This document discusses how connected TV is changing and the skills needed for employment in digital media. It notes that while technology changes rapidly, some fundamentals remain the same. Specifically, it discusses how past predictions of new technologies like interactive TV were overhyped. It also examines how TV is transitioning from scarcity to abundance and becoming fragmented across many platforms. The document advocates understanding users, technology, and the commercial aspects of the industry as skills that remain relevant despite changes.

1. Employability for Connected TV
Richard N Griffiths
Programme Leader: Postgraduate Programme in Interactive Technology
University of Brighton

2. Question I’m trying to answer
• How do you prepare people for entry and
career success in digital media – now?

3. My Agenda
• The effects of convergence are always
underestimated
• There are some eternal verities

4. Plan for this Talk
• Have we been here before?
– The Gartner Hype Curve
• and living with it
• What’s so special about TV?
– What was TV?
– What is TV?
– What will become of TV? (I’m guessing …)
• The eternal verities on the curriculum

5. Have we been here before?
The Gartner Hype Curve
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gartner_Hype_Cycle.svg

6. Living with it: Red Button iTV
2002
MSc Digital Television
Management & 2001 2003
Production
2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gartner_Hype_Cycle.svg

7. Initial Course Outline (2002)
MSc DTV Management & Production
• Business
– Entrepreneurship
– Marketing in the Digital Age
– The DTV Market Environment
• Design
– Consumer Oriented Qualitative Research and Creative Idea Generation
– Interaction Design and Usability Evaluation
– Requirements Analysis and Specification
• Management
– DTV Project Management
– Legal Issues in Information Management
• Technical
– Current and Future DTV Technology
– DTV Technology Implementation

8. What was TV?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FamilyWatchingTV1958crop.jpg

9. What was TV?
• An idea: viewing at a distance (physical / temporal)
– but film preceded it
• Technology
– Electro-mechanical / analogue electronic / digital
– Broadcast: terrestrial radio, cable, satellite
– Distribution: tape / laser disc / DVD
• A social phenomena:
– Electronic hearth
– Shared national experience / “Water cooler event”
– Telly celebrity
• An economic phenomena
– An industry: production / distribution / consumption
– Capital investment: studios, cameras, transmitters, etc.
– Property: brand (channel) / rights

10. What was TV?
• An idea: viewing at a distance
• Technology
• A social phenomena:
• An economic phenomena
The most significant?
“It’s the economy stupid.”

11. What is TV?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hyaenidae_illustration.jpg

12. What is TV?
In transition from an economy of
scarcity to an economy of abundance
At least as far as the technology of production,
distribution and consumption are concerned
Also fragmentation of audience and competition
from other ‘media’ (games, web, etc.)

13. What will become of TV?
[This slide is intentionally blank]
It will cease to have a distinct technological,
social and economic identity

14. What will become of TV?
But, in the present / immediate future:
• Attempts to hold on to unique identity of TV
– HDTV / 3D TV / time-shifting
• Attempts to co-opt the competition
– Bundled interactive services / on-demand
– Two-screen TV (betting and ‘adult’ anyone?)
• Attempts by major rights-holders to retain
access control
– ACTA / patenting / app store access

15. Current Course Outline (2010)
MSc Digital Media Production
• Interaction Design and Evaluation Process
• Interface and Information Design
• Web Development
• Creative Design Lab
• Project Management
• Research Methods
Plus up to 2 of:
• Independent Portfolio Project • Evaluation in Practice
• New Media Application • Interactive Technologies Business
Development Context
• Marketing for Interactive • Intellectual Property Law
Technologies • Accessibility for Interactive
• Independent Research Project Systems

16. Eternal Verities
• Technology changes – people by and
large don’t
– Understand how to design for people
• It’s a technical industry
– Understand the technology – and keep up with it
• It’s an industry
– Understand the commercial realities