Ashley Highland, Director of BBC New Media and Technology, recently gave a speech where he said, among other things:

Against this background, new research from the BBC has revealed four new and significant social trends that show that the way in which we consume TV is changing forever. From this we have been able to start changing our programmes and content. Broadly these trends show that viewers are taking much more control of what and how they view, they're joining in with their programmes, consuming more media simultaneously, and sharing all this content with each other.

Some of the things he proposes:

• Developing more programs that come with meta-data so they can be hooked into and used in new ways
• Recognizing that media can become a substitute for community
• That people may sacrifice external quality factors for a more localized, personalized, timely service
• Creating ambient television--television that you only have to half pay attention to.
• Downloading and sharing video is a killer combination (and he means this in a good sense)
• Industry becoming more active in creating legitimate content download products either as a pay model or rights-cleared-for-free.