Re-inventing TV for the interactive age

Every year Dutch media professionals gather for the Cross Media Cafe, a networking event for discovering the latest trends and technologies in the TV industry. Assistant Professor in MODUL University's New Media Technology department Dr. Lyndon Nixon had the opportunity this year to present the recently started EU funded research project ReTV at Hilversum, the Netherlands on June 19th.

The project carries the ambitious tagline "Re-inventing TV for the interactive age", and sees its goal indeed as enabling a new, personalised and individually targeted TV content distribution. Instead of their prior focus on a 24 hour linear broadcast schedule, broadcasters need to integrate non-linear channels - Catch-up TV, archives, YouTube and social networks - into their content publication strategy, tying content to the current topics of interest among their audience to maximise viewership.

ReTV is building an innovative new platform to enable broadcasters to do precisely that, making use of state of the art research and development from both the university technology spin-off company MODUL Technology and spin-out company webLyzard GmbH.

MODUL University students have the opportunity to benefit from Dr Nixon's involvement in media innovation through courses such as the Master-level course Media Asset Management, where the value of the use and re-use of image and video material for businesses is taught, or under his supervision for a media technology related thesis.