Futurescape is an independent digital media research and consultancy company that provides forward-thinking advice about television and social media.
Creative Consultancy
We advise major television and entertainment companies on launching innovative online productions.
Clients include: Sony BMG, ITV, Discovery Communications, Microsoft and First Resort.
You can see examples of our television, film and social networking projects in the Innovation Portfolio.
Launching a new project? Please e-mail colin@futurescape.tv or ozlem@futurescape.tv
Briefings
For the latest developments in the fast-moving Web show market and its digital marketing and media strategies, Futurescape provides personal briefings, complete with case studies, data, screenshots and video. The standard presentation is one hour long, plus some Q&A, and costs £500. Tailored presentations are also available. E-mail information@futurescape.co.uk
Research and reports
Current reports include:
WeVision – How social entertainment is the new opportunity for television online
The Birth Of Online TV – Television is taking radical new forms on the Internet
UK Web Shows Now – Cutting-edge Internet TV productions and innovative formats
Press coverage
Futurescape's research is regularly quoted in major international media and digital media publications, such as TV Week, MediaPost, Broadcast, Televisual, and Converging Media.
The principals
We're fascinated by the conjunction of the Internet and television, because an exciting and fast-changing new medium is emerging from the two.
For the past decade, we've been analysing, consulting and writing about this in its various aspects: TV channels launching their first Web sites and EPGs, and early experiments in interactive TV.
Our creative consultancy has included projects for major television and entertainment clients, such as Sony BMG, ITV, Discovery Communications, Microsoft and First Resort.
Our research now particularly focuses on original Web TV shows because they are pioneering new relationships with online audiences via social media, creating international formats reaching millions and proving viable business models with major advertisers.
The findings in our reports are a unique resource for media executives responsible for strategy and innovation.
Buyers include global advertising and media agencies, TV broadcasters and producers, cable, satellite and mobile operators, media owners, publishers, industry analysts and government agencies: AT&T, BBC Worldwide, Digitas, Disney, Eutelsat, HBO, ITV, MediaCom, Ogilvy, Publicis, RTE, UBS, Virgin Media, Warner Bros.
Özlem Tunçil has an MA in Hypermedia Studies from the University of Westminster’s Hypermedia Research Centre.
She specialised in interactive television. Her 1998 master’s thesis was entitled From Zapping to Clicking: How can an Interactive Experience be Created for Internet-based Television?
She applied her principles to creating early iTV prototypes for MicrosoftTV and ITV. These included extending a TV drama’s fiction and integrating characters with both multimedia e-mail on television and social media on the Internet.
Özlem has a BA in Business Management. Her first new media company, hUpdate, focused on online educational projects.
Colin Donald founded the New Media department at Virgin Media (then Flextech Television) in 1995.
He led a team that launched award-winning Web sites for satellite channels targeting young men, teen girls and business viewers.
As an editorial board member of media consultancy Informed Sources, he analysed broadband content and interactive TV. His ActiveTV column in Broadcast magazine explained new media to the television industry. He was previously at the authoritative business newsletter Financial Times: New Media Markets.
Colin has an MA in American Studies from William and Mary and his social networking profiles are at LinkedIn and Facebook.
Conference presentations: online TV and multiplatform
We also participate in international industry events, on themes such as 360 degree commissioning, interactive media and the future of online TV.
360 Degree Commissioning
- Panel also included senior TV commissioners and executives from major independent production companies
- Presented insights from Futurescape's report 2008: The Birth of Online TV
Chinwag's Web TV Takeover, London
- Chairing debate about future of online TV with executives from Channel 4, Brightcove and TIOTI: see photos and hear podcast
Broadband and Triple Play Services and Video on the Net, Rome
- Presenting findings from research into marketing via YouTube
Interactive Screen, The Banff New Media Institute, Canada
- An intensive development laboratory in new media project creation and development
- Presentation: Issues in adapting fictional television content for new media
- Presentation: Managing production from television to MicrosoftTV
European Multimedia Labs
- Intensive development work on Virus Wars multiplatform sci-fi drama
The Cable and Satellite Show
- Where Bravo, Trouble and Time Machine Web sites won awards
IBC’s UK Digital TV conference
- Presentation: Integrating television with interactive content
Broadcasting @ Internet
- Presenting Internet strategy for Flextech Television (now Virgin Media)
Conference presentations: New media and social networking
Future of Web Apps – panel comparing and debating the US vs UK start-up scene
- See our blog post from the presentation, Great exits for UK Internet start-ups
Netimperative Seminar on Social Networking
- Presentation: Does marketing match social networking members' motivations?
- Successful and failed marketing campaigns via YouTube and Bebo
- See our case studies of social media marketing campaigns
Mediatech
- Discussion on marketing via social networks, blogs, virtual worlds
New Media Knowledge’s User Content: The Real Deal, with Moblog UK and Scoopt
- Presentation: The balance of power is shifting to participatory consumers
Central Office of Information, UK government's marketing and communications dept
- Presentation: Participatory consumers, tailored for COI's responsibilities
Our Social World, the UK’s first blogging conference, Cambridge
- Presentation: A world where everyone can be a media producer/distributor
