Humour

Attracting a lost generation

T A Balasubramanian on how on-demand entertaining TV programs on computer screens will take the mind off software programs

Returning to the wild and wacky domain of the Techno Over-exposition of Geeks and Gizmos for Lazy Enterprises (TOGGLE), the long-running show for die-hard IT fanatics, you, Papyrus Bytewala, CIO of Baffle Corporation, have the dubious pleasure of bumping into none other than an old friend, Nawab Ghoda Ghallstone, Junior.

Next to you is Danny DeVito, your CTO at Baffle, who has the secret distinction of being the first biped walking humanoid. He is currently being coached by you in the real world through a process of immersion and random interactivity with all those who make up your round of daily encounters at work.

The nawab, founder and CEO of Ghallstone Labs, is an unstoppable marketing maverick, often plugging his exotic sales pitches with imaginative tales of technological wizardry and sometimes utter nonsense. Dressed in a swirling yellow sherwani and a turban, he stands next to a brightly decorated stall which presents a large hoarding with a screen that screams ‘Geek up your Web Life with 50,000 choices’ and displays a collage of prominent TV channel brands.

“Well, well, my friends, the last time I seem to have bored you with my talk about virtual life, eh? Nothing of that sort today for you, Danny, or you, Papyrus. Today, I am here to present you pure entertainment for techies. We have now turned our attention to the brand new world of TV on the web. Welcome to GeeKube.”

“All right,” you say, resigning yourself to fate. “What is GeeKube all about?”

“Ah, I knew you would be fascinated,” says the nawab, looking pleased. “As you may be aware, a fierce battle is taking place for the eyeballs of elusive younger techies, who are increasingly turning their backs on traditional media. Advertisers are terrified of no longer being able to reach young audiences, while broadcasters and other traditional media owners are seeing mass audiences getting eroded by influences like Geeko.”

“And what is Geeko?” says DeVito, looking transfixed.

“It seems to be the most popular geek networking site today on the Web, with over 40 million users spending an average of 45 minutes a day on it. You could say it rivals MySpace, which has drawn into its fold many big music artists, and Facebook, which has an older user base and has been enthusiastically embraced by office workers around the world. Now, traditional TV channel owners have been looking on helplessly as Geeko, the predator, has gobbled up what they feel is the ‘lost TV generation’ of 13 to 24-year-old geeks who make up the social networking site’s core audience. They spend almost all their free time on the web, on sites like Geeko. This is where our Ghallstone Labs and GeeKube come in.”

“So what do you offer on GeeKube?”

“Riveting and entertaining TV programs piped on their screens that will, on demand, take their minds off software programs—or at least that’s the way we hope it will work. As you might have observed, video games, iPods and other diversions are tempting these young techie devils away from the tube. Research from Duckbill & Goose shows that geeks with Internet connections, for instance, spent an average of 10 hours, 15 minutes a week online last year, a 17% increase over 2006. Watching TV, by contrast, grew by only 6 %. So the jittery telecast tribes have recently turned their attention to spreading their programs on the Internet—where the eyeballs have gone. Web 2.0 logic dictates that telecasters will stand a better chance of continuing to reach mass audiences if they are able to scatter clips, trailers and other teasing background material through the Web to bored geeks who will no longer head for ‘destination sites’ to watch it.”

“Bringing the water to the horse, so to speak?”

“Exactly. As we know, your horses have no time to spare for amusing themselves outside of their workstations. GeeKube will bring the world of TV right into the average geek’s desktop while he works on his code or tinkers with a project. Our research shows that the typical Geeko profile is like a teenager’s cluttered and disorderly room. So when they sign on, the website became an extension of their personality by hosting pictures and notes from friends and displaying their favourite music bands and TV shows.”

“Their view matches the viewer’s space, eh? Deserts for camels, jungles for monkeys?”

“Yes, we like customers to feel at home with GeeKube.”

“You seem to be burying the old TV industry with this online assault,” you say.

“Well, not really,” guffaws the nawab. “It’s just that your good old TV set may not be really necessary for you to catch your favourite programs—it pops up right there on your browser space. You could say that this ‘one-pipe’ convergence will remodel the landscape. That’s when a single broadband feed into your home will hook into one device that operates your TV, PC, DVD player, DVR, games console and stereo system. The differences between a TV and a computer, or between a website and a TV channel, will then start disappearing, like a swipe to clear up your screen. Besides, with all the digital storage and memory at our disposal, we can really do away with the entire business of ‘catching’ a program as it is beamed. You can have it all on demand when you want it. For example, we have on trial the GeeKube catch-up service, which offers any program from the last seven days that you might have missed. You could even choose whether to watch ads and which way to watch them.”

“Ah, that is something to cherish,” you sigh.

“Absolutely,” says DeVito, rolling his eyes. “Imagine zapping out every commercial and getting only the story.”

“That’s going to be hard for advertisers,” laughs the nawab. “The old ways of TV advertising are simpler—based on the show’s ratings, advertisers pay for a certain number of eyeballs viewing their ads. But zapping and other avoidance technologies—ranging from simple remotes that make it easy for you to channel surf during commercial breaks to these new recording services—make life miserable for the advertising fraternity. They can count eyeballs, but all that means is that an audience has been factored in—not that it is paying attention or is tuned in.”

“We can live with that,” says DeVito, cheerfully. “But hey, I do enjoy some of the ads—sometimes.”

“Well, Danny, it all comes down to what you want to watch. Content is king, and while GeeKube now offers fewer than 50 channels, it will soon have hundreds, and eventually thousands. To keep things simple, you can stick to a few channels. But if you like, you can open the floodgates. Today TV is 500 channels, but we are just a few years away from a 5,000-channel world, I predict.”

“You would, of course, expect geeks to get some work done in between all that on-demand channel surfing?”

“Well, Papyrus, that is entirely in your hands—as a CIO who decides what your geeks should be doing. But let me tell you—in this age of leisure, super-specialization and abundance of media, they would be spoilt for choice, anyway,” guffaws the nawab. “We could easily bring you 50,000 channels from all over the world. You may have a COBOL coding nostalgia channel and a channel just for mainframe computing. I can envision a Grill Bates channel dedicated to Windoves, and one each for serials like Leanox Lore, Big Blue and and Java Man.”