Are TV schedulers soon to become redundant?

Peter Feuilherade's BBC article Digital media 'empowering users' comments that "As more media become increasingly available in digital formats, and traditional models of media packaging and distribution start to unravel, "the customer is king" is fast becoming the industry's new catchphrase."

Further comments from the London FT conference on New Media:

"Consumers are exercising more control, said Microsoft's Neil Holloway, Already in the US, 70% of personal video recorder users are skipping adverts, he noted."

"The trick for media companies is how to embrace multiple content in a profitable way," Ed Shedd of the UK consultancy firm Deloitte.

The growing trend towards on-demand viewing, although still representing a small minority of all TV viewing, was starting to exert the pressures of the internet on the world of commercial television.

One day, schedulers might even find themselves redundant, warned David Moody of BBC Worldwide, the BBC's commercial division.

For Rod Henwood of the UK's Channel 4, the key to ratings success for TV channels still lay in content. He told the audience passionately: "Take risks. Creativity differentiates."