Blog 8 - The Interview

The following blog will diverge from the style of the others and will almost entirely be comprised of an interview with a Motion Designer named Rose James who has worked with most major broadcasters including Sky, BBC and ITV. Rose's job deals with how the brands and services represent themselves on air and I thought it might be interesting to talk with her about the current landscape of television and video-on-demand and how the two contrast from her point of view working in direct competition with them. Following on from Amazon and their television situation last week this interview focuses a large amount on TV and the idea of branding of services which is an avenue that hasn’t been really considered yet in this blog.

Q: Would you mind explaining who you work for and what it is you do within the industry?

A: So I’m now a design director at A&E Networks, they’re huge in the states, and here I’m over the graphic look of the channels for UK and also anywhere east of here. There’s about 19 channels in all. We take a lot of programming from the states, they also do UK made programmes.

Q: In terms of stuff you’ve had to do with, and in a wider context, do you think there are certain elements of film and tv that don’t translate as well to VOD?

A: It’s live events, some TV creates water-cooler moments, which you can’t do unless it’s live. So if everyone is watching it in their own time, you don’t get those moments. So you don’t get Love Island and things like that, it was because everyone was watching it every night and chatting a bout it the next day it becomes a bit of a phenomenon. So even things like big brothers still have their role in the market, they don’t translate as well. People do watch them on-demand, but a lot of the time it’s a competition and people want to be a part of the process.

Q: As someone who who works in the presentation of television and how brands and content represent themselves, what do you think are the greatest ways that traditional media presents itself opposed to new media? 

A: So traditional TV relies on breaks still quite a lot to get their message over where brands like Netflix don’t have that option so they do something really interesting. They do different bits of key art and depending what someone has picked before the key art will change, so it’s the little pictures  you see when scrolling through that show what the programme is. They have different pictures depending on who’s looking at it, they don’t have it for everything but they’re beginning to do this. So if someone picks something with a big head before, they will change their key art, they’ll have a version of the key art with the main talents big face. They are trying to do stuff that’s much more tailored to the viewer because it’s such a saturated market and people are just flicking so they have to grab them quickly. 

Q: Do you think it’s hurting traditional media that they can’t appeal to this new audience in as a direct way as VOD can? 

Possibly, I still think the traditional market is huge, and I think that at the moment everyone is panicking about Netflix and then when they do research actually there’s still a lot of people watch TV in the traditional way. I think it’s the younger generation that aren’t going to watch it in the same way, they don’t even consider having a TV. There’s going to be a big change, but I think at the moment the terrestrials are working on the premise that they still have a lot of people watching. they still get 9 million viewers for some programmes, when you compare to some cable channels that get 300,00 or 500,00 it’s massive. Even Sky with a big launch of a new series, if they get 1.7 million they’ve done really well where as the same thing on ITV might get 11 Million. 

Q: As someone who’s worked in the industry for quite large companies and who’s worked for lots of different people, have you had the opportunity to work with an on-demand service?

A: Well at Sky I did little bits for Now TV, when I was at Sky that was in it’s infancy but in a way that is the future of sky. What was quite interesting was their branding for NowTv looked nothing like Sky. Sky is always the white glass and glossy, NowTv is very flat and quite cheap looking but that isn’t by accident it’s made to feel like people are getting a good deal, by doing stuff that looks much cheaper. The people who pay for Sky monthly are wanting that premium product, they want to feel it’s all-singing all-dancing, where people with NowTv they’re dipping in and out they want to get something for their money, they’re much more sort of bargain basement at the moment. They felt very different, when you were in NowTv you didn’t feel that you were in Sky. With NowTv it was more about the brand more than the programmes. If you look at their posters it’ll have a big ‘NowTv’ in a big flat colour. The image for the programme is quite small comparatively, where if you look at the same programme for Sky it’s all about the programme and the logo is almost secondary. I suppose that’s the only difference, and with Netflix they’ve been very clever with this whole younger audience with the Netflix and Chill thing, they’ve built the brand of Netflix to be a cool brand, even though lot of the programming is very similar, a lot of the programming you can get on other channels. It’s about building this cool brand, that’s a big reason for their success I think.