BCE, CTV merger creates right conditions for two-screen production of Degrassi

The web partners in a new production of Degrassi Street are crediting the merger of BCE Inc and CTV Inc for an innovative, two-screen approach to youth programming. This fall, CTV will begin airing a new Degrassi series from Epitome Pictures that will incorporate a real-time online corollary web site with push email and other interactive elements to make young viewers part of the story. Roma Khanna, VP of Snap Media – the web partner in the production – says the project will benefit from the resources of companies across the BCE spectrum, including Bell ExpressVu, Bell Nexxia, Sympatico-Lycos and the broadcaster itself. At last week’s Convergence: ITV and Beyond conference in Toronto, Epitome producer Stephen Stohn outlined the two-screen approach. He says the project was green-lighted with help from the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund, and that each of Sympatico, ExpressVu and CTV have paid a licence fee to use the Canadian Degrassi web site. Fees are comparable to those paid for TV rights, he added. Viewers to the show can register on the web site to join a "home room", and as the broadcast evolves, participants will receive emails and other interactive events as though they were characters in the show. Epitome and Snap are 50/50 partners in the web site, which can be customized for other broadcasters. Negotiations are ongoing, for example, with the British Broadcasting Corp. Key to the experience will be a new content management engine being built by Snap that will track viewers through the broadcast according to when the show is being watched in their geographic territory. A CTV viewer, for example, will receive different content than a BBC viewer watching the same episodes months later. Khanna calls the engine a "monster" for its complexity and the company is still in the final stages of completing the product. Stohn says there’s no question of broadcasters licensing either the show or web site as a standalone entity. He told the ITV audience that the venture partners have been unable to ascribe a separate value for either component, and that negotiations thus far have attached a higher value to the converged project – the only option he and Snap are putting on the table. Commenting on an observation that the project reflects a new push by Bell Globemedia for converged content, Khanna agreed that the CTV/Bell merger pushed the agenda for interactivity forward. "I think that’s a bit of a chicken and egg, but, absolutely, I think that this project and what’s happened with Bell Globemedia are both signs of how media is changing and how television is changing." "From our point of view," she added, "what we’re doing with Bell Globemedia and CTV would be impossible at the level to which we’re doing it today if they hadn’t merged the companies… That’s possible because they’ve got all those companies, but it’s also possible – a point that can’t be missed – is that they’re allowing it to be possible and they’re trying to connect those dots and have projects like this across all their different companies." The site itself will be hosted by Bell Nexxia, and Sympatico-Lycos plans a strong marketing push in return for sponsorship consideration. Because the site will be controlled by Epitome/Snap, Khanna says it can be offered to other broadcasters on either a turnkey basis, or with extensive customization subject to increased licence fees. In Canada, Degrassi Street is slated to air on CTV on Oct. 14.

BCE, CTV merger creates right conditions for two-screen production of Degrassi

Broadcast | August 23, 2001

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