Look up, look down: Second-screen trend noted at broadcasters’ meeting

You say you frequently tweet on your mobile device while peering up occasionally as “WWE Monday Night Raw” plays out on USA?

You’re not alone.

That “second screen experience,” in which viewers access information on another device while watching television, could mean huge implications for the way broadcasting is created. Dennis Wharton, spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters, which is meeting in Las Vegas through today, cited the second screen as a major industry trend.

Others agree.

According to Yahoo and Nielsen, 86 percent of consumers use a mobile device while watching television.

Among the 91,000 attendees at the NAB Show is Devon Childs, vice president of products and solutions at Vobile. He’s at the show talking to potential customers and partners about the company’s automatic content recognition technology, which Vobile is offering to companies for use in their second screen apps.

“It’s an industry that’s still evolving,” Childs said. “But there’s a lot of information that says this is going to be huge.”

During the 2013 Grammy Awards, more than 19 million social impressions were made, up 29 percent over 2012’s stats.

According to the Second Screen Society, the second screen will be almost a $6   billion industry by 2017.

But there are a lot of questions about its future and what eventually will shake out, Childs said.

“It’s in an educational phase right now,” he said.

Which is the reason, Childs said, that events such as the NAB Show are so valuable for the key players. They help build relationships with potential suppliers, competitors and buyers.

“The industry is probably going to see a little bit of consolidation in the next year or so. You’ll see more experimentation, you’ll see some apps that are really starting to get it right. In terms of monetary return, there haven’t been a lot of second screen success stories,” Childs said.

There are apps that people are using, (such as DISH’s app released in January), but Childs said broadcasters don’t yet know how to monetize them properly. What is clear, he said, is that people are using social media and websites while watching television.

A good example of this is the WWE, whose fans tweet constantly during the wrestling shows. They also search characters’ storylines and use the company’s app during and after matches for more content.

“Those are things where there’s a rabid fan base already looking for ways to engage the show, and the second screen app is a very astral progression of that,” Childs said.

As for the future, nobody’s sure what will happen.

In NAB President and CEO Gordon Smith’s annual State of the Industry address, he talked about the future of broadcasting and urged industry leaders to “keep our eyes focused on the new doors that open before us.”

Then, he said, “the danger for any business that becomes complacent is it’s being left behind.”

Other than cost, there’s no barrier to downloading an app, making second screen’s growth potential exponential.

Vobile was founded in 2005. Its primary business is fingerprinting visual and audio assets for Hollywood. It provides content protection through its algorithm that assigns a fingerprint to content, frame by frame, a unique numbered sequence that allows Vobile to crawl user-generated sites such as YouTube to search for pirated material.

Each day, 20,000 to 40,000 take-down notices are sent to websites asking for the removal of copyrighted material.

“That in some ways is what’s funding the second screen effort, because there is so much experimentation still happening,” Childs said.

More and more, producers and writers will be thinking about second screen integration at the point of creation, rather than after the fact, Childs said. This would be a complete shift in the way content is created.

In his address, Smith said: “Emerging technology presents a great opportunity for broadcasters to provide viewers with our highly valued content anywhere, on any device, anytime they want it.”

Contact reporter Laura Carroll at lcarroll@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4588. Follow @lscvegas on Twitter.