colouring on their TV screens. The reason, it turned out, was all to do with a new children's programme called Winky Dink and You (CBS, 1953–1957). It was the very first incarnation of a unique type of TV show which encouraged its young audience to take part and do something during transmission. Families had to buy a special transparent sheet (the ‘magic drawing screen’) to put over the TV set. Then children, using crayons, would aid the characters in the programme by drawing helpful things like roads, bridges, ladders or cages (to keep wild animals in). Aside from drawing objects, children also had to complete join the dots puzzles which revealed secret messages. Winky Dink was one of the most popular TV characters of the 1950s. However, there was a drawback: children got into the habit of defacing the TV set and weren't waiting for the transparent paper to be attached. As a result the show was canned and the notion of interactive TV went back into its box … at least for a while.

The evolution of interactive television has been a journey of innovation and experimentation. It has required technological advances, a fundamental shift in the mindset of TV professionals, and changes in the structures and business models of the TV industry. This turbulent history has spanned decades, crossed continents and has taken place in both public sector and commercial broadcasting. It's been shaped by the creative and technical minds across a broad section of the industry and beyond: TV producers, presenters, advertising executives and audience members themselves. However, ultimately, the history of interactive television has been a story of failure.

Part of the problem lies with the term ‘interactive’ in the first place. There have been a multitude of definitions for the term ‘interactive’ both in media and the performing arts. According to Tom McDonnell, CEO of the digital agency Monterosa,

It's just an evolution of a form of entertainment that has existed for centuries really. At the heart of it is the idea that you can gather people round a performance. Some forms of performance are completely passive, but not all of it. A pantomime is not passive is it? There are certain concerts you expect the audience to get involved in too. So there's a branch of performance which is interactive.

(Author interview, June 2015)

As a concept ‘interactive TV’ has been flexible enough to deal with evolving technologies and viewer habits. However, it's also a vague term: there's no real consensus to its meaning and it's been stained by a number of so-called interactive TV projects that have struggled with failing technologies, spiralling costs and low levels of audience engagement. Many of these same challenges face second screen experiences today.

The taxonomies of interaction

Over the past 30 years, researchers and industry professionals have attempted to define and classify different categories of Interactive TV (iTV). Jensen (2001) says there has been a ‘media studies blind spot’ (p.28) around theories of interactivity and defines the term as ‘a program or segment of a program involving the active co-operation of the viewer’ (p.16). In the following years, detailed taxonomies emerged which divided the notion of interactive TV into three basic forms: Enhanced, Personalised and Participatory. ‘Enhanced TV’ is a phrase that the BBC and other broadcasters adopted to describe their interactive outputs at the start of the new millennium. It involves the creation of additional content to give added value to the viewing experience, including videos, text-based information, photographs and graphics. The second form of iTV has been described variously as ‘Distribution interactivity’ (Gawlinski, 2003, p.6) or ‘Personalised TV’ (Jensen, 2005, p.89.) It focuses on viewer agency and the different mechanisms of audience control. According to Jensen, ‘Personalised TV is linked to a piece of hardware … which in principle offers the user the same control over the broadcast flow’ (2005, p.90). The piece of hardware might have been, at various times, the remote control, a video cassette recorder (VCR), SMS texting via a mobile phone, a digital set top box, a wifi TV streaming platform … or a second screen device like a smart phone or tablet. The third form of interactive TV involves viewers actively taking part in a television programme. Gawlinski refers to research by the Henley Centre which outlines a similar concept as ‘participation interactivity – where viewers are able to choose between options during a programme or advertisement. This includes the ability to play-along with a game show’ (2003, p.7). Each of these three categories has a second screen dimension. Viewers can access multimedia content on mobile platforms to enhance their viewing. Likewise, tablets and smart phones can act as Electronic Programme Guides (EPGs), remote controls and Video on Demand (VOD) players to give viewers personalised control. Finally, synchronised companion apps and online social media forums enable both one-way and two-way audience participation in TV shows.

Radio

As a medium, radio has been more conducive to interactivity which has been centred around the phone-in. In America, NBC's Today Show experimented with phone-ins back in 1959. In the UK, BBC Radio Nottingham broadcast a radio phone-in during a 1968 show called What are they up to now? ‘Phone-in calls can be considered as being at the interface of interpersonal one-to-one and one-to-many communication’ (Jautz, 2014, p.20). The interaction doesn't reflect real life conversations, however, as there is an inherent power imbalance in the process. Jautz (2014) describes this as the ‘asymmetrical relation of host and caller’ where the caller has to ‘abide by conversational management’ (p.20). The phone-in continues to be a mainstay of live talk radio whilst in television its use has been much more limited. Television phone-ins have appeared occasionally in magazine programmes and TV tabloid shows on both sides of the Atlantic (Channel 5's The Wright Stuff being one example). TV is much more likely to put together a live studio audience to engage in a topical debate or to engineer a personal confrontation.

Text-based services

In 1972 two text-based TV services were announced: Ceefax for the BBC and Oracle (later renamed Teletext) for ITV. At first Teletext was primarily an on-screen information service which then went on to sell consumer bargains and holiday deals. It was another 20 years before TV producers started to realise its interactive potential with the quiz Bamboozle. Originally this was supposed to be a real-time game played alongside a TV quiz with a multiple choice format. However, technical issues meant it was impossible to synchronise the Teletext game with a broadcast TV show. Since then, ongoing issues of synchronicity have caused both technical and editorial challenges for interactive and second screen TV projects. In the end Bamboozle ended up being a Teletext format and players had to make do with a virtual host: Bamber Boozler. The game generated a large fanbase which endured for more than 16 years. In 2010 Bamboozle was relaunched in the Apple App store as a mobile game complete with retro graphics and interactive leaderboards. Bamboozle was a significant first step in adjusting the mindset of TV viewers and producers into thinking about television as a potentially popular, two-way interactive medium.

Remote controls and VCRs

Remote controls and video cassette recorders represent important milestones in the development of viewer agency. They gave users greater control over what and when they watched TV. More significantly they laid the groundwork for future viewer interaction. They introduced the notion of an interactive device independent of the TV set itself and they started to have a psychological impact on the mindset of both viewers and TV producers. The technology behind remote controls is almost as old as television itself. Back in 1956 the so-called ‘Zenith Space Command’ was a wireless remote which used ultrasound technology to change the channel and volume on TV sets. When viewers pressed buttons the device emitted sounds in different frequencies which were picked up by the TV set. It was the creation of Ceefax by the BBC in 1973 that really pushed the take up and development of the remote control. Until then, devices had only three functions: channel forward, channel back and volume/off. Ceefax needed numbers and the ability to switch between text services and TV. Remotes made viewing easier: they put the viewer back in control of what they watched. Before this, programme makers often relied on the laziness of viewers not to get up and change channels. The new remote control worried commercial broadcasters, in particular, who feared that people might simply change channel when the adverts came on at the end of a show. It led to more adverts being played in the middle of TV programmes. In recent years, broadcasters, TV manufacturers and digital TV providers, like Sky and Virgin media, have all embraced mobile platforms to develop a new generation of remote controls. In 2011, the BBC Research and Development Department published a number of papers into its development of an API (Application Program Interface) for a so-called Universal Control. According to one BBC White Paper: ‘The Universal Control API has been designed to be a good API for creating remote user interfaces running on PCs and mobile phones and in web browsers, controlling set top boxes and similar devices on the local network’ (Barrett et al., 2011, p.27). The team examined the use of mobile phones and tablets to control TVs and set top boxes (STB) via Bluetooth or Wifi. The initiative also laid many of the necessary technical foundations required for tablets and phones to become synchronised companion devices linked to TV sets. However, the TV industry was moving quickly and the BBC vision of the Universal Control was abandoned. Jerry Kramskoy, who worked at BBC R&D at the time, says ‘The Universal control was an experiment which eventually died a death because there wasn't acceptance in the wider industry. Obviously the TV manufacturers have a strong say in how they want things to look on their TV.’ In fact, most SMART TV manufacturers were developing their own mobile apps that could turn a mobile device into a remote control and an electronic programme guide (EPG). Since then, EPGs have developed a functionality that goes beyond TV listings to embrace VOD and simulcast. The development of EPGs is driving innovation in second screen use as EPGs become the platform of user activity around TV discovery, selection and playback.

If remote controls have evolved into second screen EPGs then VCRs are the precursors to set top boxes and cloud-based storage systems. In 1982, ten per cent of households in the UK owned a video recorder: a figure which increased to 30 per cent in 1985. The success of the VCR meant that terrestrial TV had a competitor in the living room for the attention of viewers: people could hire a movie or record a programme to watch later. As the VCR became a rival to live television it also challenged the development of some fledgling interactive services. For the most part, interactive TV required people to watch TV at the time of transmission. The emergence of the VCR provided audiences with the power to take control of their own viewing time. In fact, the history of interactive TV (including second screen activity) can be seen as an attempt to help live television fight back against the VCR. In recent years this translates into the ongoing conflict between linear TV, VOD and streaming services.

The experiments of the 1990s

In 1994 Channel 4 experimented with Teletext services by linking them with chat forums on the emerging internet. The channel took a long-established computer game show called Gamesmaster and, during one episode in series 4, displayed social chat messages in lines of Teletext on the screen. The experiment didn't become an integral part of the show but in hindsight it was one of the first times a UK broadcaster engaged with embryonic online social TV forums. During the decade another company, Two-Way TV, was developing technologies which enabled viewers to interact with entertainment shows or make predictions during sports programmes. Nick Hall was a producer at the company: ‘Two-way TV created a dedicated set top box for playing along with live sport and game shows’, he says. ‘It was quite significant and at the time we were the biggest players in that market. Then we adopted the red button model and we did games on all platforms’ (author interview, December 2015). The company produced a quiz show called Fifteen to One which created a leaderboard for at-home players. For households that took part, there was a jump in the Broadcasters Audience Research Board (BARB) ratings for these interactive programmes. Two-way TV had four handsets which enabled families to play together. According to Nolan (2002, p.62), ‘Many commented that they communicated more as a family instead of watching TV in silence as they had done previously’.

In 1999 the BBC developed a new interactive CBBC children's game show called Sub Zero. It was pitched as the ‘Ultimate Battle of the Sexes’: boys and girls formed teams to compete against each other in a series of ‘high tech quests’ (BBC Press release, 1999). The studio teams needed the help of viewers at home because they couldn't win by themselves. There were a number of different interactive layers in the show. Marc Goodchild was the producer: ‘Sub Zero was around the beginning of the internet going mainstream into schools’, he says. ‘We were getting kids into internet cafes on a Sunday to contribute into the show using webcams’ (author interview, November 2015). There was also a 3D virtual reality studio where contestants would be guided around a maze by viewers at home pressing keys on a phone. Audiences could also participate online, by email or even by sending letters through the mail. The programme also set internet challenges for young viewers at home by setting an online treasure hunt each week.

In the mid 1990s a number of large-scale exploratory interactive TV projects were set up to explore the technology, the user demand and the commercial benefits. In 1994, broadcasters, banks, computer companies and shops set up a wide-ranging experiment known as the Cambridge Digital iTV trial. The BBC, ITN, Anglia TV, the NatWest Bank and Acorn computers were all involved in creating a system which used ATM networking technology. At first it had just ten users, but two years later there were 100 participants. The services on offer included home banking and shopping via the TV, information and education software services and enhanced TV channels On Demand. The content was streamed to homes, schools and businesses in the Cambridge Cable Network. It was both an experiment in networked technology and usability and relied on detailed feedback from participants. Nicoll (2001) argues that ultimately the trial didn't succeed as ‘tensions emerged during the Cambridge trial between anticipation and actualisation, imagination and realisation’ (p.193). In 1995 British Telecom ran its own interactive trial involving 2,500 households in Colchester and Ipswich. According to BT the system ‘brought together the telephone and the television to enable customers to choose and order entertainment and information services’ (BT Archives, 1995). There were education programmes to complement the national curriculum, local news, an On Demand film channel, shopping services and an interactive advertising platform called Adland. By the turn of the new millennium, the industry was in a position to start pushing at the boundaries of interactivity and TV audiences were ready and waiting for it.

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