EMERALD PARK, Sask. – It may have taken a little longer than expected for Ag-Com Productions to bring The Rural Channel (TRC) to life, but it recently celebrated its one year anniversary. On May 29, 2013 the rural lifestyle and agri-food business channel hit Canadian airwaves through an exclusive distribution arrangement with Shaw Direct.
Originally licensed in August 2008, TRC took five years to come to fruition. It had planned to go to air in 2011, but it had to wait on the launch of Shaw Direct’s new satellite. Even so, Bill Wilson (pictured), founder, president and CEO of TRC, says he was “extremely appreciative” of Shaw for stepping up and making TRC available to its customer base at launch. Soon after going to air, Eastlink also got on board and began distributing the channel to the majority of its subscribers.
With the first anniversary behind it and the channel available to over one million customers, after it inked additional carriage agreements with Gosfield North Communications and Mitchell-Seaforth Cable TV, TRC is looking to expand the number of distributors and of course, the number of people who can view its programming. Wilson tells Cartt.ca the company is currently in talks with Telus about a potential video on demand arrangement on Optik TV which could add another approximately 600,000 homes to its potential audience.
He’s also bullish that Bell Canada, both its satellite and Fibe services, will pick up the channel in the near future. Wilson adds TRC has been talking with Bell from the beginning and “it has never closed the door” to carriage, so there is hope that an arrangement can be made. This could also result in Bell Aliant picking up the channel, too. The company is looking to round its western Canadian base by signing deals with SaskTel Max and the IPTV service from MTS.
Backstopped by strong roots in the production of rural-based programming that goes back to the mid-1980s, Ag-Com took its original Prairie Farm Report show and turned it into a specialty channel with near national coverage. The program is one of the staples of TRC’s agricultural news and information lineup. It also includes shows such as the Market Journal, a weekly program produced by the University of Nebraska that is of “special interest to agri-business interests in southern Ontario where corn and soybeans are king,” says Wilson.
TRC is exploring the possibility of adding some new original information services, including those that provide analysis of market or cropping trends. Wilson says there is a lot of this type of information available with an international or American viewpoint but not so from a Canadian perspective. “We hope to go in that direction in the coming months with some programming that we can do ourselves that will give the Canadian agricultural producer and agri-businessperson a feel for how events in Canada and the world are impacting the business within
the country,” he says.
Current programming, however, goes beyond the news and information business to include a solid roster of shows on the equine industry, including Monty Roberts – Backstage Pass and Downunder Horsemanship featuring popular horse clinician and trainer Clinton Anderson. Interested in watching the world equestrian circuit? Well, you can on TRC through its carriage of the Fédération Equestre Internationale (FEI).
The channel rounds it complement of rural and agriculture programming with Motorz, a DIY automotive improvement program.
“We currently are close to break even and we will be profitable within the next year to 18 months.” – Bill Wilson, The Rural Channel
TRC’s chief executive is not just a broadcaster, he and his family interests also own and operate a small hay farming business located a very quick drive – less than two kilometers – from its studio in Emerald Park, just east of Regina.
Dealing with new broadcasting realities
Clicking through the 500+ channel universe in the search of something compelling to watch can sometimes be an exercise in futility. It’s not uncommon to find the same show on two or more different channels only days apart and even sometimes to find it on two different channels at nearly the same time. This only makes it harder for specialty channels to find an audience and to generate the ad dollars needed to supplement their subscriber fee, but the quest to provide sticky eyeballs for its advertisers isn’t a problem for The Rural Channel.
Wilson acknowledges that the number of viewers to its programs may be much smaller than other specialty channels, but says its audience is worth more to advertisers than an equivalent number in an urban setting. An advertiser “might be targeting a few thousand people but they equate to one million people in terms of what they have to purchase over the course of the year … so the impact of messaging is far greater than it would be in general television I would say,” he adds.
As for offering its programming over digital platforms, it’s too early in the game to start discussions on that front, says Wilson. The focus is on securing as many distribution agreements as possible before thinking about new viewer interaction methods.
Now, after one full year of operation, the channel is healthy and is expected to make a profit in the not so distant future. “We currently are close to break even and we will be profitable within the next year to 18 months,” Wilson tells Cartt.ca.
He attributes the sound financial situation to “the farm approach,” which dictated keeping the purse strings very tight during the initial launch and in covering the overhead of day to day operations.
