Watch Michael Sater's interview with Definition 6 Expert in Residence Frank Radice on the future of Social TV and the impact on broadcast and cable programming.

Michael Sater:

Frank, After watching The Oscars last night I started to think, the future of Social Tv has got to be really interesting.  What do you envision?

Frank Radice:

One of the things that started last night because of The Oscars, by a new company, I’ve got it right here, called Umami. Umami is a social TV application that works on your ipad that syncs to whatever you’re watching. It hears the sound and syncs to that show. It’ll show you, assuming you’re in some kind of cable operation that allows itself to sync up like Time Warner Cable does in New York, the program you’re watching on your ipad. If you hit a button you can freeze a frame and then you can immediately share it with all your friends. So when Angeline Jolie decided to stick her right leg out the fifth or sixth time, you could freeze frame it, you could send it out, and you could name it and hashtag it Angelina jolies right leg or something. Point is, a conversation began to start about that and if you took a look at social media last night there were 100’s of thousands of conversations going on or engagements or tweets or Facebook updates about Angelina’s leg. They even named a hashtag out of it. The point is you can do it, and you can do it immediately. Social TV allows you to have a second screen experience with whatever you’re watching.

Michael Sater:

Well the experience of having a second screen is not something that’s all that new, but throwing in video and visual is certainly going to change the way people absorb and receive the content. How do you think that, as a gentleman with a few years of TV experience, that’s going to elevate and escalate those dialogues?

Frank Radice:

I would say it will hugely elevate and escalate those dialogues for people who are younger, people who are really into it, people who aren’t your typical television viewer. I think there are two sides to social television, there’s a really good side to social television which is: you want to get engaged, you want to share stuff and you want to talk about it while you’re watching a show. And there’s a really bad side to social television: Leave me alone while I’m watching my show. So wherever you stand in that scale is where the importance of social television will be to you. I actually think right now we’re somewhere in the middle in terms of our society, I’d say more people are watching television that are probably in the 25-54 age group or even older whereas 18-49 or 18-34 are probably more into being unplugged or having the cable off and experiencing their content through other devises whether it be an ipad or mobile. I think what’s starting to happen is as the older generation of people who want to watch television and be couch potatoes, and the newer generation of viewers and content consumers want to get another way. As they start to come together, what will actual happen will be social TV. That’s when we’ll reach the zenith of it.

Michael Sater:

That makes me think of your comments from CES, consumers who are attempting to watch drama’s probably don’t want to interact in a social manner, while people who are in a big community event like the Oscar’s are most certainly wanting to engage and have that dialogue. So as consumers start to age the younger group gets older, do you think there will be a larger adoption of social television practices?

Frank Radice:

 That’s a good point. I think for live tv events, like sporting events or big galas like The Oscars, or the thanksgiving day parade or for the tree lighting at the Rockefeller center, those are things that will allow people to take their mind away from the content and then go back into it. However, and I do agree that drama’s need you to pay attention, but shotime is doing something very interesting, for example you can watch Dexter and have a second screen experience with the shotime application and before a murder occurs it will come up on the second screen application before a murder occurs, do you think Dexter will kill such and such or how many murders do you think Dexter will commit during this episode. It’s a different kind of social engagement, it’s not oh did you see who Dexter murdered, it’s now asking you what you think is about to happen. It’s creating a situation that makes you feel a part of the story.

Michael Sater:

Well by triggering people’s thoughtfulness you’re playing on people’s psychology of changing somebody from a passive consumer to a thoughtful consumer of that medium.

Frank Radice:

Which is really what social television is supposed to be about. It makes you an active consumer fo content.

Michael Sater:

So moving into SXSW, what do you think is coming down the pipeline.

Frank Radice:

You’re going to hear about connectTV, you’re going to hear about iTV which has existed for a long time, but all of these things are second screen applications that will utilize something like the Shazam sound recognition ability for the application to know what you’re actually watching. What I think will start to happen is, they will take what has just been social TV and a second screen application and start to do some of things we’re talking about now. They will actually allow you to become involved in it, involved in the story, to be an active instead of a passive viewer, and to make social television something that truly will become something you can talk about and share with your friends.