THE SENIOR VICE-PRESIDENT of digital media at Alliance Atlantis, takes care to point out that his new baby, blogtv.ca, is not a technology play.
Even though it’s a broadband service requiring a web cam and some rudimentary know-how, blogtv.ca is "a programming and production play, about engaging audiences on other platforms," says Claude Galipeau, that SVP. Plus, it’s different from just about anything that’s out there. While other sites let anyone post clips from anywhere, blogtv.ca lets Canadians, and Canadians only, broadcast live and interact with viewers in real time.
This is not about taking content from elsewhere and dumping it on line. It’s about live TV and drawing eyeballs.
Last week Galipeau (pictured) chatted with Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien. What follows is an edited transcript.
Greg O’Brien: How is it doing since launch?
Claude Galipeau: it is on fire. We started our marketing push on Mar
ch 5th. On March 4th, we had 480 subscribers. Today we have over 9,000 – just in three weeks. We have an average of 500 live shows running per week and each one of the shows has on average 10 viewers – so each has a one to 10 ratio. They range from two to as high as 90 watching and interacting.
We have had a million page views, too.
GOB: All since March 5th?
CG: Yes. And we have had a vast amount of content being produced. We have people who are staying on line for short periods and some for long periods. We had one guy stay on continuously for two and a half days.
GOB: Broadcasting for two-and-a-half days?
CG: Correct. He broadcast his life, basically. He is from Montreal, his handle is Bronx, and was recently divorced and was trying to deal with his issues by getting some support on line and was giving out relationship advice. He’s turned out to be quite a draw and continues to broadcast on a regular basis.
Right now, for example, we have a guy right now doing guitar lessons. We have two major sections, a general section and an after-hours section and we have a guy named Havoc who’s doing a nightly show that’s kind of a cross between Punk’d and Howard Stern. He has, on a regular basis, as many as 30 to 60 simultaneous viewers. He has a co-host named Big Will and their have a camera trained on an interesting, let’s say, if not seedy, corner of Brantford, of all places, and they comment on the goings-on in the evenings in Brantford and hold a virtual block party and engage in a number of stunts.
GOB: Such as?
CG: Going out there and humping the stop sign. Big Will has gone out there in a gorilla mask and a sign saying "I need bananas", they periodically leave a purse on the corner and see how long it takes before someone steals it. They also count the number of police cars that go by without seeing it.
This has all arisen without any prompting from us. These people are developing their own fan base, they are developing their own vernacular – for example, the call of the wild blogger is "whoot whoot!"
Havoc has one where he asks: "That’s a cup of what?" and everyone answers: "That’s a cup of what the f*** is that." I’ve heard chants, too, like "Bye-bye YouTube, Bye-bye!"
There’s also an immense patriotic streak occurring now. People are appearing on their cams with Canadian flags. The fact that it is Canadian and for Canadians is a popular feature that people have picked up on.
GOB: Have any of the users or broadcasters crossed the line of taste or safety or anything like that?
CG: We have 24/7 moderation and the racy content can only be in after hours. If people are abusive they can get booted out either by the broadcaster or any content deemed inappropriate can be flagged to the moderator and dealt with. But we really have not had any significant incidents.
We do in fact have racy content, including sexual content in the after hours section but that is all within the community rules. Everyone who is on the platform is 18 and over and there are also shows on hockey, TV shows and DVD reviews, gaming and technology and that kind of stuff.
We’re also in the market with a campaign where we have a 20-person crew who are bogging out of a Hummer while driving around Toronto.
GOB: How long will that go?
CG: We’re doing it this month but we’re going to continue to tape them.
GOB: What has been the primary marketing vehicle to get notice out there?
CG: The primary marketing have been our blogger who have content there all the time and search engine marketing – buying ads in the Google network, on Face book, on Yahoo360 and Yahoo Instant Messenger. What we’re doing is that because Canadians are so engaged with social networking out of the U.S. we are buying ads in these networks seeking to repatriate these Canadians.
GOB: Is that an expensive spend?
CG: I would say that I’d consider it cost-efficient… I’m not going to tell you what it cost in actual numbers but it pales in comparison to any TV campaign. It’s an expense, but it’s not the days of the Internet boom where everyone was blowing their brains out.
It’s also extremely tactical with regards of where we’re placing it with Google Network. And we also monitor our conversion rates very closely. So we’re managing on a daily basis our subscriber acquisition, where we’re linking all of our spend to subscriber acquisition.
GOB: How are you specifically targeting the advertising to reach the right people?
CG: We’re going in social network sites and on video sites and we’re aiming for all interests, and all players who are adults. We are in the process of building a user base and finding out what the community will do and how they will express themselves.
We’re not pre-judging what they will do on the platform. We’re not saying "Come to blog and do a DVD review show", we’re just saying "Come to blog and just check it out."
And people are coming and doing content all the time and figuring out how to do it on their own and developing their own technique and their own modes of expression and their own show styles.
GOB: In terms of revenue, will it be advertising only, or do you foresee a subscription model.
CG: At the moment it is advertising-based. We also expect to look at the sponsorship side and event marketing side. So any advertiser that wants to do event marketing or engage with Canadians as they express themselves – I mean, if you want reality programming, this is real reality programming.
GOB: How long before this is a money-maker for Alliance Atlantis?
CG: We have a business plan and I’m not going to discuss when we’re going to go cash-positive but we consider this to be an important investment in the social media space because there is no property in Canada that’s offered by Canadians where Canadians are interacting in a social network.
GOB: How much of the programming is stored, versus, just "aired"?
CG: We store it, but users record it and keep it. At the moment, we have 1300 videos that have been recorded.
GOB: The reason I ask is that it’s different than a YouTube, to use the most popular example, in that anonymous users aren’t just posting clips, they are live.
CG: It is live. It is authentic. It’s interactive. It is YouTube on steroids. Supercharged. We consider it to be unique. Live video bogging is a unique value proposition. We also think it’s unique because it’s targeted to Canadians – Canadians speaking about themselves with passion.
GOB: Is it closed off to those from other countries?
CG: You can post your videos to any blog or any site anywhere on the Internet, however, only Canadians can use the platform. It is blocked to all Internet addresses that are not Canadian.
GOB: So, if I wanted to do a blogtv.ca show from NAB in Las Vegas in a couple of weeks when I’m there, I couldn’t because I’d be broadcasting from the States?
CG: More than likely, you couldn’t do it. We’re doing that for a number of reasons. One is our software application licensing is for Canada but the principal reason is we need to manage our bandwidth and if we’re going to provide bandwidth, we’re going to provide it to the community we believe is underserved: Canadians.
GOB: And this is more bandwidth intensive than just a regular old clip site.
CG: Correct. However, we’re managing relatively efficiently and not suffering under any particular loads at the moment. We’ve created an architecture that’s highly scalable but nonetheless, we’re not in the business of having Americans engage in our platform. Why? Because we want to present advertisers with an engagement that is purely Canadian.
So that’s why one of the challenges for media companies in Canada is they can see quite a bit of engagement being sucked into the south with Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, with no ability for us to monetize that engagement.
So this is our strategy to, on the one hand, provide a compelling service for Canadians to use, but also to have a clear Canadian user base that is appealing to advertisers.
GOB: And it’s not at all a place meant to drive viewers to Showcase or HGTV or any of the company’s TV channels.
CG: It’s a pure Internet play – it’s to build a community. It’s to find an answer to the question of what, if you’re a media company, are you doing in a social media space. It’s our answer to the move News Corporation did when it bought My space.
GOB: You’ve got other interactive activities you’re in charge of at the company, too, right?
CG: We’ve just re-branded and launched Slice, which was Life Network, and the slice.ca web site has a whole number of unique on line applications. We have advice for women and gossip and lots of games – because women are big players of online games – particularly quizzes and puzzles.
We’re building out unique video content as well as replay video content on Showcase. We have a unique blog on Showcase. In Food, we continue with our recipe service, our information about cooking, we have video – some how-to videos not available on television. We have a very popular blog written by Catherine Rheon on Food and on HGTV we have replay video and how-to video and applications for design and real estate information and other information.
We’re quite active in all of our verticals… but what we also want to develop are communities of interest around all of our brands and that would be phase two
