In this month’s column for Mediatel’s Newsline, I respond to some recent comments from Nigel Walley at Decipher who predicted that broadcaster online players – iPlayer, 4OD etc – have ‘had their day in the sun’ and that the next decade at least would see ‘a new era of Set Top Box domination’.
My Mediatel article (here), argues that broadcaster players will continue to play a strong role in a hybrid future alongside Set Top Boxes. Nigel has continued the debate via twitter and also posted a link to this article on the Decipher blog. Hopefully we can continue the debate at the ASI Conference in Vienna where we will both be speaking. There are two sides to every story – as Sigmund Freud probably said to his mother – ‘hey, it’s just a theory!’
Meanwhile, whether ‘Set Top Boxes’ dominate or not, surely it is time for a new generic term – in a world of wafer thin screens balancing them on top of the TV set will only result in tears….
Research The Media 