CHUM, CBC prime examples of wireless becoming key strategic tool

Other broadcasters looking to capitalize on the growing wireless content trend should look to CHUM Television and the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. for advice on how to successfully integrate mobility and other content into traditional offerings. The innovative broadcasters are leading the way in Canada in terms of using alternative platforms to connect content with viewers, and are considered standouts on the international scene. In the past, broadcast television was about providing static content to viewers. "You put a program on TV, you market it, you schedule it and then you hope that people come and watch it. And if people came to watch, then you’ve done your job well," said Roma Khanna, senior VP with CHUM Television, at the All About ME (Mobile Entertainment) conference last month. That paradigm has changed, and some would argue no longer exists. Viewers are increasingly dictating what they want to watch on TV or what type of content is important to them. They are already doing this through the Internet, which led the innovative broadcasters to move into the wireless arena and add other interactive technologies to its broadcast properties. In one of his last interviews before his announcement to move to Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc. (see People, p. 7), CBC executive director of digital programming and business development Claude Galipeau told Canadian Communications Reports that the broadcaster will increasingly make use of a wide array of digital distribution outlets for the audio and video content it produces, from digital TV and wireless carriers to emerging channels such as Google Video. Galipeau pointed to the CBC’s wireless content delivery partnership with Bell Mobility during the recent Olympic Winter Games in Torino, Italy as an example of the public broadcaster’s new thinking on digital distribution to platforms other than traditional TV and radio. "When you’re away from a TV you don’t have to necessarily go to The Bay at lunchtime to see Olympic coverage now. You can see it on your cellphone," he said. The CBC’s website already receives a respectable amount of traffic, so much so that it’s almost become a third mainstream media outlet alongside the corporation’s television and radio stations. "It completes the day in terms of media offerings," according to Galipeau. "We have the audience in the morning on radio, and in the afternoon on drive shows, and then in the late afternoon and evening we have them on television, but during the day it’s really the Internet, with primetime being lunch," he said. Galipeau added that wireless adds a whole new level of possibilities. "It’s helping us complete the geography of media consumption, because people are consuming media all over the place," he said. "We’re on screens in airports, in elevators and on cellphones. People are consuming content across these various platforms, and our objective is to be relevant to people in their media choices, and to be there when they choose it, not make the choice for them." It’s a sentiment echoed by Khanna and underscored by CHUM’s deployment of content over Internet and wireless platforms. "We want MuchMusic to move with our audience onto platforms because our audience is using those platforms," Khanna said. However, the interest a piece of content garners when broadcast on a 42-inch television set might not match up with the welcome it gets on a 320-by-240-pixel handheld screen. "We’re still in the early days of analyzing usage patterns in things like video content on cellphones, but I think the industry kind of divides the content offerings into two baskets: one is timeliness, which would be news and sports, and then time-wasting, which would be entertainment – comedy in particular," noted Galipeau. "I think that’s pretty much the lesson learned from the United States, and so we try to stay pretty much on top of that." While the CBC is taking tentative steps into mobile content, CHUM has staked a significant part of its future on wireless, having launched a pre-paid wireless service about 18 months ago and made a considerable effort to offer much of its content to cell phone subscribers. CHUM’s music channel MuchMusic is also another cornerstone of its wireless strategy, playing a pivotal role in the multi-carrier ringtone store shop.muchmusic.com. As of November 2005, the portal had sold more than three million ringtones and cell phone screen graphics. With changing audience demands, the broadcaster has had to create other avenues for delivering content to its viewers and the fourth screen -- as the cell phone has been dubbed -- is an important delivery mechanism. Key to the company’s success in this area rests with CHUM’s view of MuchMusic as a brand, not as just a TV channel, and wireless is a natural fit with this concept. "If we view ourselves as content providers, as opposed to a broadcast platform company, wireless fits in perfectly," Khanna said, adding this is a holistic, multiplatform approach to content. Audience, said the CHUM executive, plays a much greater role today in what is seen on TV. Accordingly, CHUM has made use of new technology platforms to introduce more interactivity and user-driven programming. "We don’t tell our audience anymore what to watch, they tell us. And it’s our job to try to deliver on what they’re asking from us," Khanna said. She pointed out that CHUM’s Punch Much program is entirely directed by viewers, who send in text messages requesting the video of their favourite band or artist. Each SMS puts a particular song in the queue and a live chat also allows viewers to interact with each other, creating a sense of community. Integrating wireless into the broadcasting sphere isn’t without its challenges. As Khanna noted the wireless platform isn’t yet "invisible" or transparent to the user. But she added, the content players, carriers and technology providers are working together to get the kinks out of the current platform. The CBC, meanwhile, is increasingly looking at B2B-type arrangements where third-party networks syndicate the broadcaster’s content in order to offer it to their customers. "There is a high demand amongst the user bases on those networks for our content. So, we would deal with Rogers and we’d deal with Telus and we’d deal with Shaw, whether it’s cable or wireless or broadband, we syndicate content within broadband networks," Galipeau said, pointing to sites such as the Rogers Yahoo and MyTelus web portals as potential customers for the CBC’s audio and video content. The public broadcaster first got into syndicating such content nearly a decade ago, with the first news headline feeds to mobile devices through WAP technology. Now, it has a whole division dedicated to content partnerships with third-party networks. "We already syndicate through podcasting quite a lot of content through iTunes," Galipeau said. "Radio 3, for example just celebrated its millionth download, we do that both through our own platforms as well as through the iTunes window. Podcasting is really MP3 files and RSS put together, right?" For more information of the wireless activities of CHUM Television, please see the following issues of CCR sister publication Report on Wireless, Nov. 4/04 and Feb. 25/04).

CHUM, CBC prime examples of wireless becoming key strategic tool

Broadcast | March 13, 2006

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