New CTV-Rogers Olympic consortium planning to step up digital content; CBC, Telus will be watching

With the CBC losing it’s Olympic bid for the first time since 1996, this year’s new Olympic broadcast consortium is under pressure to demonstrate that it can deliver Canadians the content they want via new, digital platforms. Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium, a partnership between media conglomerates CTV Inc. and Rogers Media Inc., will deliver all Olympic competitions live on either 10 television networks, 10 radio stations, or two websites. The CBC lost its bid to broadcast the 2010 Olympics to a winning bid of $153 million US, representing a 110 per cent increase from the $73 million US that the CBC paid for the rights to the 2006 and 2008 games. “The CBC has been a ground-breaker in coverage of the Olympics,” Jeff Keay, the CBC’s head of media relations, English services, said in an interview. “We were the first broadcaster to feature Olympic events and highlights on mobile phones.” At the Beijing games in 2008, the CBC offered online Olympics highlight packages in Mandarin. But digital media has come a long way in two years' time. This year, the consortium is combining its technology to offer video content to smartphones. Content will be pushed to consortium partner Bell Canada, which has the exclusive right to carry video on its mobile network. Bell Canada beat out Telus Corp. as an official Olympic partner. “We have an exclusive arrangement with CTV for content,” said Justin Webb, vice-president of Olympic services for Bell. “We can deliver mobile video to a variety of devices on our network. This is a significant amount of content that we will be streaming out live to handsets during the games.” Bell will be making use of investments in a 285 km fibre optic network and a revamped HSPA wireless network. CTV chose Microsoft’s Silverlight 3.0 over rival Adobe’s Flash technology to stream video. A recent high-tech webcast announcing the Team Canada line-up hit some glitches, however, when many viewers didn’t know that a free browser plug-in was required. Silverlight worked well, however, when NBC used it during the 2008 summer games in Beijing. “The Microsoft video player allows people to pause, rewind, replay,” CTV’s Marcovici said. “We have built in markers so that with one click of a button you can go to a key moment. For example, in a hockey game you can quickly find goals, hits, and the beginning of periods.” Alon Marcovici, vice-president of digital media and research for CTV, told The Wire Report that CTV has also partnered with delatre s.p.a., an Italian IT and media services company, to provide live chat overlays, leaderboards, running box scores, and archives. The technology supports delivery in 22 languages, eight of which are Canadian aboriginal. “We have long talked about this as a watershed moment for how media will be consumed in this country,” Marcovici said. “The notion of the passive experience is somewhat antiquated. There is a great case study coming out of this that looks at the partnerships across companies and channels.” Bell is hoping that its land-based fibre network can handle the consortium’s 14 concurrent live streams—but streaming live, mobile video could be a challenge. “Bell’s HSPA network makes their life easier when it comes to streaming video on handsets,” Mark Tauschek, a senior research analyst at the Info-Tech Research Group, told The Wire Report. “They should be able to handle demand, but there are some questions as to how robust the backhaul is.” The most significant challenge will come during high demand periods. “You are only as fast as your bottleneck, and those cell sites have to get back to the fibre backbone,” Tauschek said. “When Canadian hockey is on, especially the medal games—that’s really when it is going to be put to the test.” No doubt the CBC and Telus will be watching.

New CTV-Rogers Olympic consortium planning to step up digital content; CBC, Telus will be watching

Broadcast | January 21, 2010

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