How TV Became Tech’s Favorite Vanity Project
Why are Netflix and HBO helping Tinder and Airbnb make TV?
It was when Tony Gunnarsson was making breakfast that he knew something was weird. The coffee packaging the Swede tore open cajoled him to visit CanalPlay, an on-demand video service run by French TV channel Canal+. A few minutes later, he received a message on his cellphone from a local public transport company, offering him a voucher to download a movie from a local video-sharing website.
It was a shock for Gunnarsson, an analyst who monitors the online video world for Ovum, a research company. But it’s the way things are going. ‘‘The bus company is giving me vouchers to download or rent a movie on the local iTunes equivalent, and coffee is producing a series?” he says. “Online video is certainly not a niche anymore.”
In fact, having a streaming TV series is the new must-have for any tech company — or, in fact, any company at all.
“The economics has come down, and the companies involved are getting better at pitching ideas to companies that perhaps wouldn’t be getting involved in any TV or video productions through the internet,” says Gunnarsson, who has tracked the rise of TV shows produced or funded by nontraditional TV companies.
