From June 5th
I apologise if it's a memory you'd rather repress but I'd like to drag you back to the Eurovision Song Contest, because I suspect this year's show illustrated all sorts of interesting things going on in the media and communications world. The first, of course, is the enormous additional boost of drama you get by doing things live. Saturday night telly has always known this, Honda and C4 have rediscovered the power of live advertising and Euro2008 will demonstrate it all over again. This has to be a way forward for TV broadcasters, their remaining trump card is the live spectacular, and as Eurovision shows, the more people you connect the more dramatic it feels. Liveness heightens things so a mild huff from Terry Wogan gets really exciting; we don't know what he might say next. I bet we see more and more live stuff as media broadcasters look to emphasise the things only they can do.
The second thing that Eurovision demonstrated is the way that television is now being supplemented by all sorts of social media. Not replaced. Twitter was swamped on eurovision night by chat, comment, name-calling and outrage as European twitterers sat in front of their TVs and socialised over the twitter network. (You can see some of the entrails if you go to www.tweetscan.com and do a search on eurovision.) The much talked about 'watercooler moment' is now distributed across time and space. A crowd watching a programme, even if they're not all in the same room, adds all sorts of fun to the experience. Future TV platforms like Joost have all talked of baking this kind of sociability into the watching experience but its crazy to try and make people learn another tool when they're already chatting on IRC, Facebook, Twitter and whathaveyou. The first broadcaster that thoroughly integrates these social tools into the viewing/listening experience will do very well.
And then a third trend hammer hits you over the head when watching Eurovision - it's the way that the creative centre of Europe is moving rapidly East. All the oomph, all the effort, all the determination is spilling out of the former Soviet nations and swamping the weary craftsmanship and bored professionalism of Western Europe. If you've spent any time in Romania, Poland or Latvia recently you'll have spotted that they're more than ready to pour the imagination and hunger they give to Eurovision into building globally relevant creative industries and taking your jobs. You can laugh at the excess of the Azerbaijani entry but that's what Eurovision's all about, and that kind of energy will pose a serious challenge to the creative entrepeneurs of Western Europe. Keep your eye on next year's Eurovision people. Watch and learn.
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