TORONTO – The multiscreen environment of the typical Canadian living room these days has profound implications for broadcasters as they figure out how to reach and maintain their audience, said a number of industry experts who spoke Wednesday at the Digital Media Summit in Toronto.
“We are now multitasking across multiscreens,” said Neil Shankman, head of large advertiser and agency marketing for Google Canada, during his keynote address Wednesday morning. “Some people describe it as a four-screen world. Other people describe it as a one-screen world, because the screen that is relevant is the one you’re looking at.”
Shankman said content distributors need to embrace new platforms, particularly mobile and interactive technology, to engage their audience. He added that it’s important to program properly for each platform. “You can do things online that you can’t do in traditional media, particularly for TV, such as interactivity,” Shankman said.
A panel discussion held later in the day took on the topic of creating a more interactive experience for TV viewers through connected apps on mobile devices. One of the issues raised was how to maintain stickiness with TV viewers when they may be distracted by content on the so-called “second screen”.
“It’s a big point of contention,” said Amber Lawson, managing partner for consulting company StoryTech. “You have actors and traditional television broadcasters who don’t want you distracted from the linear programming. But the demand is there, the technology is there, and the opportunity is there.”
Until recently, most second screen technology was about delivering information and connectivity, Lawson said, “and now people are going to actually deliver story (through connected apps), deepening the story and giving the audience something in return,” she said. “I think it’s exciting that we’re going into more of a 360 type of experience.”
Glenn Purkis, Microsoft Canada’s product manager for Xbox Live, said his company’s new SmartGlass companion application for the Xbox 360 is “our attempt to put on your device of choice a synchronous experience, because you’re logged into your console, you’re logged into your device, and the console knows exactly where you are in that piece of content.” He said Microsoft is currently working with studios and producers to create dynamic content for movies, such as The Hobbit, as an example. For live sports events, Microsoft has partnered with the NBA and NHL to provide viewers with live stats via their game console during broadcasts.
“So it’s synchronous to the experience. I’m not on a separate web portal that might be out of sync with my broadcast,” Purkis said.
Some of the panellists spoke about the danger of creating a disconnect with viewers if second screen content is not presented or handled well. Marc Scarpa is a producer and director of live interactive TV projects, such as Grammy Live! and X-Factor’s Pepsi Digital Pre-Show. “Some of these second screen apps are not in sync, because the studios that create the content are not incorporating the actual producers who make the shows into that digital experience,” Scarpa said. “So that’s the disconnect.”
He said the result can be two different experiences happening at the same time that don’t relate or have any communication between them. “There is no person sitting at the top of the food chain that says, ‘Okay, we have all of these things going on that all need to work together,’” Scarpa said. “They’re not really maximizing that value chain, and it’s unfortunate.”
As director of digital for Bell Media’s MuchMusic/MTV, Mark Swierszcz said there is always pressure from above at the broadcaster to improve ratings. As such, he is concerned by anything that might distract viewers from engaging in shows airing on his networks. He pointed to a Nielsen study released earlier this week that reported a correlation between social traffic and increased TV ratings. According to the Nielsen study, an 8.5% increase in Twitter volume is associated with a one-per-cent increase in TV program ratings for the 18-to-34-year-old demographic group.
“For me as a broadcaster, that’s something that I have to latch onto and something I have to use as a shield when I’m talking with executives and co-workers about why we’re not investing in a $200,000 integrated iPad medium or iPhone app,” Swierszcz said.
He also added that he needs to be pragmatic about how his organization invests money to better reach its audience. “We don’t all carry around briefcases full of money to throw at vendors to create these apps, and most of the time you need $60,000 to $100,000 just to get in the door,” Swierszcz said. “Is that money better spent to enhance the chatter, the discussions happening in social media? Or are you going to invest it in the apps?”
In the old days, broadcasters had to guard against viewers changing the channel with their remote control. Today, one tap of the home button on a mobile app loses the audience, Swierszcz said. “The terrifying thing is that one home button at the bottom of your app, a single tap will dump you out of that experience that I just paid a ton of money to build. A double tap will drive my audience to their 200-ish friends. That’s a really hard thing to compete with,” he said.
“It almost makes more sense for me to be one of the 200 people that they’re going to dump to, and to own that space, be very informative and very authoritative in that space,” he said.
