11 September 2011

The rapid uptake of tablets has brought a much-needed change of mindset for content producers and technology providers, with both embracing the companion or second screen device in a much more proactive way.

"The tablet has become the logical bridge between the smart-phone and the TV," said Dan Saunders, Head of Content Services at Samsung Electronics Europe during The Tablet is Coming session. "When we only had smart phones and TV it seemed like a big leap between the phone and the TV but that has now changed."

Peter Cassidy, vice president Parti cipation Media at FremantleMedia, agreed, saying: "It felt like we were in the doldrums for a couple of years but developments seem to be happening now and we believe there will be a lot of new entertainment franchises coming out on tablets and second screens."

Anthony Rose, ex-CTO of YouView in the UK and now CTO of startup zeebox, said that the tablet is "going to arrive faster than anyone is expecting". He said that unlike the existing economics "where a telco or a broadcaster tries to tie you into their existing contracts and channels" now we are in a world where the consumer and developers can create applications easily and inexpensively. It will be a bit crazy for a while but it is going to be totally disruptive."

Fremantlemedia's Cassidy unveiled a new HTML site to run alongside an upcoming show on Holland's RTL4 called Intuition that will allow viewers to play along, testing their "gut instincts" about quiz questions. The play-along quiz will run on tablets, laptops and smart phones, allowing viewers to invite their friends to play and providing live stats.

"We have built in the sense of the collective, so we show the average score of all the players," said Cassidy. He admitted that the business model isn't clear yet but that FremantleMedia would offer vouchers to redeem products to winners. "The revenue stream comes when the vouchers are redeemed," - he explained, adding that if he gets a 10% take up of audience, the new series will be a success.