TORONTO – Having spent three years building the HBO Canada brand, it just might be time for Corus Entertainment and Astral Media to do the same for Showtime in this country, according to Corus CEO John Cassaday.
Speaking Tuesday at a BMO Capital Markets media and telecom conference in Toronto, Cassaday was, not surprisingly, bullish on the future potential of pay television in Canada, even with the influence over-the-top video leader Netflix may be having on the marketplace here and elsewhere.
Pointing to the fact that traditional pay-TV penetration is generally in the 25% to 27% range for the company’s Movie Central multiplexes and Astral Media’s TMN channels (including HBO Canada, the brand the company shares, split along the traditional Western Canada-Eastern Canada line), Cassaday insisted there is tons of room for growth with the addition of new media platforms and brand segmentation.
He specifically singled out Showtime, the #2 U.S. pay service, as a potential brand his company and Astral could launch in Canada as its own channel. “Showtime has been sufficiently prolific in terms of the development of new programming over the past couple of years that looking at launching a Showtime channel, like what we did with HBO, is something we can look to do in the future,” said Cassaday (right).
Showtime’s popular programming includes the likes of Dexter, Californication, Nurse Jackie, The Borgias, The Franchise, The Tudors and Weeds.
He went on to say viewership growth for Pay TV content will also come with new platform development to compete with OTT, which is well in the works. Corus is working with Astral as well as “the three biggest” carriers in Canada on a standardized subscriber authentication regime, Cassaday noted.
“Our basic hypothesis is that while consumer demand for more video may not be insatiable, it’s far from being satiated,” said the CEO. While Netflix and other over-the-top services in the market (like iTunes, YouTube rentals and so forth) or coming to market, may well have an impact that “doesn’t necessarily have to impact the pay services,” he said.
“To offer our own OTT offering, authenticated and in partnership with our BDU partners, is the approach we’ll go,” explained Cassaday about the push by Canadian TV distributors and broadcasters like towards a TV Everywhere model, where existing pay television subscribers can be identified wherever they are on the device of their choice and watch their subscription TV.
“What is progressing are discussions among the three major distribution companies about a common platform with some essential common elements of authentication,” he continued.
However, he cautioned it isn’t going to come together next week. “I think those discussions will bear fruit but there are obvious turf issues that have to be sorted out,” explained Cassaday. “Our view is to try to be somewhat patient in that regard because it makes sense for us to work with them so that we don’t have to re-create our own backroom and do the onerous task of authenticating these subscribers.”
But, looking at the slick U.S. online portal HBO GO, which the Time Warner owned pay channel offers Stateside, Cassaday sees an opportunity which his company might have to seize on its own, if Corus and the big BDUs can’t work something out.
“(HBO GO is) an absolutely spectacular application of our programming in a broadband over-the-top environment. That’s available to us. We do own those rights and we are talking to our colleagues at Astral about jointly making that available and again, we’d like to do it through the facilities of our BDU partners.”
The good news is “it doesn’t require a Camp David type of accord to get this done, it’s three guys who say ‘yeah, let’s get our ass in gear and get this thing going’,” said Cassaday, who added “I do believe it will happen this year.” And if not, “Astral and Corus will do something independently.
“We will continue to segment our offering to make sure we get our programming to people on whatever platforms they want to watch.”
