The Future Human Podcast is back to offer a fresh dose of future tensity and laudable audio. In Small TV we explore how software apps are metamorphosing the television industry.

The humble TV set is evolving into a rich computer interface: peripherals such as Sky+, Xbox, and Apple TV offer television shows on-demand, apps like BBC iPlayer serve up timeshifted broadcasting, and modern TV programmes offer ample opportunity to interact on mobile devices, often across multiple screens simultaneously.

In the process, a radically progressive vision of the television as a universal appliance is beginning to be realised: a mutable screen that combines as a media player and games console, a global communications device, a university and professional training resource, a shopping mall, and so much more besides.

But who will truly profit from a profoundly changing broadcasting environment where ‘apps are channels’ and a public service broadcaster like Channel 4 goes head to head with Angry Birds? Will Internet savvy production companies cut the networks out and go straight to the consumer? And will we see a new form of public broadcasting emerge as museums, theatres and charities enter the fray?

Seeking A’s to Q’s, we travelled to the HQ of Zeebox, a social television service and British startup that has been taking control of the TV experience in a fiendishly intelligent manner. The company’s CTO Anthony Rose, previously the BBC iPlayer boss who took the service to the masses, joined us to identify and connect the moving dots of that make up the networked television universe. We were also accompanied by Nick Brown, chairman of TBC Digital, an app developer for smart TVs, and heard from Simon Brickle, MD of the second screen entertainment company Monterosa, and Bill Thompson, the BBC’s resident digital iconoclast.

Listen below via Soundcloud, or download in iTunes, where you can also catch up on our previous episodes.