The Growing Importance of Search for TV

As media markets continue to expand, become more competitive, and with the flood of content availability and options, helping people find the information and content they want becomes more and more important - and valuable - to potential consumers.
  John R. Osborn offers some thoughts on the importance of search for TV firms in the Online Video Insider blog.  I'll offer my own insight that search will remain important, and become increasingly valued, for all media forms and formats.

  Osborn starts by reminiscing about TV's Golden Age of the 1950s, when there were limited channels and programming schedules were fairly static - so that most everyone knew where and when to find the programs they were interested in viewing.  Today, he notes, more than half of US TV homes have DVRs, about 90% use multichannel video providers (cable, DBS, etc.) to access TV content from some or all of the 500+ networks available in the U.S.  And then you also need to consider a number of other content sources that Osborn doesn't list - the huge backlist of movies and TV programs available through home video (DVDs, BluRay); the rise of multiple streaming services offering access to TV content and movies (Netflix, Hulu+, etc.) - including many current programs; and the explosion of online video.  A quick stat from YouTube can give you an idea of the wealth of online video content available - on average, users upload to YouTube more video content each hour than the major U.S. networks have produced in their 60+ years of operation.
  Today, it's not enough to produce good TV programming to successfully attract an audience - potential viewers have to first learn that the content is available, and then to find it.  And to  become successful, the content has to be engaging enough to get them to not only view the program, but to come back for new content as it becomes available.  Search can be incredibly useful in meeting these goals.
  Osborn's post outlines the importance and value that good search options can provide viewers, advertisers, content producers, cable/telco/satellite distributors (PayTV) many of which currently offer a variety of search options - and are applicable for local stations and outlets as well.  There are some good exemplars and templates out there - Tivo's search and recommendation system, Microsoft's new X-Box Live technology, Amazon's recommendation platform, and Netflix's recommendation system.
  The full post is worth a read.

Source -  The Importance Of Search In Next-Gen T/V Business Model,  Online Video Insider