MONTREAL – Content producers and distributors must figure out how best to be constantly innovative if Canadian content is to thrive in the new on-demand world.
That was the message Thursday as the CRTC and National Film Board’s 'En Route to the Discoverability Summit' workshop series came to Montreal. Like Tuesday’s session in Vancouver, there was a lot of discussion about how the media world has changed, and some interesting, if vague, suggestions on what to do about it.
The event started much like the previous one did, with speeches from men in suits (in French this time…) telling us what we know: The media universe is changing, young people are using smartphones and gravitating toward video on demand and online, and there’s scads more content out there but nowhere near enough ad revenue to go around.
Talking about his home country of France, Pascal Lechevallier, CEO of media consulting firm What's Hot and the keynote speaker for the event, said regulation there is holding back innovation. He didn’t go into specifics in his speech, but when pressed about it in a question afterward clarified that an unregulated media environment would “open the door to abuses.” Lechevallier said the keys to promoting content are a need to understand our environment, create “synergies” and “innovate, innovate, innovate.”
Easier said than done
Things got more interesting during a panel discussion later featuring professors and media experts. Sylvain Lafrance, the former vice-president of Radio-Canada, noted some lessons to learn from more traditional marketing techniques. He noted the hype that’s generated at the Bell Centre before a Canadiens game, with musical montages, eye-catching animations and kids skating on the ice with flags. “Before it even starts you’re engaged,” he said.
Lafrance was instrumental in the 2010 launch of Tou.tv, Radio-Canada’s online French language video service, which also features content from other public broadcasters like Télé-Québec, TFO and TV5. He said a major advertising campaign was necessary to raise awareness about the service when it launched.
“We inundated the city (with ads), no one could avoid hearing about Tou.tv,” he said. “It was almost instantaneous.”
But Lafrance also said that a lot of the way people learn about media is beyond the control of producers, distributors and marketers. He illustrated with an analogy: It used to be like bowling, where you’d throw a ball down a lane and try to hit as many pins as possible. Now it’s like pinball, where you launch a ball out there and you don’t know where it’s going to go. It could bounce around everywhere and earn thousands of points, or it could make a bad bounce and go right down the drain.
“The strategies of discoverability vary from one type of content to another.” – Suzanne Lortie, UQAM
Suzanne Lortie, a communications professor at Université du Québec à Montréal, suggested that “the strategies of discoverability vary from one type of content to another,” and there’s no magic solution for everything. For TV, she said, live interactivity is a key driver of engagement.
Jean-François Gagnon, president of LVL, which makes second-screen apps, mobile apps and interactive websites linked to TV series, said one key is listening to the consumer. He pointed to the fact that Telus and Cogeco, two major television providers that aren’t vertically integrated, now offer Netflix as an application on their advanced set-top boxes. “They’re just responding to the laws of the free market,” he said.
Lortie pointed to Songza, the music streaming service (which Google announced on Wednesday would be shut down and incorporated into Google Play). She theorized that in the future, TV viewers would be searching for content much like Songza users currently do, not by looking for particular authors or subjects, but by their mood.
Social media will certainly have a strong role to play in discoverability, everyone seemed to agree. But what role, exactly?
Michèle Savard, senior vice-president of media strategy firm Carat, said one of the strengths of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and others is real-time feedback. “We can tell very quickly who is interested and who isn’t interested.”
But while social media will be key as a recommendation engine, Lortie warned of the potential for abuse. She pointed to bloggers who accept money or goods in exchange for positive reviews, often without disclosing it, a form of “payola”, she said. “If we rely only on user recommendations, it’s clear there will be fraud.”
There are also technical issues to consider. Josée Plamondon, a digital librarian and consultant who watched the panel discussion, pointed to content that’s locked in walled gardens (hello, Apple), invisible to search engines and the larger web.
“We have a tremendous amount of resources in Canada to actually make a difference. The convening power of the Commission is to bring that force together.” – Jean-Pierre Blais, CRTC
It’s a lot to take in, and maybe still too abstract to implement at this point, but CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais said he came out of the discussion with some interesting ideas: the importance of “big data” and understanding audiences, the usefulness of partnerships between public institutions, particularly the idea of bringing in Library and Archives Canada. “They’re information managers, right?” he said.
“We have a tremendous amount of resources in Canada to actually make a difference,” Blais explained. “The convening power of the Commission is to bring that force together.”
What is the CRTC’s role?
Blais emphasized that this summit is “not a regulatory activity.” He said the Commission has already done its part with the Let’s Talk TV proceeding and by organizing these events, and said “I’m not seeing anything on the horizon” as far as new broadcasting regulations on this topic.
However, the chairman did point to the Reguator’s upcoming activities on the telecommunications side, including a hearing in April on the availability of digital networks, including in remote areas.
The Vancouver and Montreal events were teasers to a much larger two-day summit in Toronto, which Blais announced would take place May 10 and 11. Blais said the bigger conference will be more international, bigger and hopes it will attract youth. (He blamed their lack of participation in this week’s events on timing, coming so close to the end of the semester). He also expects in-depth papers to be presented with some hard data.
