The CBC’s Digital Content Strategy
The CBC intends to aggressively push its content onto multiple digital platforms by negotiating deals with the cable and satellite companies while building on partnerships with the major digital players like iTunes and Google.
“You gotta be in all these places, because that’s where the audience is going,” Richard Stursberg, the executive vice president of English programming, said as he laid out a multi-pronged digital distribution strategy for the corporation last Thursday.
Stursberg said the CBC will have to transition from being a radio or television company to a content company, because content – whether it be TV, radio, or online content – is increasingly untethered from it’s originating platform. TV content is now watched on multiple devices, not just a television screen. He said this has resulted in the decline of appointment viewing, as viewers can watch or listen to content when they want. He said both developments will affect the way the CBC distributes content.
You have to start thinking very hard about the order in which you release your content. Because if it can be on all these different platforms, the question is in what order does it go to the different platforms. And you want to determine the order in which it goes to the different platforms on the basis on how are you going to get the most cumulative viewership or listenernship, and how are you going to maximum the total revenues that are available.
Stursberg said the switch to a multi-screen broadcasting environment won’t happen overnight, and many question remain, “We don’t know what will work,” he said, “One of the big outstanding questions is how long content will live on various platforms.” But he reiterated his commitment to pushing content onto new platforms regardless, “We’re gonna have to absolutely be there,” he said, if we don’t move to these new platforms, “we just lost all our viewers.”
The content strategy update was not entirely groundbreaking. The CBC is already executing many parts of it, like publishing on iTunes and pushing content to video on demand services. However it does represent a sea change in the thinking at the CBC over the last few years. Less than five years ago many producers, and the corporation in general seemed concerned that putting either radio or TV content online would cannibalize their core audience, and hurt ratings. Those concerns are now obviously no longer current.
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Top TV dinosaur Stursberg speaks and says nothing.
How less than thrilling it must be to work at a broadcaster/publisher that is so far behind and has no new ideas and isn’t even trying to break new ground.
To be fair, Allan, I expected dinosaur thinking but he seems to have gotten it. There were some flaws from my amateur perspective. For one thing, independent producers may be less likely to give exclusive rights to all platforms, especially when they have just as much access to online platforms as we do. I’d also question the importance of the relationships with some of those platforms (Google in particular, at least as described). But the meat was there, and buzzwords were used sparingly.
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Wow, sounds like someone finally got to him.
Too bad he laid waste to a bunch of careers along the way before it finally sunk in.
I’m glad you’re well, Paul, because you’ll need all your strength to fight the Maffin Menace trying to take over your blog.
But subject at hand: I listened closely to Richard at the CRTC hearings on new media and he makes a plausible effort at staying informed. But then, what else does he have to do?
He was not hired to bring original thinking to the CBC. More like administrative duties in the vein of Margaret Thatcher. But to listen to him is to hear the results of various studies and surveys. All of Richard’s certainty and understanding comes from surveys and accumulating data.
The most striking thing about this piece is how shockingly dated it is, as if this is a story that had been lying around from three years ago and you only now got around to printing it. Because everything he says is the epitome of a “DUH” moment.
To announce that the CBC is moving content on to the web is old hat.
What’s interesting about taking shows that people are bored with such as The Hour and The National and making them more widely available?
Now if he were to announce that new programs were being created just for the web, and that these programs would be given more freedom in subject and style, then we would have something to get excited about.
Fine, I’ll do it:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/03/22/ad_apple_1984_2.png
Waiting for “Observer” to come in and defend her boss.
Allan, I agree. I was looking forward to the presentation hoping that some new direction would come out of, but instead it was more of an elucidation of what the CBC is already doing. Maybe the idea was to update staff that are not aware of some of the developments on this front. However there is also an element of waiting for the other shoe to drop. When more direction on the windowing strategy is released it may have significant impact of producers and viewers.
I consume gobs of CBC content via social media. It’s the program like Age of Persuasion that’s not available as a podcast that worries me. Get all that great content available via all channels. Give me my taxpayer’s money’s worth. And I’ll praise you to high heaven. Cause CBC produces smart, thoughtful, unique, worthwhile content. Bravo Richard.