Google's Shane Peros on the future of television

“I don’t think television is dying,” says Shane Peros, managing director for global broadcast partner business solutions at Google. “It is just changing. The whole living room experience is still good. But a lot of things will have to change.”

Peros, who recently joined the new IBC Council, is responsible for the search giant’s presence in the media industry. He points to content as always being the key driver, and acknowledged that the production community that has grown up around broadcast has tremendous knowledge and experience in creating it.

“There is more pressure on content companies,” he says. “The cost is so high to create great content. How can they do that and compete on a level playing field?

’Machine learning will be central to understanding what the audience really wants’

“There is more content being created than ever, so how are you going to connect with the consumer? And how are you going to monetise it? How do consumers determine how to watch? I don’t think anyone has the answers.”

Clearly, critical to the future success of the bigger, wider media business is the transition from traditional architectures to the new, software-defined, IP-connected world. How does Shane Peros view the state of the transition?

“Right now we’re in the middle ground of the convergence,” he says. “What we have to decide is what we do in this middle ground, and how much we can carry over into the end game.

Big data

What does that end game look like? What new technologies, or technologies imported from other industries, will have an impact? Will big data be the key?

“Big data is an interesting topic,” he says. “You’ve got to have access to it, in a timeframe that allows you to act on it. Google is going to be a partner around all this stuff.

“We have the experience in sorting through the biggest of big data, to giving people what they want in the right format.”

Machine learning

The analytics will surely have to be automated. How are we going to ensure we are getting the best out of it. “Machine learning will be central to understanding what the audience really wants,” he says.

“Beyond that, how can you use machine learning to automate some of your processes? As an industry, we don’t spend enough time thinking about this.”

How soon will we be able to reap the benefits? “Television is going through the largest change in its history,” Peros says. “The challenge is to see who is going to hang on to the past and who is going to take the big benefits of the new world.

“We talk about a 10-year timeframe, but inevitably it will vary from country to country, region to region. Countries like France and Japan are already ahead of the pack, because of their infrastructure. Some other developed countries are behind the curve.

“What is important right now is that the tech has to be built for the future. The partnerships you choose now, and the talent you bring into your organisation, will determine success.”