Remembering The 2nd Screen Society: The Future We Saw In 2012 Is Finally Here

Back in the very early days of streaming—2012 or so—I was the Chairman of something called The 2nd Screen Society.

It was an organization devoted to promoting all of the various second screen start-ups that had sprung up during that period, all of whom were trying to get better adoption from networks, cable companies, consumers and those brand new streaming services, Netflix and Hulu.

Second screen apps, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, were designed to let people use their phones to interact with their TVs in a variety of ways: finding programs, sharing what they were watching with friends, interacting with ads on the TV and even buying things they’d seen in those ads or in the shows themselves.

The apps allowed users to look up which actors were on the screen as they were watching the show, providing context as to who the characters were and how they were related to each other.

Some of the apps encouraged viewers to check in to their shows and earn points for check-ins that could be redeemed to watch episodes ad-free.

Others allowed you to find shows across streaming and linear, thus simplifying the viewing process.

It was a time when we could see unlimited possibilities in the digital capabilities of the TV…only to be met by indifference from the various networks and cable companies who liked things just fine the way they were, thank you very much, the door is this way and don’t forget to validate your parking.

The old school TV players were, in those days, obsessed with keeping the digital wolf from the door, lest they be set upon and destroyed overnight like the music industry.

I cannot overstate the degree to which this was the prevailing wisdom at the time and how fearful these companies were of the iPhone or anything Apple- or internet-related.

What’s crazy is not that the disemboweling never happened—TV is far too complex for that, sort of like a Jenga puzzle that won’t topple.

It’s that none of these ideas sounds out of date today. In fact, many of them are quite hot at the moment—shoppable TV in all its forms, for instance.

I look back and shake my head at how long it’s taken the industry to get out of its own way to allow these ideas to come to life.

But they will, eventually, and we will all be better for it—programmers, advertisers and, above all, consumers.

This video will give you a much better sense of where we were back then. You will recognize the voice of the interviewer as none other than BeetTV’s Andy Plesser, who was helping us make it happen back in the day.

You’ll also recognize me talking about the value of data and how having data beyond Nielsen diaries was going to change everything from advertising to discovery, allowing for more targeted advertising and even shoppable experiences. I do remember frequently using the line about how it creates “an experience that feels much more like shopping, which is fun, as opposed to watching advertising, which isn’t.” I was quite proud of it and it resonated.

Enjoy the trip back to 2012 and what could have been.

And hat tip to Pascal Felique from Nordic Video Research who unearthed this and much more from that era in a LinkedIn post.