Future TV: Experts Debate Impact of Writers Strike

Industry experts claim the on-going writers strike, which has resulted in TV audiences being deluged in reruns of such popular series as “CSI” and “The Daily Show” is changing viewing habits that may not change back.

Speaking at the Future TV show Tuesday, presenters said impacted viewers have been spending more of what they used to use on traditional TV, on Internet video Web sites, over-the-top PC to TV offerings or video-on-demand.

“Last month 40 percent of our viewing happened in prime time,” said Dmitry Shapiro, founding CEO and current president of Veoh Networks Inc.. The company offers a downloadable software program that enables over-the-top content (content form the Web) to be sent to the TV for viewing. “Whether people who have left will go back or not, I’m not sure.”

While nobody is suggesting the strike has forced anyone to leave traditional TV altogether, there’s a line of thinking about speakers that some will either keep spending more “TV time” elsewhere, or will continue spending more time on non-TV video viewing.

Content aggregators are also waiting to see what impact the writers strike has on TV viewing.

“People are turning to online,” asserted Amy Friedlander-Hoffman, senior vice-president of programming for AT&T. “People are saying, ‘OK, nothing is on.’ I’m just not sure everyone will be shifting back when the strike is over.”

One media industry expert seemed unconcerned, seeing any shift away from traditional TV as a glass-half-full scenario.

“The answer is people will be very upset at missing ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ for a while,” reasoned Shelly Palmer, managing director at Advanced Media Venture Group. “But people are habitual creatures so they will come back.”

The final impact of the writer strike, however, is the affect it will have on the TV programming production business, especially in Hollywood, warned Palmer.

“The bigger question, however, is what’s the business going to look like? Companies love it because they’re able to cancel contracts, claiming outside forces, of TV shows that are too expensive to make than not make.”

If the strike needed to be settled, he added, it would have been settle already.

Ironically, the writers strike in search of compensation for newer uses of their asset may end up backfiring.

“This gives folks a unique opportunity to finally sit down and take a hard look at all their options for content,” said Dan Daines, general manager for VIP-TV at Echostar.

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines