User-gen on TV - BBC says yes, MTV no

Is Lilly Allen And Friends on BBC Three the future of user-generated content, social networking and broadcast television?

Two major broadcasters are moving in opposite directions on viewer participation.

BBC Three controller Danny Cohen looks to integrate television and online even more closely for the youth channel. From the press release:

Programmes simulcast across television and the web

Commitment to placing innovative, interactive ideas at the heart of key programmes

Online content produced with the passion and production values normally associated with TV at bbc.co.uk/bbcthree

User-generated content integrated into the heart of the peak-time schedule

Allowing the audience to have a sense of ownership over BBC Three through unique cross-platform presentation techniques. Viewers will be able to upload clips of themselves introducing their favourite BBC Three programmes, the best of which will feature within the heart of the peak-time schedule

On the programming front:

Lily Allen is to host her very own show, Lily Allen And Friends, which is based around social networking

Upstaged, a major new entertainment format that will live and develop primarily on the web, is an eight-week live online event that is a mixture of talent show, stamina and social networking

And content will be available via widgets:

We’ll make better use of clips and short-form content, some of it specially commissioned to help audiences discover and sample what the channel is all about. This will enable them, over time, to take and embed BBC THREE content in their own sites. This will take the brand into the places where our audiences spend time - we won’t assume that they’ll always come to us - through appropriate partnerships, syndication and embeddable widgets.

Meanwhile, MTV is to close its Flux channel, which attempted to combine social networking with music videos. It will be replaced by a time-shifted version of the main MTV. Similarly, the US music channel ManiaTV gave up on user-gen content in favour of returning to a music service.

As Futurescape's Colin Donald recently commented to New Media Markets, bringing the audience and their content into linear broadcast television has proven challenging for existing channel brands. It's the start-ups, such as Sumo TV (which has recruited Loaded founder James Brown for editorial), that seem to have the advantage.

The BBC and MTV moves are both in an Anglophone media context. In France and Italy, there have been some interesting examples of programmes that include viewer webcam contributions on a kind of phone-in model. See our 2005 blog post with screenshots.

Meanwhile, the multi-platform teen service BBC Switch is building on its experience of interactive online television with Wannabes and Signs of Life by commissioning further shows from Conker Media.

What is the future of online television? In the latest Futurescape report, we analyse the new shows and studios and interviews industry leaders as online TV booms.

Our exclusive interviews give valuable industry insights from the Head of BBC Switch, Geoff Goodwin, and the producers of the US online shows The Burg and In the Motherhood.

For more details about 2008: The Birth of Online TV, contact colin@futurescape.co.uk

Comments

[Nick Reynolds (editor, BBC Internet Blog)]

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