The pace of life has certainly changed in the past few decades, and that is quite evident on television. Soundbites from politicians have become shorter. Shows have reduced their length and upped the number of camera cuts, to keep viewers glued to the screen. And now, television executives have many things competing for our attention -- computers, mobile phones, console gaming, now even 3D immersive gaming.
While it seems cruel to us to have to sit through commercials, getting advertising dollars into television is a real problem these days. The traditional model was that advertising paid for programming, whether it be syndicated reruns of your favourite sitcom or some local news. But particularly since the recession struck in 2008, it's been difficult to get advertising. Many ads are now preferring more targeted markets, such as those based on clicks on a website. Social media is cheaper and has the added bonus of direct interaction with the audience.
So television is now looking to get creative. Subtle product placements in the shot are one way of doing this, but as the technique has been used for years, viewers may not take notice. One target in the future could actually be those very syndicated shows, particularly those shot in the 1950s to 1970s.
This clip from a popular 1950s TV show called I Love Lucy shows just how much television has changed in the past 70 years. You can see longer shots, longer setups between jokes and the like. Viewers were used to a slower pace at that time. A new technology called Tempo aims to target these gaps and make the show shorter in a way that the company claims will not impact viewers. Show runtimes could be reduced by as much as 10%.
"Syndicated content duration from the 1950s through the 1970s was longer than the typical syndicated content from the modern broadcast era. This presents problems in fitting these longer length programs into current ad-block alignments," said Shawn Carnahan, Telestream’s chief technology officer, in a news release reported on in the Sacremento Business Journal.
Telestream is no pushover; the company has been around since the 1990s and provides digital tools to many name-brand broadcasters, such as FOX and Discovery and MTV. The company may find more success with international broadcasters with this technology, the article added, since timing overseas is different than what is found in the United States.
Today we can even watch television on mobile phones -- something that was unimagineable in earlier generations. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
There is the potential for such technology to grow scary, though. Hopefully broadcasters won't start considering the route taken by some revisiting their old movies. Director Steven Spielberg famously made several changes to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in newer releases a few years ago, such as having guards carrying walkie-talkies instead of guns, and removing a reference to terrorism. More infamous are changes to Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope by director George Lucas, who had the hero Han Solo famously shooting second instead of first when up against an annoying alien.
And do we know if this will really work? Viewers often walk away from the television during commercial breaks, especially as they grow longer. It's unclear if the extra time will be of benefit to advertisers, but given the tough market it's true that almost anything is worth a shot.
What this technology really points to is the need to make advertising more relevant for its consumers. Perhaps networks of the future will allow you to, if you want, to upload your preferences and then they will serve you advertisements based on your preference. What do you think ads of the future will look like?
Top image: A still from an 'I Love Lucy' episode in the 1950s. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
