Market potential for interactive audio-visual media

NM2 (New Media for a New Millennium) develops tools for interactive, personalised and non-linear audio-visual content that will be tested in seven pilot productions. This paper looks at the market potential for these productions from a technological, a business and a users´ perspective. It shows that digital broadcast networks and broadband Internet are rapidly growing in Europe, but will have reached less than half of the households in 2007. Broadcasters and television producers have so far invested little in interactive television. New players are platform operators and ISPs, operating as digital content aggregators. Users value possibilities for programme management (EPGs) and simple forms of interactivity (voting, gambling) by using SMS, telephony or Internet. More complex interactive services are not yet very popular. Promising routes are multi-platform and cross media strategies as well as productions for particular target groups that are already actively participating in online communities and games.