World Television Day: television without TVs?

Since the very first broadcasts more than 90 years ago, television has conquered the world. According to estimates, an average world citizen spends about 9 years of his life watching TV alone. Given the television development, increasing content availability and ways for watching it, this number is doomed to grow in the future. But will television still be called television in the future?

When the Scottish innovator John Logie Baird premiered the first television having broadcasted a black-and-white 30-line view in 1926, it seemed like a miracle. Nowadays, colour-streamed HD (1080 horizontal lines) broadcasts, which can also be paused and rewinded, also allowing browsing two weeks of recordings, have become a self-evident phenomenon, which we take for granted.

'Every second household in Lithuania uses pay-TV services, and nearly half of them watch smart IPTV. The perception of television itself has changed, it has moved beyond traditional broadcasts and stepped outside a television screen. TV content - movies, series, shows, sports and event broadcasts - is available on a variety of platforms, from YouTube to HBO, so people can find and watch relevant content whenever and wherever they want. And this is just the beginning', says Nortautas Luopas, Head of B2C at Telia Lietuva.

New opportunities also change people's habits. Although cable TV broadcasters in Europe are living in a golden age, it is predicted to end with more and more people, especially younger generation, choosing other content platforms, primarily webcasts. In addition, the number of people who agree to pay for online content has been increasing: GlobalWebIndex polls show that in 2014, a mere 15% of respondents said they had paid for movies or a broadcast service, while last year the share of such respondents accounted for 22%.

Mix of competitors

Gytis Oganauskas, Deputy General Manager of the national broadcaster LRT, says that the traditional perception of television has been changing, and everyone from newspapers and radio stations to social networking and Internet portals is competing in the video content market.

'Competition is fierce, and there is a trend across Europe that the audience has only been loyal to channels that offer high-quality content. We are pleased to see that LRT has such a loyal and continuously growing audience. We have the most creative potential in Lithuania in all our channels, and we have lately been focusing on synergies between TV, radio, portal editors and cooperation between journalists, which further contributes to making time spent with LRT meaningful', says G. Oganauskas.

He adds that in offering engaging and high-quality content, the national broadcaster has increasingly outperformed the usual top leaders, reaching new audiences in various platforms - on LRT.lt portal, in social networks and mobile apps.

Meanwhile, Vytautas Benokraitis, General Manager of Delfi, emphasizes the importance of content creators finding their own niche and exclusivity in the intense competitive battle. For Delfi TV, this is original Lithuanian content.

'Traditional TV is now only one of the channels to watch video content. Internet TV is just as powerful, and its popularity has been continuously increasing. At Delfi TV, we strive to be accessible everywhere, sharing content not only on our portal, but also through Telia TV, YouTube, and social media, and we plan to provide the viewers with even more original Lithuanian content, live broadcasts and new broadcast formats in the future', V. Benokraitis reveals.

Change is only starting

Telecommunication companies have also pursued the attention, time and money of viewers with new business models, which are becoming not only a link between TV and online content platforms, but also start managing televisions and producing films and series by themselves. For example, in early November, the European Commission approved a transaction of Telia Company Group for acquiring Bonnier Broadcasting, a company which owns TV4, C More channel in Sweden and MTV in Finland. Marie Ehrling, the Chairman of the Board of Telia Company, says that by incorporating media into its business, the company aims to create a higher value for its customers and shareholders.

There also are some news in Lithuania: Telia Lietuva has recently launched an online content platform Telia Play, which allows enjoying smart TV content and features on phones, tablets and PCs. This service is currently available to selected testing users only, but the plan is to provide all Telia TV customers with the opportunity to try Telia Play for free in the near future.

The lion's share of the Lithuanian Internet traffic comes primarily from video content as it is the most demanding of data, and Telia's network statistics confirms this fact. The measurements done during peak hours revealed that Telia TV content accounted for as many as 57% of the total Telia Internet traffic in Lithuania, international Internet traffic totalled 23%, local communication accounted for 15% and mobile Internet made up the remaining 5%. It is important to note that Telia has over 1.3 million mobile communication customers in Lithuania and about 240 thousand Telia TV viewers, however, the latter ones generated ten times the amount of data traffic than all mobile customers put together.

Telia Play has previously been introduced in Scandinavia, where people spent about 50% of time watching video content on TV, with the remaining time being spent on computers (an average of 33%) and smartphones and tablets (about 17%). So, the decision to watch TV on the phone was very welcomed.

Not only do Scandinavians watch major sporting events on small screens when they are unable to return home on time to watch them on TV, but also this is how they watch new popular TV series (such as the Game of Thrones) or while traveling and going on vacation. The Telia Play solution also comes in handy when family members want to watch different content. That way someone watches a large TV screen, while others can turn on a phone or a tablet.