Be ‘More Skeptical’ of Claims That OTT Will Kill Broadcast TV, Urges Digital UK CEO

No one can deny TV is changing and that services like YouTube, Netflix and Amazon are driving “much of this change,” Digital UK CEO Jonathan Thompson said in prepared remarks for delivery Wednesday before a Broadcasting Press Guild media briefing in London. “But new technology alone cannot dictate the future of television,” said Thompson, whose company runs the Freeview over-the-air TV platform that reaches 19 million U.K. homes. “If it did, we’d all be watching 3D TV.” The industry needs to be “a bit more skeptical about some of the big claims we hear about OTT leading to the death of broadcast television,” he said of over-the-top services. “We should be less willing as an industry to adopt the Silicon Valley view of the world based on flimsy evidence and half-truths. We should be wary of big claims when coupled with a lack of transparency over audience figures and instead focus on real world evidence of what viewers are actually doing. Even the much talked about millennials who have fully embraced the on-demand world are still watching more live TV than anything else. All the evidence points to a blend of viewing behaviours and technologies for the foreseeable future and we should be planning content strategies and networks which will meet that need.”