SANTA MONICA, Calif. — During a panel discussion at NewBay Media's Next TV Summit Thursday on how apps and tech are transforming the TV experience, a quartet of executives offered insight on trends and how their products fit into the future.
“It’s a golden age of TV, but there’s also a lot of noise. Consumers and content creators are looking for a way to drive discovery of new shows,” said Dan Brian, the COO of WhipClip. A local Santa Monica startup, WhipClip is a platform that allows users to clip and share live and recorded TV. Think of it as “user-created trailers for show,” Brian said. “80% of our users said they discovered a show they had never seen before.”
Kimberly Kalb, the entertainment partnerships director of live-streaming platform Meerkat, talked about finding new ways to reach audiences and being your own broadcaster. “We’re not suggesting putting your television show on Meerkat,” she said, adding that it’s not about pirating on the platform but rather creating new content around existing content.
Whereas you need a Twitter account to engage on that platform, “I think there’s going to be new platforms that don’t require people to log in or attach people’s names to things,” said Lee Brenner, who runs Microsoft’s real-time audience engagement platform Bing Pulse.
“The new normal today is a generation Z viewer,” said Matt Smith, the chief evangelist of TV everywhere platform Anvato. “Facebook and Twitter represent as large an audience as a broadcast audience.” He offered two predictions: an increase in binge-watching and a major shift in the network and affiliate model. With a bevy of TV everywhere platforms, second-screen devices, OTTs and more, “affiliates won’t have as much content viewed exclusively in their market,” Smith said.
