OTTAWA – Digital disruption has opened up tremendous opportunity for broadcasters, distributors and producers alike, but has also created significant challenges, according to speakers in the first panel session at the Canadian Media Producers’ Association’s annual Prime Time conference Thursday morning.
For CBC/Radio-Canada, going digital and implementing its own over the top (OTT) service has allowed the national public broadcaster to reach new audiences. Heather Conway, executive VP of English services at CBC, acknowledged that the corporation skews to an older, linear TV oriented demographic but said the move into the digital realm has given CBC a wider audience.
“As we move into the OTT world we’re able to give the digital audience that we’ve reached incredibly successfully through our news app and other things access to the real breadth of our programming. We’re able to put things on OTT that may never appear on linear,” she said (pictured, screen capped from the PTiO YouTube channel, which is showing some sessions live).
Producers, on the other hand, see the value proposition of creating content as remaining as it has been in the conventional world. “It’s harder to come by perhaps, we have to find it in different places, non-traditional places,” said John Young, chief executive at Boat Rocker Media. “But that ultimately is still the opportunity for us – create original IP.” (Intellectual Property)
“With that we can build businesses, we can scale perhaps, and certainly we can enjoy the process of just making content which is at the core of any producer’s DNA. So I think the opportunity remains despite the disruption and all the things that are going on,” he said.
Broadcast distributors generally agree that opportunities arising from the digital shift remain the same, but as Jay Gardner, VP of product development at Shaw Communications, explained there are some challenges particularly since the majority of its customer base is still largely focused on watching TV on big screens. This means, he added, that there is work ahead for Shaw as it innovates to address the changing viewing patterns of its customers.
There are some cool innovations coming that should make it easier for the broadcast distributors to deal with the changing viewing habits.
“We think BlueSky and X1 is an example of that. Rogers and Vidéotron will be coming soon,” he said, referring to innovations such as voice search, curation and profiling which will come east when the companies deploy the Comcast technology as Shaw has. “It really takes what frankly Netflix and some of the OTT guys have innovated on in terms of UI (user interface), individualization, curated content. Netflix is just so easy to use and it never seems that difficult to find what you want. That’s really raised the game of all players including the BDUs.”
Despite the opportunities OTT and the digital shift offer to the various industry stakeholders, there are other challenges ahead for broadcasters in this new world. Conway pointed to the escalating cost of programming as one. She noted that Netflix’s The Crown cost $130 million for a 10 episode season, which is equivalent to the amount of money CBC/Radio-Canada spends on all of its non-news programming in the course of a single year.
“Our ability to compete in a world of exceptional global content is becoming tougher and tougher. That’s true not just for the CBC, but it’s a problem being faced by every broadcaster.” – Heather Conway, CBC
“So our ability to compete in a world of exceptional global content is becoming tougher and tougher. That’s true not just for the CBC, but it’s a problem being faced by every broadcaster,” she said.
The evolution of devices – big screen TVs and smaller handheld devices – undoubtedly has a role in how consumers view and access content. John Penny, executive VP of consumer business development and partnerships at Twentieth Century FOX, noted that one of the big issues will centre around the amount of time spent in front of the TV versus the handheld device. Throw in the fact that 80% of all advertising in the US on mobile devices is on Facebook and Google and a big dilemma emerges.
“Therefore most of the time people are spending on their mobile devices are in social or other short form content environments like the very powerful and unique YouTube environment. That puts a creative challenge out there,” he said.
“The challenge is that people’s attention spans are becoming much more fleeting and you start to look at it in age based segmentation. Young people having a very different form of attention, they can attend to things for longer periods of time if it’s worth it for them, but they give it much less opportunity to play out, less willingness to try unless their friend group is recommending,” he added.
Cartt.ca will have more from Prime Time in the coming days.
