Two decades ago entertainment did not pander to you. You watched shows when they aired and patiently waited for responses delivered and has flipped the way you consume entertainment on its head
Entertainment forms itself around you. It knows your taste. It follows you around from the train to your living room. As quickly as innovations come, they touch the market, disrupt the way we consume entertainment, and capture our attention.
From broadcast to on-demand and personal
The personalization of entertainment was the most profound effect of the introduction of streaming on the industry. Netflix and competitive services pioneered recommendation systems. These systems learn user preferences, in a way replacing the conventional entertainment selection process.
Mobile-first design redefined how people engaged with content on the go. Designs showed a clear preference to vertical screens that would load content at the speed of a potential audience’s attention span making it a key competitive design feature. It meant tradeoffs in Brevity, forced companies to compress and reformat their content in order to fit into these gaps between commutes.
Data, latency and the live experience
Real time was the next frontier. With multiple technologies culminating at the same time, including low latency streaming, fast networks, and cloud computing at a low cost, audiences could view event streams with lag measured only in the seconds. Event attendee streams could provide additional information such as statistics, win probabilities, etc. Concert broadcasts would allow users to select their preferred camera angle and even run polls to engage the audiences.
That data-rich layer is where most modern entertainment now lives, because that’s the only place you can manufacture something on-demand entertainment cannot: the real-time, simultaneous uncertainty for everyone consuming the content. “Real time” now means that everyone can enjoy the novel experience of uncertainty together, something on-demand entertainment can’t provide. No longer are people at the mercy of rigid broadcasting schedules. They determine their entertainment consumption as they see fit.
Immersion and the blurring of the screen
There’s immersion as well. Increasing frame rates and spatial audio along with VR headsets and game engines that make fully realized worlds all collide to the point of participation and consumption almost being the same. Video games have been the highest earning entertainment sector for quite some time now, and their live events, seasons, and in-world markets have fused with everything else.
Rather than being a traditional viewer, the modern audience is an active participant. They click, they choose, they respond, and the result is not linear.
A few forces drove that whole transformation across entertainment:
- On-demand delivery that enabled users to control their own schedules.
- Personalisation that curated catalogues and feeds based on individual preferences.
- Immediate data and low-latency systems give us ways to share live experiences.
- The concept of designing mobile apps in mind first to cut down on things and code for speed optimizations.
- Interactivity that transformed once passive audiences into active participants.
Artificial intelligence moves into the studio
AI is the latest trend, and it is working two shifts. The use of generative tools has helped with the creation portion of the process by generating scripts and storyboarding, helping produce and complete a show and provide a translated version of it in a dozen different languages in a matter of hours. The distribution side of things has machine learning tools that determine the most effective thumbnails and clips, arrange them in an autoplay order, and determine the placement on the top of a feed at 9 PM on a rainy Tuesday.
This iteration of the technology will generate more complicated concerns regarding digital authorship, available work, and what is real. In the past, when leaps in this technology occurred, they caused similar anxieties before users became accustomed to the reality of this new version. Earlier versions of the technology were introduced to provide entertainment to the audience in a cost-effective manner and improve audience engagement.
Where technology met the odds
Quick improvement is a characteristic of modern entertainment, including betting. Digital betting eliminates the need for paper slips and once-time consuming queues. Instant settlement from a next-day errand after betting is now done in a few seconds. Betting lingo is now explained with the click of a button.
If we are to illustrate this with an example, we could take each-way place. Anyone can now look up the 1/5 odds meaning in a moment and see that it simply describes how much a place pays relative to a win, one fifth of the win odds, rather than being baffled by it. One detail that used to be knowledge reserved exclusively for individuals with access to certain channels is now a two-minute read due to the same technologies that personalize experiences, enable mobile design and allow for instant delivery. It also made the subject legible.
The audience that expects to take part
Innovation has created a new normal. People want media that is precisely tailored to their interests, immediately available, live for big moments, and interactive where they can vote, chat, or control the content via an app. People will not revert to being passive. Entertainment and media are constantly available at a user’s fingertips to fit individual needs. The pandemic and the shutdown created a higher demand for media and entertainment outlets and changed how people accessed information and worked out. a higher demand for media and entertainment outlets and changed how people accessed information and worked out. Streaming media and entertainment providers expanded their services, including the delivery of information and opportunities to work out.
As AI and technologies related to it become more advanced, the next iteration of headsets and networks will likely be judged the same way the last decade’s innovations were judged: do they increase the user’s control and decrease their wait time while giving them a more active role? As new technologies emerge, the goal of providing users with more control and less wait time will remain unchanged.
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