ITV Imagine: are they serious?
February 18, 2008 – 10:39 amAt a seminar that I chaired for Digital Horizons last week, a presenter from a department at ITV called Imagine presented their vision of the future.
I hadn’t heard of Imagine before but it now employs 15 people and exists to inform internal and external producers, commissioners and execs at ITV about the future of media, to create prototypes and inspire. It sounds a bit like the BBC’s Imagineering unit, set up in 1999 and disbanded a couple of years ago to become Creative Research and Development.
One of the prototypes shown was intended to demonstrate what Coronation Street might look like 50 years from now. Ignoring the production values, which were on a par with film student essays, the ideas proposed are all things which are feasible now and, in some cases, have been trialled and rejected. They included options to click on and purchase products featured in the show, to select a specific storyline and pursue it, and to vote on what should happen to a character in the next show. There was also a demo of how a viewer would be able to create and publish his own schedule.
Imagine seems to be at an even earlier stage of creating a vision than Imagineering was almost a decade ago. Ideas that are between 5 and 10 years old were presented as being 50 years in the future, with no awareness of trials and prototypes that have been undertaken here, in the US and elsewhere. There was no mention of user research or attempting to understand how people’s relationship with media and with channels is changing. In fact the presenter was amazed that he got quite a hostile response.
If what was shown last week is really ITV’s vision of the future, the channel seems doomed.
3 Responses to “ITV Imagine: are they serious?”
WOW this really takes me back to the year 2000 in BBC Imagineering …with Steps in the charts and millennial fear in our hearts.
Back then we were busy researching the new media forerunners and experimenting with interactive narrative, navigation concepts and the like. Luckily we weren’t big on public forecasting – always a hostage to fortune. But there’s definitely kudos for courage. After all innovation needs a climate which rewards sticking your neck out!
Our user experience knowledge wasn’t up to much when we started out but we hired games and design experts and ramped up our horizon scanning skills over time. And it took us a long while to find all the hidden pockets of experience and genius scattered across the BBC – in fact I’m still finding more!
I am now a Change Consultant at the BBC - supporting new innovation practices across the organisation as well as steering big transformation projects. I’m always up for wider cooperation and if ITV Imagine are reading this then do get in touch! I’d be happy to discuss the ups and downs of innovation.
By Hannah McBain on Feb 23, 2008
Does sound like a doomed concept. I give it till the end of the year.
By Simon Willoughby on Jun 16, 2008