My Media Tips for 2008

Happy New Year to everyone, it’s 2008 - I’m not sure what happened to 2007 to be honest as it all went by so quickly - but here’s hoping for a slightly slower year this time.

For me 2008 is personally going to be a year of nappies, sick and screaming - and that’s just the weekends - our new baby is due on 11 January although looking at my wife it will probably arrive any time in the next few days.

For everyone else, especially in media terms, I think 2008 is going to be the Time-Shift year. I know people having been time-shifting for ages but this is the year it will get a LOT easier.

The BBC iPlayer has launched as a streaming service - complete with heavy promotion and people seem to be finding it fairly easy to use - ITV will probably heavily advertise ITV.com now as well and I’m hoping Channel 4 will drop the application and offer streamed shows through their website.

iPlayer will also be launching through Cable and IPTV companies this year - BT and Virgin will be offering iPlayer shows over the air which will bring it to the attention of even more people.

We’re probably going to find out more about Kangaroo - the commercial version of iPlayer, ITV.com and 4OD combined. And I’ll carry on using SKY+ to avoid adverts.

But this will probably also be a year of more creative forms of advertising - as more people time-shift the pressure will be put on OfCom to allow commercial broadcasters to advertise in other ways - such as in vision adverts, product placements and fewer adverts shown more frequently during a show.

I also think we’ll see podcasts grow in popularity, especially video podcasts with the increasing popularity of the iPod Nano (video).

The BBC Trust will probably allow the BBC to publish video podcasts which will probably take the form of cut-down versions of TV shows they own the full rights to (Top Gear, Newsnight etc).

This will then prompt the commercial to up their game and start offering more video podcasts of their shows - maybe with embedded adverts to cover costs and make money.

I also think we’ll see a lot of fuss made over home grown children’s television in 2008 - money will be made available to the commercial operators to produce children’s television here in the UK and to develop British ideas.

There will also be talk, off the back of Australia planning to filter ‘unsavoury’ websites at ISP level, of the UK doing the same thing and of regulation of the internet as major UK broadcasters use it more.

I’ll publish more ideas for the new year as I think of them. Until then - Happy 2008.

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