The future of TV that we are seeing is increasingly interactive, participative, personalized, addressable. Fincons is paving the way to NextGen TV.

A new form of TV is dawning

At Fincons Group, we are noticing many signs of this move towards a new form of television, in every country we operate in. The future of TV is increasingly interactive, participative, personalized, addressable. New technologies are driving these trends and helping broadcasters respond to increasing competition and changing consumer viewing behaviour so that they can grasp emerging advertising revenue opportunities.

In fact, the time is now ripe for broadcasters to accelerate their transition to NextGen TV standards in order to monetize their content catalogues with novel Addressable TV Advertising, DAI, and TV commerce models. At the same time, the focus of public and local broadcasters should be in developing new interactive forms of citizen interactions such as Advanced Emergency Alerting, Remote Schooling and Hyper-local News distribution.

Broadcast and broadband: a perfect match for advertisers

Broadcasters, both private and public, are finding that combining broadcast and streaming services is helping them evolve their OTT models into a mix of Subscriptions or Advertising -Video On Demand (VOD) and Free Ad Supported streaming TV (FAST) models. Specifically, DAI (Dynamic Advertising Insertion) is emerging as a highly effective innovation in the advertising world. DAI enables the automatic replacement of traditional 1-to-many broadcast ads with 1-to-1 broadband advertising, which reaches viewers directly via connected TV sets thanks to HbbTV and ATSC3. The result is better targeted adverting that is more effective, providing relevant adverts which can be perceived as a useful service. 
In parallel, TV interaction via the remote or a mobile second screen is evolving the citizen communication model, enabling a more useful delivery of local and relevant, timely information service to citizens.

The TV R-evolution

All these evolutions and the progressive move towards pure streaming are changing the TV paradigm as we know it. Fincons Group actively contributed to the evolution of the different generations of OTTs and to spread both the HbbTV standard in Europe and ATSC 3.0 in the US, thus enabling new Services as well as introducing content interactivity and addressable advertising supporting broadcasters in the evolution of their revenue streams.

This key pioneering role has helped us not only keep the pulse of evolutions but develop a clear understanding of the pressures felt by broadcasters to optimise their catalogues and maintain a healthy advertising revenue pipeline, finding original ways to fight the competition of pure online global players.

Real-life applications of NextGen TV by Fincons Group

Fincons is always at the forefront of innovation and played a key role in the evolution of the European HbbTV standards, pioneering R&D projects since 2014 and deploying solutions in live production since 2017. As such, we’ve also become trusted integrators and consultants for many major broadcasters in the US that seek to leverage the opportunities provided by ATSC3.

Specifically, we presented the very first complete Broadcaster App leveraging the new ATSC 3.0 A/344 standard with channel Info, channels list, EPG, VOD at earlier versions of the NAB Show in 2018. We’ve also developed an innovative “Hybrid binge-watching” application, promoting Live-To-VOD and VOD-to-Live functionality for Broadcaster’s channels with fragmented audiences.

In-app purchases while viewing

We’re particularly proud of the test of a prototype Watch&Buy interactive cooking app specifically designed around the popular CBS This Morning Saturday segment, The Dish, which we showcased the first time at the NAB Show in 2020. This app enables a smooth transition from live sponsorship to TV e-commerce purchasing. 

We helped Sinclair in the redesign of their broadcast app and supported its distribution as open source to the market. Our experience as system integrators means we are able to leverage existing systems and bring them into the future, tailoring broadcast apps on a range of systems including open source and CMS-based multi-network configurations.

Live Sports Gamification and Betting 

There is a fascinating emerging trend in sport, where online sport TV channels are moving away from being an appointment-viewing sports-app to being a service that people turn to more regularly. Sport Federations, Clubs, international players like DAZN and more traditional ones like BBC Sports and Sky Sports have users regularly turning to their apps for news, live scores and other editorial content, in addition to live events distribution. 

NextGen TV enables the creation of broadcast apps to entertain, serve, engage sport fun with multiple business models and through multi-channel reach, driving fan engagement from the passion of live events to the loyalty of on demand and social. 
NextGenTV Broadcast Apps can run on TV and mobile, providing Highlights, Gamification, Betting, Statistics, External Information, VOD content from catchup and archives.

We designed an innovative prototype early in 2019 with the NESN broadcast network in Boston, which pioneered a new sport TV format, where commentators of the live event were commenting for both the match and the virtual game, increasing the level of engagement and enthusiasm. 

Fincons evolved this idea into a platform to build NextGen TV solutions for sport Gamification, Betting and External Information Exchange.

Public broadcasting and ATSC3 for public utility

We’re also particularly proud that our unique broadcast integration skills have been leveraged by public broadcasters for services of public utility. We’ve redesigned broadcast apps with improved, cutting-edge UI and UX including tools such as Call-To-Actions, Emergency Alerting,
Weather Forecast, Favourites, Categories and Channels to enable public broadcasters to communicate in a more tailored and engaging way even at local and hyper-local level.  Specifically we developed a Hyper-Local News stream for Over the Air (OTA) channels for Univision and Unimàs, integrating the RUN3 Framework from the Pearl TV coalition of U.S. broadcasters.

Our innovation in the public sector has also been used for the greater good enabling  a News Literacy Project App, to help citizens identify and avoid so-called “fake news”, an increasing problem in today’s hyper connected world that may lead to dangerous misinformation, and developing a remote schooling for educational equity system, with the Howard University Middle School. The latter leverages ATSC3 datacasting to give access to learning resources to students that are unable to access an internet connection.

Let’s work together: contact us to discover more about innovation to make the future of TV happen!