TORONTO – If you thought clicking thumbs on BlackBerrys during business meetings was annoying, now Kevin Newman is going to be making appearances in them.
Saying the video quality is iPod-like, CanWest MediaWorks will begin making its content available to Blackberry users beginning this month.
Sixty to 90 second clips of Global National will be the first of many "berry casts" the company has planned, CanWest Interactive president Arturo Duran told www.cartt.ca today. Following the news, the company will make Entertainment Tonight Canada available and is looking into packaging sports content, "like plays of the day," as well, he added.
"We’re in discussions with others on this."
The service will be in beta-mode for at least a month after its May 16 launch and the company has not yet put final touches on the business plan as it waits to see how consumers use it. However, added Duran, revenue will come from three potential sources: some sort of split with wireless carriers (for those who want on demand viewing); a subscription fee (for those who want the content automatically downloaded to their Blackberries); from advertising – or from all three.
The company is currently in talks with all three national wireless carriers in Canada (Telus, Rogers and Bell Mobility) about packaging the service.
CanWest is negotiating with two sponsors (Duran declined to name them, as negotiations are still ongoing) who will run a "three to four second" ad spot at the beginning of each piece of video. At launch, the content will not be live, or streamed video, but downloaded in chunks. "The sponsor message can’t be 15 seconds if the content itself is only 45," said Duran.
As for live streamed video? That will come next, says Duran.
Only users of the Blackberry 8700 and newer, yet to come models, will be able to access video, but with the unit’s larger screen, when compared to cell phones, it’s hoped this will be a more user-friendly, viewable, interface. Video quality "is as good as an iPod," said Duran.
As well, when users visit other CanWest sites, such as the local canada.com sites and its newspapers, any video available will be identified with a Berrycast tag so that Blackberry users can download and watch the video if they wish.
While there are only about 37,000 of the RIM 8700 devices in the market, "the whole world is going G3," Duran added, referring to the rapidly developing digital wireless networks which are getting faster and faster, adding more bandwidth all the time – thus, enabling video to the BlackBerrys.
Duran is undeterred by the relatively small numbers because as existing models age and are replaced, users will replace them with new G3 models. "In 12 to 18 months, everyone will have (a G3-capable) model," said Duran.
This is a bit of a different target market for video content as compared to others where much of the iPod content or video delivered to cell phones has the 30 and under crowd in mind. "But this is a business person market," said Duran. While the college and high school crowd are used to their MP3 players, the business crowd is used to their Crackberrys.
An important part of the change is in the news production itself, he added. The company is looking to update their news Berrycasts "every 60 to 90 minutes," which means the newsroom must redefine how it thinks of a deadline. Newspapers have had to get used to this already where when the news is ready – it goes out right away and doesn’t wait for the next day’s paper. As Berrycasts and podcast grow, news deadlines become far more immediate.
"The educated user wants multimedia and doesn’t care if its Global National or the National Post or whatever," added Duran.
CanWest, its middleware provider Sona Mobile (creators of the first-ever Blackberry Media Player), along with manufacturer Research In Motion and Intel will show off the service at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium, May 16 to 18 in Orlando, Fla.
