Winning the Future of TV
Tim spoke at the Edinburgh TV Festival about the power of TV to connect us with the other.
Tim gave a talk and took part in the panel “How to Win the Future” at the Edinburgh TV Festival, along with with futurist Monika Bielskyte and blockchain-for-TV startup founder Ashley Turing, moderated by the prolific Irish comedian and TV show host Dara O’Briain.
Tim writes about his experience:
“TV is a romantic business: inherently, it’s all about imagining other worlds and creating meaning through powerful storytelling; it’s about adventure, drama, extreme emotions, and human connections. The industry is nervous though: both public broadcasters and increasingly also pay-TV providers fear that the so-called FAANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google), armed with AI, might be eating their lunch.
In Edinburgh, just before our session, Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn proposed a ‘journalism tax’ for the tech companies. But what should give the TV networks more hope is the very fact that they can give us hope: 1. TV is still the most powerful medium when it comes to connecting us with the other, and in our fragmented and divided societies this capacity is ever more important. No wonder diversity and inclusion – especially of non-binary identities – were a big topic in Edinburgh; 2. Entertainment will become even more powerful in the future as we will have more unstructured time on our hands and may need more of both: education on the human condition and a device to escape from it.
At its best, TV is a shared experience that fosters intimacy and belonging, forms identity and meaning, and strengthens citizenship and diversity.”