The first speaker at Digital Directions 2011 was Anthony Rose, former CTO at YouView and future media controller at the BBC. Rose talked about his worked in launching the iPlayer at the BBC in London, including his decision to push iPlayer out to a range of devices, starting with the Nintendo. Today it is available on almost every connected TV in the UK – 2 million now, or 6 million by the end of this year.

Rose said there are two audiences – the ones who are mainstream, and the blogosphere, who are the ones that help to create the audience. This is changing the dynamics of television, particularly the deployment of television ‘apps’ that are controlled by non-traditional broadcasting companies. He said the TV manufacturers for instance saw themselves as the new gatekeepers and take revenue as a result. And consumers don’t necessarily want to go chasing apps.

Hence there is a need for a content mall, which led to Project Canvas (which has become YouView). He described many of the attributes of YouView, such as the focus on live television and its augmentation, rather than just on-demand content.

He described the remote control of the future, with just five buttons – ‘Me’, ‘Friends’, ‘Browse’ and ‘More’, with ‘Select’ in the middle. Me is for the individual, Friends makes television social by enabling people to ‘share’ what they are viewing.

“Who is the taste-maker is vitally important,” Rose said.

Browse takes the view to the content mall to browse by category, while More will show you contextually-related content with augmented information. It could also lead to ‘Channel Me News’ put together by a server to suite what you want to watch. The question is whether that is owned by a publisher, or aggregated by a third party.