I watched ‘the future of TV’ and it was really lame

Last night I watched what was hailed as “the future of TV” – an epic gala performance broadcast on TV and streamed live over the web, directed by veteran Hollywood producer David Hill, famed for his Super Bowl and Academy Awards shows. Indeed it was Hill himself who made the bold claim for his largest ever production.

The live stream was interactive, tying strongly to online shopping in a way that I’ve never seen before.

The focus on shopping was inevitable because the gala was put on by Alibaba, China’s biggest ecommerce firm. It pulled out all the stops for the hours-long extravaganza, promising appearances from some of China’s hottest celebs alongside Katy Perry, Scarlett Johansson, and Kobe Bryant. The whole thing was designed to lead up to midnight and the beginning of today’s Singles Day shopping spree as China’s consumers grab discounts offered by pretty much every shopping app and website.

The gala live stream greets me with weirdness.

Photo credit on all screenshots in this story: Tech in Asia.

No idea when it started, but I watched the thing – inside Alibaba’s Tmall shopping app – for about three hours. The stream already has 450,000 viewers when the first guest star I recognize is was wheeled out – Kobe Bryant.

An ad floating on the side distracts me from the hyper-friendly Bryant banter and antics, so I click it. It’s a pillow. Magical.

60,000 of them are up for grabs at a low price. The sales pitch has begun already.

Bryant is then handed a series of Tmall branded packages, which he lobs into the audience with flicks and flourishes.

He should have brought over a T-shirt cannon, though not even Bryant could get that past the TSA, I guess.

And now an ad break, because apparently I haven’t yet been milked enough.

No sign of Katy Perry yet. She’s pretty famous in China, where she’s known as Fruit Sister for her colorful outfits. This GIF will have to suffice for now.

GIF credit: We Know Memes.

After an assortment of skits, songs, and chat with some apparently famous people, Chinese-American singer Coco Lee appears onstage. As does a floating ad for Macy’s, the 150-plus-years-old department store chain that’s now busy making a push into China’s web. The ad takes me to a new page where I can browse Macy’s products available via Alibaba’s Tmall. The live stream continues in a small box.

600,000 streamers are now tuned in as the rate of animated ‘likes’ and zooming-by comments intensifies on my phone’s screen. It sure does look frantic, with nearly half of the screen obscured by text or graphics – as if the awkwardness of the horizontal shooting isn’t bad enough.

On comes another star, this time a Chinese one, conspicuously wearing a lengthy coat. She slowly takes it off and hurls the jacket offstage. Suddenly the same coat pops up on my phone along with the caption “I want to grab.” Click it and it goes to a flash sale for that exact jacket. Clever stuff.

Then another foreigner comes onstage. No idea who. Another sportsing celeb, it seems. He climbs up onto some boxes as part of some kinda challenge. And then more clickable adverts interrupt the show.

Another big star – Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai of In the Mood for Love fame. 820,000 people now watching online. A floating ad links to his latest flick, The Ferryman, directed by frequent collaborator Wong Kar-wai. In a total non-coincidence, the film is the first produced by Alibaba’s movie studio.

After a short chat with Leung, two Smart cars appear onstage – one red, one black – along with a group of people in corresponding colors.

I’m not surprised at this point that the entire bit is tied to a promo for Smart cars, which are sold on Alibaba’s marketplace. A pop-up add tells me a special deal is underway on 88 Smart cars.

Then the two teams – of about 10 people each, I think; it’s hard to tell watching a horizontal screen – embark on a challenge to pile everyone inside the diminutive German car. One guy on the black team goes in head-first through a side window.

It’s clear by now that this probably is the future of TV – hyper-interactive and more commercialized than ever.

And Alibaba is clearly doing something innovative and daring as well as technically very well executed.

But the show itself is nothing radical – it’s basically just the kind of variety show that was huge in theaters before radio and television came along.

This is just the cheap and cheerful side of TV. This should worry the large networks around the world, which produce an astonishing amount of crap, but it still leaves plenty of space for the quality, original streaming we’re seeing now from the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime.

I’m bored right now, but I’m not despairing of the future of TV.

This is 2 minutes of entertainment crammed into three hours of streaming.

I get an email from Alibaba’s PR people telling me that Katy Perry cancelled at the last minute due to “a family emergency.”

GIF credit: Katy Perry.

OK, I admit it – I emailed them first to ask what time she’s on.

Oh look, it’s Jack Ma! The Alibaba founder, chairman, and former CEO strides onstage as confidently as a man who can shut this shit down at any moment. There are now 900,000 live streamers.

Ma does a card trick with the help of a rando plucked from audience.

The comments sailing by on-screen intensify further to welcome Ma, who’s arguably China’s most well-known tech dude. “Boss!” says one commenter. “Daddy Ma,” says another. This being the internet, one person goes too far, typing “I want my daddy.”

Ma vows to do a bigger magic trick. He walks from the stage onto the catwalk. A silver curtain goes up behind him. Ma does a countdown, the curtain falls, revealing Scarlett Johansson in a helicopter.

Beaming with enthusiasm for the Chinese ecommerce industry and a large paycheck, Johansson alights and greets Ma with continental kisses on the cheek.

Ma and his fluent English seem to have put Johansson at ease amidst the frenzy of the gala.

Johansson is then roped into yet another Ma magic trick.

A glitch: a popup that won’t go away tells me that the livestream is over. But it’s not, because it’s about 10 minutes before midnight, when Singles Day begins. The huge graphic is plastered all over Johansson’s face, preventing me from viewing the video that continues beneath. The pop-up instructs me to “buy buy buy.”

Returning to the app’s shopping section, I notice that a jacket I had my eye will be reduced by US$30 after midnight, so I wait a few minutes and buy it. Well done, Jack Ma.

This post I watched ‘the future of TV’ and it was really lame appeared first on Tech in Asia.

from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/china-live-streaming-future-of-tv
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