Happy Friday!
Last week saw one of the most thrilling Super Bowl games of all time, with the Patriots overcoming a record breaking 25-point deficit to win in the event's first ever overtime (earning Fox an extra $20 million in the process).
The ever ambitious halftime show saw Lady Gaga taking centre stage, along with an army of 300 drones that created a spectacular light show behind her performance.
But how did they pull it off? With a little help from Intel.
Top Pick
BBC jumps into Snapchat Shows with Planet Earth II
Snapchat have announced a new deal with BBC Worldwide to produce a new, six-episode Snapchat Show for North America, based on the BBC's hugely popular Planet Earth II documentary series. At Rerun we think this partnership is both a practical and innovative step for both the BBC and Snapchat.
Firstly, the BBC can use the vast catalogue of material filmed over three years for the documentary that never made the show. Planet Earth has long been known as the documentary series that innovates and pushes the boundaries of filmmaking in the natural world. It will be fascinating to see how it incorporates the backlog of footage into Snapchat.
Many will see this partnership as the BBC looking for new audiences from Snapchatâs core younger demographic. However this new venture also reveals Snapchat's desire to pick up and engage older audiences, who are already fans of Planet Earth, but may not be Snapchat users.
Furthermore this partnership will make Snapchat standout from the crowd.
'...itâs a sign of how Snap has figured out a way to make itself relevant to a wider audience with original content at a time when others like Twitter and Facebook have also been trying to capture more video viewers
A win-win for both sides it seams!
Features
EU agrees on new rules allowing Europeans to travel and enjoy online content services across borders
According to a new EU agreement, Europeans may soon be able to fully use their online subscriptions to films, sports events, e-books, video games or music services when travelling within the EU. This agreement is part of the Digital Single Market Strategy which hopes to bring clearer copyright rules that will increase cultural diversity in Europe and content available online.
For public service broadcasters, OTT subscription services, and cable companies, this will certainly place extra requirements on them to develop services to cater for traveling Europeans. Given that some countries require the payment of TV licenses to fund their public broadcasters, this agreement could start the mass overhaul of how public broadcasters are even funded at a domestic level. It certainly will affect how rights are domestically and internationally negotiated for sports, live events and VOD content, and may have an impact on content piracy in the longer term. With the added complication of Brexit it will be interesting to see how this new agreement plays out.
Facebook streaming numbers plummet 94% after Nielsen recalibration
Nielsen recalibrated their NetRating measurements following on from last year's story that Facebook had been overestimating a key video metric by between 60%-80%.
But while you would expect to see a drop in this range, the actual figures show a 94% drop in Australia, putting Facebook far being YouTube in terms of viewing figures.
Nielsen measured Facebook streams of 8.6b in July last year, 12.506b in August and 9.94b in September. But in the months after the change, the numbers have plunged to just 560m in October and November and 580m in December.
Measurement of total YouTube streams by Nielsen throughout the same six month period saw streams fluctuate between 2.6b to a high of 2.8b and a low of 2.4b (desktop only).
Future of TV
Generation âIâ and the Future of TV - Some Predictions for 2017
Generation I: it's a new one on us, too, here at Rerun. Generation X? Yes. Generation Y? Got it. Generation I? Hmmm.
Shay David, President and GM of Kaltura Media and Telecom, clarifies his use of Generation I to refer to "...iPhones and iPads and for the capital âIâ of Individuals", but really, he is primarily referring to millennials.
Throughout, David makes states some pretty obvious points about the consumer culture of TV
"...the Internet has brought with it a culture of âfreeâ content and given access to free content, consumers are reluctant to pay high subscription fees for TV."
Where the article gets most interesting and insightful is David's nuanced forecasting of trends that will and won't define TV in 2017. For example, David predicts that we will see an increase in the volume of direct-to-consumer OTT services launching over the next 12 months; by the same token, David expects that linear TV wonât die during 2017.
Interactive Media
Mixed reality will soon mean big business for brands
Mixed reality technology isn't mature enough yet for brands to embrace, but it's just a few years away from the mainstream.
See Digital's Keith Curtin explains why brands need to consider their MR/AR strategy now to prepare for the many new ways in which products will be marketed, purchased and advertised in a mixed reality landscape. He also outlines some of the potential challenges for consumers that come with it, including spam and data privacy.
"AR is going to be as important as eating three meals a day, and once itâs arrived, we will wonder how we ever lived without it, similar to how we feel about our phones" â Tim Cook
The Movie with a Thousand Plotlines
Employees at Bloch's company envision a future where viewers gather around the water cooler to discuss the differences in what they watched, rather than to parse a shared dramatic experience.
The New Yorker have published an interesting piece on interactive film and whether it could be the defining art form of this century. The piece is centered around the interactive video company Eko (formerly Interlude), whose vision of the future is a 'choose your own adventure' style experience.
Note this is a long read, you need a solid 30 minutes, but it's well worth bookmarking.
Virtual Reality
How escape rooms and live theatre are paving the way for VR
According to Bryan Bishop at The Verge, âVR experiences just arenât that interesting.â In this article, he explores what the missing elements might be, among them, the lack of human interaction VR experiences offer. Perhaps this missing feature may be found in the cross pollination of VR with other forms of entertainment. In other words, can VR continue to develop experiences that combine with other entertainment forms?
Bishop suggests VR should continue integrate with escape rooms and immersive theatre (We're massive fans of escape rooms at Rerun!). Escape rooms allow for teamwork and problem solving. Immersive theatre gives the audience a role in the act, no matter how small or big. VR, on its own, doesnât do this well as users are on their own in a virtual world.
Escape rooms also incorporate "story telling" well as they allow for the flexibility of it. Participants create their own path through the puzzle, whereas theatre and the broader Hollywood entertainment industry depict stories that are already set in stone. If VR can continue to blend its technology with entertainment forms like these, it will likely become âinteresting.â
Esports
That Super Bowl comeback had something esports will always lack
Pushing the human body to its limits makes for great entertainment
At this stage no-one in broadcasting can doubt the success and potential of esports. We've discussed on Rerun before some of the aspects that will likely prevent it from going as mainstream on cable as traditional sports. In this article by The Verge they touch on one of those aspects, namely that you have to play the games in order to understand what's going on. The games are heavily based on mental agility and reaction speed, and the virtual characters move unnaturally which makes it impossible for newcomers to intuitively anticipate or understand what's going on.
It's a bit like watching an intense game of speed chess, impressive at first, but if you don't understand chess it holds limited appeal. In contrast, watching athletes combine this mental agility with physical extremes will forever hold our appeal. That's what creates heroes who transcend their sport and capture the world's attention, like Serena Williams, Usain Bolt, or Lionel Messi. We love athletes who fight against our natural imperfections to perform miracles.
Briefs
- Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok sets individual Twitch streaming record with 245,100 concurrent viewers
- TV maker Vizio unlawfully tracked viewing habits
- Huffington Post copies Snapchat with new 'storybook' format
- Facebook has big plans for its video business. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is on Facebookâs board. Discuss.
- Facebook has poached an executive from MTV to help it compete with Netflix and YouTube
- Apple hires Amazonâs Fire TV Head to run Apple TV business
- HBO Now surpasses 2 million domestic subscribers
- Rock Band VR is coming in March, pre-orders now open
Why our Super Bowl ad failed
Cards Against Humanity are known for their anti-marketing promotions and PR stunts, using techniques like sarcasm and reverse psychology to attract customers. In a style true to form they delivered one of the oddest Super Bowl ads, which in their own words 'showed a disappointing return on investment ($0)'. In this hilarious postmortem they reveal how it all went wrong...
'We spent so much time selecting the right potato for the ad that we never stopped to question whether a potato would convey the essential brand experience of Cards Against Humanity.'