Internet and television will grow together, believes tm3
The tiny station wants to be at the forefront of the supposed movement – the only question is whether it exists at all. tm3 managing director Marco Deutsch doesn’t want to talk about his station’s programming. Neither about today’s nor about the future. It is actually also self-explanatory.
Originally started as a sophisticated women’s television channel, the smallest station mutated into soccer television at the beginning of the year due to a lack of success, thanks to the broadcasting rights of the co-owner and media tycoon Rupert Murdoch. In the meantime, the channel is owned by Murdoch alone and the football rights went to Kirchsender and RTL. When tm3 is not being judged by the media for a transvestite stripping to church music, you can look at "Life and housing", "Wrestling: SmackDown!", the "Before and after show" and even "Air and love" delight. The sad thing is that here trash is sold as something else. RTL 2 cultivates the gutter image, while at tm3 the globe as the station logo before commercial breaks promises the wide world – which is then not delivered.
It is understandable that one prefers to keep silent about such things. Especially if it brings you just to 1.5 percent market share. But why does Deutsch say nothing about the future, the glorious future that is to dawn one day for tm3?? Well, maybe because she doesn’t look that much better. For a long time, there was a rumor that Rupert Murdoch wanted to turn tm3 into a fitness channel. Such a one already brings him profits in the USA, but apparently Germany doesn’t need sports as much as Americans after all – the idea is dead.
At the end of July, Deutsch wrote a letter to the Bayerische Landeszentrale fur neue Medien describing the new program. From 11. November should tm3 accordingly "at the top" in the convergence of Internet and TV. The program will even "visually look like a website" wrote German. Aha. And of course at the top of the top "Single shows" and other games that "are more strongly adapted to the spirit of the times". Deutsch also wrote. Somehow these shows should then be internet compatible.
But it is questionable whether tm3 can be at the forefront of a zeitgeisty convergence of Internet and TV. There stands so far niche transmitter NBC Giga and that not at all badly. On weekdays, it broadcasts a mixture of talk, music television and shows for five hours. The whole thing is not only designed for under 29 year olds, but is also seen by them. The show’s chat rooms and mails to presenters play as rough a role as the program itself. Actually, they make up a large part of the program.
tm3 does not want to say anything about its new Internet strategy, but what is known makes us think of a web portal with Internet access transferred to television. And that is not necessarily promising.
Microsoft, for example, has won just a paltry million subscribers for its WebTV service in the USA. Business concept: Internet access via the television set. In the meantime, the receivers, which actually cost 200 dollars, are being given away during special promotions. The IT consulting company Meta Group has a simple explanation for this: with the resolution of today’s televisions, you may be able to see a picture in full detail, but you will never be able to read an Internet page with text, graphics and all kinds of other stuff. Just look at how much information a videotex page holds and how much is on an average web page.
Apart from that, the potential Internet user probably already has a PC at home. People who don’t buy one prefer uncomplicated technology such as the remote control for the rough RTL TV novel and the telephone for a chat to searching for websites and typing an email. The classic net is too exhausting for many people, which is why AOL is so successful. Microsoft’s WebTV engagement is therefore also seen by Meta Group analysts as more of a strategic investment. Television and Internet will never grow together. But the today’s television will develop to the digital, interactive one – and then Microsoft wants to have already a safe market share as starting point.
Whether tm3 can and wants to spend money on such far-reaching goals is questionable. They finally want to make money. At the end of August, the station announced that the relaunch would generate advertising revenues of 60 million marks in 2001. The Internet can fuel the imagination here, as in the middle of the year the Prognos Institute predicted a near doubling of spending on online advertising by 2010. It’s just a pity that this market is already fiercely contested today. Will tm3 actually compete with top Internet offerings such as Spiegel online and Yahoo?! can compete?
Probably not. The mutation to the top of the merging is then also of the 11. November has been postponed until sometime early next year. Why, tm3 does not want to say. It doesn’t have to: In July, it became known that the Kirch Group was considering an investment. It is probably still being tested and negotiated.
One thing is clear: Rupert Murdoch no longer needs the tiny channel, and he is Kirch’s partner at Premiere World. And it is also clear that Kirch wants and needs to invest in the Internet business. In a few years, the transmission of moving images in television quality will be standard here. 500 million marks Kirch New Media may spend this year alone to build one of the ten strongest portals in Germany. Kirch’s three billion Bundesliga deal already includes the Internet rights. The question now is how Kirch will exploit these on the Net and how it will bind Internet users to itself profitably. Once the d-box – the Premiere World decoder – has Internet access, Kirch New Media and Premiere World will fight over responsibility. That’s when Kirch New Media came in handy with tm3 as its own Internet television platform. A strategic investment like Microsoft’s in WebTV.
What you can expect from tm3 in terms of interactivity? A small foretaste is perhaps already offered today by the so-called infomercials. There one may call at the end and order a titanium drill screwdriver attachment with 200 other parts. And at "Living and housing" you can even get the recipe from the Kurbis Special by fax while a Kurbis is being squeezed. In the future, this will probably also be possible in the network.