 Okay, hello. This is Garrett Leonhardt, futurist in Sydney. I live in Switzerland, but I'm in Sydney now here with Ross Dawson, fellow futurist and purveyor of wisdoms. Today we're going to talk about, or now we're going to talk about the future of television. It's a small topic, I guess, and I'll pass it over to Ross first and what's your take on that? There's lots and lots of nice juicy bits about the future of television. One is this idea of video everywhere, so I don't think it's that long before we have video wallpaper. Basically, take your paintbrush and you paint your wall and you've got the whole thing as video and so that's all tabletops or floors or ceilings or your glasses and so on, so that means that there's lots of spaces to put all of this extraordinary amount of video that we're creating. Another thing which I'm particularly interested in is this idea of participatory TV, where it's part of the whole shift of media has been from this hub and spoke as in broadcast, we're in the middle, you're out there, watching whatever it is we have to bevay, to creating something which is co-created, where people are actually participating in that. And there's a few interesting things happening in that space at the moment, which are pushing out the boundaries just a little bit. There's what's trending from CBS, which includes some interactive elements. There's Al Jazeera's The Stream, which is kind of like a social media view of the news source and there's a couple of others, so we're beginning to get into participatory TV, but it's pretty early on. Yeah, I think in many ways we may have to get rid of the word television, right? Because the way with, I mean, if you're, we're both in the same age now, if you're thinking of television, you're thinking of a central entity providing it, you're thinking of a box where it's inside of, you're thinking of a cable in the ground or something, none of that is true anymore. I mean, it's still true, but there's now lots of other things that are over the top. Television is 90% of Chinese people. If they are online, they're watching online video instead of television or along with television, right? So the very definition of video is completely upside down. Of course, there's not just YouTube. There's another 50 like YouTube, and then there's Ted.com and 4RTV and Big Think. And so this on-demand role of television both on production as well as on consumption is just exploding, right? So if we think of a larger story, it's also converging with text and with audio. So New York Times now has video channels, and I mean, the other day, I think Jeff Jarvis said, it's basically books that you can watch and television that you can read, right? So it's now basically it's completely converging and every television in the world will be connected to the Internet. Yes, absolutely. So I mean, part of it is this video is a better word than TV. Moving images is sort of even a better catch-all, but it's kind of getting a bit clunky. Maybe you can call it MI. But this whole thing of IPTV, it's been inevitable from the start. The fact that, yes, broadcast towers exist and they are great at getting out. Television signals to a lot of people, but given we have a whole lot of new infrastructure, there's no question that the existing channels will also be getting out over IP before we knock down the towers. And they will have, you know, provide the space for tens, hundreds, thousands, millions of channels. And that's the, we call it IPTV, or call it what you like. This is the infinite channel world. Well, if you're looking at 20 years from now, you know, we probably don't need the proprietary infrastructure of cables in the ground or just for certain kind of television programs. So this can all go over the web or electronic networks. Right now, that doesn't work because we're going to broadcast over the internet. Now, if there's 100,000 people listening, it's game over, right? Because it doesn't have enough juice, right? But 20 years from now, that's all going to converge and come together. So from my point of view, I think the future of television looks great because everything is a screen. Yes. And that's a huge opportunity. I mean, everything, newspapers are screens now, right? I mean, you actually have magazines that have screens embedded. So because there's a screen everywhere, that means everybody wants to see video. And now, for example, education is all available online. This is a huge opportunity for educational TV and shows and all this kind of stuff. So it kind of blurs the border between content groups, you know, like, for example, games are now actually television as well. And you can even play poker on digital television now, which essentially is just a game. So I think it's also interesting to see that to a pretty fair degree, the television channels and stations are taking us, having a similar mindset and approach to the newspaper organizations have, which is not recognizing what you've seen as these blurring boundaries, but being able to say that newspapers and newspapers and yes, we'll set up some websites as well. And television channels as well, the defensiveness, I think, in a lot of TV companies is doing them a disservice. Because the reality is, video is going to be at the heart of this new world. And who better to be able to take that opportunity than those who have already been doing it for a long time. Yet I don't see this willingness to move away from the existing channel to a far broader view of what video is. And how value can be extracted from that? Well, it's about the advertising money, right? Because basically on a global level, $650 billion to spend on advertising is to reach us to buy stuff, right? And then the rest of it is data mining, marketing, public relations and all the other high buildings. That's a trillion dollars, right? So there's a trillion dollars on the table and television guys are saying, you know, wait a minute, we used to get $600 billion of that a year, right? And now these web guys are coming along and taking the sausage off the plate here, right? So basically what has to happen is that they have to realize that advertisers are not going to keep on putting money into the dumb television box. That doesn't know who you are. Because as a saying goes in the advertising, 50% has always been wasted. You just didn't know which one. Now you know which one. Though that, again, is one of the opportunities is the targeted advertising. And that's, again, moving away where you can't, well, there are ways of doing it actually over traditional broadcast channels, integrating internet connection to be able to bring in targeted advertising. This which goes to this broader issue of the future of personal advertising and the regulatory and social issues that will allow that. But, you know, the vast majority of people don't want to watch the vast majority of ads on television. Yet that could be very different. We don't all need to go to the soap opera as in branded content being everything. We can actually move to there being some kind of brands going out in ways that people which are going to the right people if you're providing information which they want. But this does require a different infrastructure and absolutely requires a different mindset from those who are selling and placing that advertising. It goes with the issue of fragmentation. I mean, in the 60s and 70s, 75% of Americans are watching I Love Lucy or Gunsmog or Dallas. So you could hit everyone with the same ad for the next car and everybody would know it. Today, four and a half or five percent of Americans are watching American Idol, it's completely fragmented audience. Ten years from now, you'll be happy to get one percent of the entire population of the country to watch the same TV show. Because we're going like this, we're completely fragmented. And because of that, television is going to go into niche channels, advertising is going to follow. It's all going to be targeted, advertising is all going to be very creative stuff to find us. And this will completely change the landscape of television as far as we know it. As I was saying earlier, let's get rid of that word, find a new word. Because basically the direction that we're going is opening up a lot. So those are a few thoughts on the future of television. For more from me, go to RossDawson.com or social Ross Dawson. There's chapters from all of my books and lots of reports and articles on my blog. And for Goode... I actually have my own TV station as GoodeTube.com, that's a YouTube channel. You can go there and watch my stuff. About 200 hours will ruin you some of the occasion. Otherwise, go to mediafuturist.com and look at my stuff there. Thanks very much for tuning in.