DTG speakers predict the future of TV consumption and distribution

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Industry speakers on a panel at Digital TV Group’s FutureTech 2023 – The TV of Tomorrow, Today event in London have predicted linear TV in the future will advance to provide a more personalised viewing and will strengthens its presence in the streaming market.

Omdia senior research director of media and entertainment, Maria Rua Aguete, said: “What we call linear TV now will be different to what we call linear TV going forward, it will be more personalised and AI will play an important role and even in FAST as well.”

The Omdia exec explained will we see a difference across content and  advertising. “FAST, advertising and AI will play a big role in how we watch Linear TV in five years time,” she added

Rua Aguete highlighted despite growing audience for on-demand service, linear is not yet dead with strong audience numbers in select countries across Europe and the US.

The Omdia exec said, “still around the world linear TV is still the number one way in consuming content”. She cited Omdia research that reported linear viewing was  more than 50% in the US and over 80% in Spain.

Sri Hari Thirunavukkarasu, Amagi SVP of sales and business head of EMEA predicted pay TV providers and cable operators will expand its footprint in the streaming market.

He said, “Platforms have evolved, services have evolved. Experiences of those services have evolved, such as mixing VOD with a linear, so it’s obviously maturing.”

“Traditional pay TV companies will start doing a lot more streaming oriented services for channel launches. And for cable companies doing a streaming launch from nuances in terms of product availability and technology availability. We are there in terms of ability, quality of service or just pure placement services,” he added. “That’s the next tier of platforms, to start doing streaming channels and without getting stuck to the word FAST, I’m calling it streaming channels.”

The exec also noted he expects the evolution of companies like ITV’s AVOD service ITVX which replaced the UK broadcaster’s former on-demand service ITV Hub.

“Those kind of local tier 1 content of platforms will evolve and the existing pay-phone companies joined by traditional cable TV companies will evolve over time streaming and FAST.”