DTG: FAST, linear and AI – The TV of Tomorrow

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The growing FAST market, the evolution of linear TV and the implementation of AI technology will be the key deciding factors for the future of TV.  Speaking at the Digital TV Group’s Future Tech 2023 event in London earlier this week on Wednesday November 15, panellists shared their insights on where the industry will be heading in the upcoming years. 

Despite repeated predictions of the “death of linear TV” among the industry, speakers at the DTG event made the case that linear TV is here to stay for at least a little longer than some may have expected. But, as Omdia’s senior research director of media and entertainment, Maria Rua Aguete pointed out it, “What we call linear TV now will be different to what we call linear TV going forward”.

The research outfit previously reported that linear in the US, UK, Sweden, and the Netherlands, linear had fallen below the 50% audience share threshold, with nonlinear viewing now the dominant viewing method. Yet, in the face of growing cord-cutting and the ascendance of nonlinear platforms, the Omdia analyst in fact argues that linear TV will continue to be a relevant and valuable player in the market.

“Yes, on-demand viewing has increased but linear TV hasn’t died,” said Rua Aguete. Omdia showed that traditional linear TV viewing remains the dominant form of viewing in Australia and across most of Europe, including France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

Rua Aguete went on to explain that in places like the US and other regions there is both an “appetite” for linear TV and free content which has driven the rapid growth of the FAST market. “It was a match made in heaven,” she said. “Still around the world linear TV is still the number one way in consuming content”.

There are more than 1,500 channels already available in the US, with FAST revenue forecast to reach US$12bn by 2027, according to Omdia.

Rua Aguete predicted that in the next five or ten years linear TV will be more personalised, with changes across advertising and in providing a personalized collection of content. In addition, she stressed that AI will be instrumental in the evolution of linear TV and in FAST. Meanwhile, there has already been a push for UK broadcaster BBC to go fully digital by moving its services online by the 2030s.

She said that “AI, FAST and advertising will play a critical role in how we will be watching TV in five years time”.

At the DTG event, Mireality CTO Maria Ingold highlighted some of those benefits, citing the example ofAI technology being used for dubbing content to distribute to foreign markets.

AI tech has been “key for dubbling where you can get like 97% accuracy but in order to get that 98% or the final piece you still need that person” said Ingold.

Sri Hari Thirunavukkarasu, Amagi’s SVP of sales and business head of EMEA made the similar point that we will see more of the blend of the two markets in the future, with pay TV and cable companies to expand its footprint in the streaming market. He cited the recent example of the Virgin Media partnership with Amgai and 24i in August which sees the pay TV outfit tap the tech firm to launch and monetise a new line-up of themed FAST channels on Virgin TV.

“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,” said Thirunavukkarasu. “That’s the next tier of platforms, to start doing streaming channels and without getting stuck to the word FAST”.

The Amagi exec went on the praise ITV’s streaming brand ITVX, which he said he presages the evolution of similar companies to follow in similar steps. The AVOD platform launched by the UK broadcaster at the end of 2022, replaced the former on-demand service, ITV Hub.

He said, “ITVX has a very rich portfolio of content they already own, as ITV Hub they were a great consumer proposition that they were servicing clients and those kind of local tier one content of platforms will evolve and the existing pay-phone companies joined by traditional cable TV companies will evolve over time to streaming and FAST.”

Mathieu Ghariani, senior director of commercial operations at Netgem, highlighted that “the regulation landscape is [already] changing”, with the recent introduction of the UK Media Bill.  He expects the bill will help boost discoverability and engagement for broadcasters. “Discoverability is still a bit of a problem, I believe, that we need to crack that challenge,” he said. Also going forward, Ghariani said that for operators to enhance FAST streaming there needs to be increasing focus on the quality of metadata which is “still a bit of a problem in the FAST world.”

It may not be clear whether linear TV is here to stay or will go or how exactly the streaming market will evolve in the future, but the general consensus is that we can expect a more consolidated technological advanced model.