QUEBEC CITY – Radio-Canada has launched a new Internet site, TOU.TV, the first in Canada offering free access to a well-stocked library of old and current French-language television dramas, variety shows, and current affairs productions.
The launch of the new site, enriched by the content from 20 other broadcasters and production companies, puts the public broadcaster firmly in a leadership position, said Radio-Canada vice-president Sylvain Lafrance, because viewers are quickly adopting the web as the place to get their television fix and they have nothing else quite like it, in English or in French.
Already, more than 2,000 hours of shows are available; that will double by summer as more agreements are signed and more programs are technically readied.
Among the shows available for viewing are current dramas, such as Mirador and C.A., old favourites from the ’70s and ’80s such as Chez Denise and Le temps d’une paix, as well as music shows, documentaries, current affairs programs, and several years’ worth of Bye-Bye’s, Radio-Canada’s year-end comedy revue.
Other public networks contributing content are Télé-Québec, TFO, TV5 Monde, TV5 Québec Canada, RTS (Switzerland), and RTBF (Belgium). There are also 11 participating production companies: Aetios, Bubbles Television, Casablanca, Cirrus, Jimmy Lee, La Presse Télé, Novem, Pixcom, Sphère Média Plus, Vivaweb, and l’Alliance des producteurs francophones du Canada.
On the English side, CBC Television has no immediate plans for a similar site, said CBC’s head of media relations Jeff Keay. Rogers offers access to a TV library (Rogers On Demand Online), but it’s limited and available only to cable and wireless subscribers (and at last report, actually has fewer hours of content on it than TOU.TV).
Hulu.com was launched in the U.S. in 2008, but its content is unavailable outside the country, just as 90% of TOU.TV is blocked to web viewers outside Canada, at least for now, because of broadcast rights agreements.
Quebec’s private networks, TVA and V, are not part of the new portal, nor is the specialty TV chain, Astral Média.
“We have no intention of providing content [to TOU.TV],” Astral’s senior communications advisor Hugues Mousseau said. “We’re more interested in continuing to increase our own content and interactivity on each of our network’s web sites.
“It’s true there is a trend to increased web viewing,” he said, “and we see it with our own Teletoon and Family.ca, which are the most visited in Canada.”
The motivation behind TOU.TV, Martin Delisle, Radio-Canada’s Internet and digital operations director told Cartt.ca, is “to reach the growing number of people who are moving away from the TV set and using the web for their viewing. And with TOU.TV, we can broaden the spectrum of what we offer and not feel restricted by the limited hours in the TV schedule.
“The idea of bringing together different broadcasters and producers – that provided even more opportunity, and everyone right away saw the advantage of doing this.”
Surprisingly, it took barely more than six months for the project to advance from the initial brain-storming to reality, he said. Technically, the project was helped by the fact that Radio-Canada had already converted old shows from their original formats to new digital supports.
There is no guarantee the site will remain free forever, Deslisle acknowledged. The partners will look at other fee-based models to see how well they might work, though for now, they’re counting on advertising revenues to reach the target of sustainability within a couple of years.
The response in the first few days (it launched the week of January 25th) has been “overwhelmingly positive”, he said, with 359,000 visits within 48 hours and 21,000 “friends” on the site’s Facebook page.
Glenn Wanamaker is Cartt.ca’s Quebec Editor.
