Content is king ... but only if you can watch it when you want to

Audiences will pay to see their favourite television shows and films, on their own terms, writes Brett Debritz

Robin Wright and Kevin Spacey in season 4 of House of Cards. David Giesbrecht / Netflix

Who remembers the “water cooler moment”? That time of day in a workplace when we’d gather to discuss the one thing that we knew we all had in common – the big show on television from the night before.

I was reminded of that long-past ritual while reading about the death of the Scottish comedian Ronnie Corbett, whose 1970s and 1980s variety show with Ronnie Barker, The Two Ronnies, used to attract audiences in the United Kingdom alone of 17 million people. This was at a time when the UK population was 56 million – meaning that almost one in every three people was watching the same thing at the same time.

The next morning, in schoolyards, on factory floors and in offices, people were fondly reciting to each other the tongue-twisting sketches and shaggy dog stories for which the two comedians had become famous.

In the United States in 1983, the final episode of the Korean War comedy, M*A*S*H, attracted about 106 million viewers – meaning that almost half the American population of 233 million had tuned in.

But recent years have seen incredible changes in the way people view what we used to call television programmes and are now known, in the media industry at least, as “content”.

Enormous viewing figures are unimaginable today. Even the big reality and talent shows – in this part of the world, the likes of Arab Idol, The Voice and Arabs Got Talent – don’t come anywhere near that kind of saturation. And much-hyped shows such as Game of Thrones, House of Cards, Orange is the New Black and The Walking Dead pale in comparison to the blockbusters of yore when it comes to viewer numbers, especially when taken as a percentage of the overall population.

The Big Bang Theory, currently the most popular US sitcom, attracts about 20 million American viewers.

Why has this happened? Because of disruptive technology that has led to more viewing choices and more flexible delivery options, along with changes within families and society in general.

It is rare now for families to sit down together to watch the same television show, as my parents and siblings and I did 30 years ago. Family members may be engaged in viewing at the same time, but it will almost certainly be different programmes on different channels on different devices.

The lines have been blurred, the audience has scattered, and this has caused considerable consternation to the big players in the media industry.

In particular, traditional broadcasters no longer have a guaranteed audience, and fewer viewers means lower advertising revenue. The competition is no longer confined to a handful of other free-to-air stations, it’s hundreds of satellite channels, thousands of programmes available on-demand and millions of videos, from six-second amateur clips to two-hour feature films, streamed over the internet.

Much of this content is freely available – either by design or by illegal means – or for a very low cost.

I pay Dh50 a month for a basic package including Al Jazeera, BBC World News, euro News and Russia Today as part of Etisalat’s eLife service. But here’s the thing, I never watch it.

If I want to catch up on news -- which, as a journalist, I do -- I find it easier to go to the web or one of my phone apps.

I also have a Netflix subscription that costs me about Dh30 a month. In common with other Netflix users, I’m annoyed that the offering here is nowhere near as comprehensive as it is elsewhere, particularly in the US and UK. We’re getting “Netflix lite” despite paying full price.

The current bugbear for many Netflix subscribers is the fact that, due to a local licensing agreement, the fourth series of House of Cards isn’t available on the streaming service in the UAE. Fans who want to behave legally have to wait for it to be meted out in weekly doses by cable broadcaster OSN, rather than binge-watch it like their friends in the US. The reality, of course, is that some people will always find a way to get what they want. They will use devices such as set-top boxes with fake decoders, virtual private networks or pirate download sites. And they will do so because they believe there is little chance of them getting caught and because they feel that they have a right to see this content.

The world is becoming too small for different rules to apply in different countries. The challenge for the producers, distributors and broadcasters is to find ways to satisfy an increasingly content-hungry audience and to make money doing so. I believe that people will pay for content, as long as they can have it on their own terms.

On Twitter: @debritz