BANFF – While competition for intellectual property, talent, eyeballs, and dollars has never been fiercer, those same friction points have been nudging new collaborations around piracy, co-production models and complex monetization gambits according to the Banff Media Festival’s panel of international TV executives speaking a the beautiful Banff Springs Hotel.
David Zitzerman (partner at Goodmans LLP) moderated a panel of major company leaders that included: Sean Cohan (president, international and digital media, A&E Networks), Chris Linn (president, and head of programming, TruTV), Avi Armoza (CEO, Armoza Formats), Jeffrey Hirsch (COO, Starz), and my very favourite Barb Williams (VP and COO, Corus Entertainment).
Zitzerman quickly mounted the elephant in the room by asking panelists how linear TV could possibly survive on just boomers as millennials were stampeding to digital. Well, Williams always brings a sense of groundedness to these panels and was quick to remind delegates that the good news is baby boomers remain numerous and linear television remains a viable platform.
Indeed, 80-to-90% of viewing across all Corus channels is live. Yes, linear audiences may be down but they still represent a premium buy for advertisers. “We’ve been having this conversation for many years now, but we still have a reliable and profitable core business,” she asserted.
It was also important to point out that the measurements for success – especially when it comes to the stock market – for Corus and digital players like YouTube are likely quite different.
Williams shared that in all of this change “finding the value equation” was still the goal. Hence, while linear broadcast TV might be seeing audience drops of 10-to-22%, other properties like W Network and kids (YTV, Disney Channel Canada, and Nickelodeon Canada) are currently showing upticks.
This is not to say Corus won’t continue to experiment with such initiatives as the three new short form projects they’re working on now with Twitter.
However, just so we don’t forget our history, Williams reminded the delegates “to wring our hands about how Canadian content will be financed, is what it has always been to be in the Canadian media business. The future will not be ad free because we need that revenue to finance content, and advertisers want our reach and to reach people with a local connection,” she added, with the real challenge being the maintenance of discrete rights markets.
In a somewhat contrary mode, Linn insisted younger audiences want control and better viewing experiences – which means no ads and no over-messaging by the broadcaster. So, at TruTV promos have been reduced and ads limited to just 11 minutes per hour; the result being a welcome drop in the average age of his viewers from 43 to 34 over the last two years.
Overall he appeared pretty optimistic with “the attention economy putting consumers in control with better content because the competition is so steep.”
Hirsch saw all of this angst as the “the natural evolution of our business due to the Internet… Amazon is the new satellite scare that we had decades ago,” but digital is giving us data to be smarter with our content, he said.
“This disruption has shrunk the world and made it more economical to enter new markets.” Jeffrey Hirsch, Starz
“And this disruption has shrunk the world and made it more economical to enter new markets” from his Starz perspective. However, he also contended that there will likely be just two or three big players at the end of the day “and we’re positioning to slide in to be fourth”.
Yet for Hirsch, all these mergers (AT&T-TimeWarner, Discovery-Scripps, Disney or Comcast and Fox) are not good for consumers and “scale for the sake of scale doesn’t make sense… but it’s a good time to be an investment banker”.
Armoza gracefully offered “at the end of the day, it’s the business of creativity” and all platforms need to find their respective identities. “In 2007 Netflix was a DVD sales and rental by mail business” and now its a US$12 billion streaming video on demand service with Canada as its top international market.
Not to mention Amazon doing nearly US$4 billion (according to reports) in original content today, and Apple likely US$1 billion. For Armoza, Linn’s consolidation prophesy held a silver lining since “consolidating turns companies inward and creates more opportunities for independent producers.”
Zitzerman popped in and out of the panel offering hand-grenades such as “if the EU is imposing 30% European content on OTTs which are generally U.S.-owned” shouldn’t Canada be doing that here?
To which A+E’s Cohan replied that for him there is always an “expectation and responsibility to bring in local content” but that in his A+E experience the regulatory energy to compel that is simply a refection of local market realities – and that has certainly been the case with its sister channel History.
Overall, the panel took solace that more people are watching video around the world today than ever before and those viewer statistics are a gift in terms of rising demand for channels and content – if only they didn’t have to struggle so much to come up with new and better ways to optimize and monetize that bounty.
As we neared wrap-up, Zitzerman tossed another good query about the Weinstein and #MeToo movement (and multiple disclosure moments) within the industry – and Williams aptly swatted that back with the retort “the men should talk about this.”
And to their credit the men on the panel did just that.
The consensus was the Weinstein name should be erased from the conversation and all of us should get on with doing the right thing and paying people properly.
Moreover, more than legislation was required and we all need to hold each other accountable on a daily basis – especially now that we all know better.
Plus, in the sense that there’s nothing so bad there’s not a little good in it, all these ugly reminders will hopefully give rise to more understanding that inclusion is good for business; and that differentiated creative inputs are better for audiences and sales.
