The BBC Academy Second Screen Telly summit
The event was held by the BBC Academy at Wood Lane, London. The purpose of the Academy is to bridge the gap between technology experts and content creators at the BBC and beyond. This summit was part of that remit.
The day itself was broken into five sessions. The first and second focused upon synchronised second screen technologies and the kind of solutions that are being used across UK television. The third session gave an insight into ideas and technologies around game show companion applications. The fourth sessions was an overview about research and analysis into audience behaviours and the final piece covered how live TV can be enhanced or not as the case may be.
All in all it was a very informative day, supported by an audience pushing 200, made up of half that were from the BBC and the rest being industry technology vendors and one or two journalists.
So to run through some of the details presented, here is a snap shot.
Tom Williams from the BBC talked about second screen offering a creative opportunity to make great TV even better although we must ensure we avoid it becoming more of a distraction. He said that viewers using other devices while watching TV are either engaged or looking for something else to watch. The Red Button was sighted as being a good example of early interactive TV that has been very successful. (10M users for Wimbledon and 1.8M for Dragon’s Den) He noted that 10 years ago 1M viewers played along with Test the Nation and they have more recently had success with a pilot for Secret Fortune. He put the value of second screen broadly into three categories; Find out more, Join in and Take control.
Anthony Rose was called up next to talk about Zeebox. With his usual passion and flair for presentation, he described how Zeebox had surveyed 5000 people and found that they consume around 28 hours of TV per week. The results showed that people actually wanted more information and were even keen to be able to buy something of what they were seeing while watching. Many however would just like to be able to find something to watch more easily. With regard to Zeebox, he noted that they were using various techniques like video fingerprinting and speech recognition to recognise advertisements. Interestingly, he noted that Zeebox had 300,000 users in 11 weeks. 50% of users came back, and 93% of viewers stayed to the end of the show. Finally, he noted a Facebook click through referral of 27%!
Simon Brickle from Monterosa talked about his company’s support for various UK TV brands through their second screen technology. They had been behind companion applications for Test the Nation. Apprentice Predictor and Strictly. He shared some statistics around sponsorship and noted that out of 800,000 products tried, there had been a massive 16% uplift in sponsor show association, with 10% more likely to buy due to the second screen applications.
Nick Gallon from the research team at the BBC noted that they are looking for standards to evolve from the industry. In order for the BBC to be able to evaluate the many technologies out there, they have established what they call a “Synch API”. This will allow different technologies to be compared from the perspectives of Time, Segment or Programme.
One of the speakers worth mentioning was Holly Goodier, who is Head of Audiences at the BBC. Holly spoke about using the experiences of Red Button to help inform and understand the boundaries and opportunities for second screen. She also spoke of ways to help move the 90% of passive audience participation through to many more active participants.
Holly noted two other points worth mentioning. The first was that in her view a key for any second screen solution would be the extent to which it helps to reward fans and allow them to get closer to programmes and people they follow. The second was that a key challenge for any solution is to help extend the period of engagement both before and after actual transmission.
Finally I would like to mention some points made by Chris Sizemore from the BBC Knowledge & Learning team. He spoke about the concept of Sparks and Triggers when engaging with his audience. In fact, they are focussing upon Sparks, which he suggested can be captured by second screen applications. These moments of interest he sees as important factors in learning that the second screen provides a perfect vehicle to find out more and continue the journey with. One very important learning from their research, which involved the Frozen Planet, was that audiences generally were not interested in other forms of interaction while watching such a programme. They were already engaged and did not want to be distracted although they would be interested in finding out more afterwards.
