The future of Internet TV for broadcast companies through Scenario Building / Anna Lynn E. Macalintal

Date : June 1, 2015
Number of Pages : 111 leaves
Adviser : Prof. Glen A. Imbang

Abstract

Local media broadcasting companies in the Philippines have enjoyed tremendous audience acceptance for the longest time. Filipinos have an insatiable appetite for watching content using their TV sets. It is a common thing for Filipino families to enjoy watching their favorite programs together while in the comfort of their living rooms. The impact of the TV show to Filipino audience is being carried over as conversation topics in the workplace and when friends and families get together. In the age of digital disruption through this conversation extends to using social media where the traditional audience becomes a digital audience and can provide their sentiments about the show using social networking sites. This change in behavior can be attributed to the faster way of sharing contents and feedback through the internet. The internet has a huge impact to the media broadcasters as contents from anywhere and everywhere get easily uploaded to social sites such as YouTube and Facebook. People who missed watching their favorite top-rating show in linear channel (Free TV) can easily search it in YouTube and watch it. Content creation now is not only limited to TV networks. Individuals with digital camera can upload their own user generated content (UGC) in social sites. TV networks from all over the world started to recognize this change in audience behavior and decided to extend their infrastructure to support Internet TV. Digital disruption brings Internet TV and the future of broadcasting companies depends on how all stakeholders such as advertisers, technology enablers, consumers, government entities, suppliers and so on can adapt and adopt to these changes.

For this study, the variables used in the scenario building were primarily been drawn upon the researches made on the empirical studies on Internet TV adoption in other countries. Also, primary data were gathered through a survey following the research questions conducted for a similar study in Taiwan. The questions used where scored with Cronbach Alpha from 0.75 to 0.79, this is the acceptable score to gauge reliability of the questions. Another source of the study are interviews conducted from two industry experts to get their advice on how Internet TV adoption can be successful. The information gathered were used as inputs for the environmental analysis.

The environmental analysis used several factors to get the holistic view of the different factors affecting Internet TV adoption. These factors are the following : 1) Technology - internet speed, internet access, user interface, Over-the-top (OTT) application, devices functionality, distribution; 2) Marketing - new business model, market segment and understanding consumer needs and behavior; 3) Economy- affordability of data access, economic growth, poverty rate and disposable income; 4) Political/Legal - content piracy, internet exchange policy, digital content censorship and classification, 5) Socio-Cultural - internet motivations of the digital audience, demographics and 6) Operations - employing the right value chain for broadcasting companies.

Following the theoretical framework used for this research, the detailed scenario building exercise was conducted. Through the analysis of the factors affecting the environment, several key predictable variables are defined. Assessment of the uncertainty and impact scores of the key predictable, uncertainty variables and clustered variables were used in combination to come-up with critical uncertainty variables. The critical uncertainties were then used to create scenarios where the strategies were based and analyzed.