The Implications of Program Genres for the Design of Social Television Systems

In this paper, we look at how television genres can play a role in the use of social interactive television systems (social iTV). Based on a user study of a system for sending and receiving enriched video fragments to and from a range of devices, we discuss which genres are preferred for talking while watching, talking about after watching and for sending to users with different devices. The results show that news, soap, quiz and sport are genres during which our participants talk most while watching and are thus suitable for synchronous social iTV systems. For asynchronous social iTV systems film, news, documentaries and music programs are potentially popular genres. The plot structure of certain genres influences if people are inclined to talk while watching or not, and to which device they would send a video fragment. We also discuss how this impacts the design and evaluation of social iTV systems.