ANYONE WITH EVEN A PASSING knowledge in Canadian technology and software will remember Dr. Michael Cowpland’s Corel Inc.
After building a large software company with a very strong product (CorelDraw), hell-bent on taking on Microsoft in other market sectors (such as in word processing with WordPerfect) it fell on hard times after the tech bubble burst. Founder Cowpland was forced out in 2000 after an Ontario Securities Commission investigation.
Corel continues however, but in 2001, Cowpland, an engineer, turned his attention to the wireless space and purchased ZIM Technologies.
Today, ZIM is a mobile entertainment and Internet TV service provider whose CEO describes it as "a cable company on the Internet." ZIM provides publishing and licensing services for mobile content and for peer to peer (P2P) Internet TV broadcasting. ZIM offers a variety portfolio of content services for mobile phones and for Internet TV, ranging from popular sports to cartoons and animations and Hollywood classic movies.
Recently, Cowpland (pictured) sat down with Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien at the ZIM TV offices in Ottawa. What follows is an edited transcript.
Greg O’Brien: Your launch was on the 14th of November – what’s happened since then?
Michael Cowpland: Well, we’re adding new channels pretty well every day, and we’re looking at adding new partners to create traffic on a monthly basis.
GOB: Is this aimed at just consumers or carriers or both?
MC: This is really a consumer channel. We’ve got a partnership with PP Live out of China, which is mainly Chinese content that has a huge audience – but the content we’re adding on our side is in English and directed at the English-speaking world because quite a lot of people get scared off by hundreds of Chinese channels. So far we’ve been a free service, advertising supported. But we’re adding pay-per-view.
GOB: Pay-per-view as in what? Sporting events?
MC: No. More like movies of the month, with memberships.
GOB: What will the price be?
MC: We’re looking at $1.99 for a movie, or $9.99 for a monthly membership.
GOB: Do you see yourself as a competitor to what are the beginnings of mobile video right now, or as a competitor to all the Internet video that’s already out there?
MC: Zim is totally different because we’re playing on computers, not on TV screens, although you can plug the computer into the TV screen. Basically it’s for people who want to use the computer. They might be doing e-mail at the same time, or maybe watching sports at work, but you can do two things at once. And, of course, it’s good traveling around. In a hotel, if there’s a poor selection of channels. You can always get your hundreds of channels on our portal.
GOB: So the channels that you have, are you building them into brands or partnering with existing ones? I notice you have NASCAR and G4 shows on there.
MC: We’re actually looking at as many brands as we can get. Of course, it’s a work in process constantly, because every day we get new contacts and people looking for new ways of getting their content out there – particularly in pay-per-view. They don’t mind giving out their older movies for free to the advertising-supported (model), but if it’s a newer movie they want to talk about pay-per-view.
GOB: Are you approaching the independent producer level or are you approaching the Global TV level for example.?
MC: Basically people who’ve got collections of movies – a lot of our partners have 1,000 movies or more. We just go through the process of encoding them, uploading them, and making them available for the free service, which is pretty viral in attracting a lot of interest because people love the free stuff.
And because of the peer-to-peer technology we use, we can afford the bandwidth, which has only now become feasible because regular streaming would be too expensive to give away free. That’s the beauty about the peer-to-peer model.
GOB: Is it your own application, or a BitTorrent type of thing?
MC: It’s based upon BitTorrent, the idea that everybody is watching is also a transmitter. So this has been proven up to a million or more viewers on just one server. It would be a gigantic server farm if it was streaming.
GOB: What type of movie titles are we talking about?
MC: It’s pretty good. Hollywood Classics has a lot of familiar faces like Cary Grant and people like that. But it’s a work in process… and most people are lining up for the pay-per-view, which is turning on next week. I expect to get a much richer selection of content when we launch that
Roberto Campagna (ZIM’s sales and marketing man): It’s pay-per-niche content. If you have a look at what we have, you’ll see ITTF International Table Tennis.
GOB: I’ve never seen table tennis except during the Olympics, I don’t think.
MC: But it has one of the world’s biggest audiences.
RC: There is an event coming up on the 15th of December where we’re going to be doing a live broadcast. The event generates about 100 million television viewers for this weekend event in China. It’s the major – the number one sport in China, and you could imagine the Chinese audience outside of China is massive, and they’re looking for ITTF coverage, but there’s no way to get this live coverage of certain events. So for niche content, niche markets, this is an excellent platform, but it’s not providing NBC content, for example, at this point. But for people looking for specific types of content that is television quality, is a great opportunity.
GOB: Now, where do you see yourselves positioned in the market? I mean I’ve been to YouTube countless of times. I’ve seen videos at MySpace and Facebook. I’ve got a Slingbox in my house. I’ve seen the Location Free TV stuff from Sony. I’ve seen Mobi TV in action. Where do you see yourself in that swirling mass of new broadband and mobile applications?
MC: Well we position ourselves more like a cable company as opposed to blogs. You don’t see video blogs on Rogers Cable, and we have quality professional channels with all of the copyright licenses as opposed to people uploading all kinds of content. It keeps it clutter-free and it’s a whole different animal than YouTube. It’s a good way to avoid lawsuits too… So, we’re going to be regular channels, and I think a lot of the quality channels, they prefer to be in that kind of space.
GOB: It’s all professional content, not user generated content.
MC: That’s right.
GOB: You know, when I mentioned Slingbox, all it does is pull my existing TV service to where I am. Your content right now seems to augment. It’s stuff you can’t really get here in Canada any other way.
MC: That’s right. A lot of niche content, alternative content. Because of the fact that it’s unregulated, we can do things very quick, on the fly, and change our business models if we need to.
GOB: And you don’t have to show the Canadian Table Tennis League as there are no CanCon requirements… You’re pushing this globally, too, right?
MC: Oh, it’s worldwide. But on the other hand if there’s a requirement to block a country we can do that, or block a region, — if a partner has the programming rights to a certain territory… (T)he numbers are pretty striking. You could get a large audience, for example, with table tennis. You’d get killed though if you gave that away free, streaming.
GOB: So what are your goals in terms of users or subscribers?
MC: Well, it’s too early to say, but we think the English-speaking market should be even more attractive than the Chinese market in the advertising milieu.
RC: It’s not only that, but when we looked at JumpTV, for comparison, they’ve accumulated between 16,000-20,000 subscribers. If you look at one of these events, the World Championship coming up in December 15th gets 100 million viewers on television. Anyone outside of China that wants to dial in, and they definitely do, the numbers show they know who and where to watch.
So on that basis alone, on that one sport, and given the large Chinese audience, we have drawn a few numbers, and joined the target out there and where we want to be, and whether it’s 15,000 or 20,000 or 30,000 subscribers, it shouldn’t take long through these events.
MC: We’re talking to franchises like the (Ottawa) Senators but this time we can go to Czechoslovakia, and we can develop an audience outside Canada, which they wouldn’t normally be able to do.
GOB: Okay. So with Daniel Alfredsson, for example, you might be looking to feed it into Sweden so they can follow him or his teammates it from there.
MC: That’s right, because you could have a foundation there.
GOB: Some of the cable companies in North America have been sort of cranking down what their Internet users can get unless they pay a higher fee for more bandwidth. Some MSOs have been clearly targeting the heavy BitTorrent users. That would seem to perhaps impact your business because ISPs have been talking about extracting a fee from a company like yours for transmitting this content everywhere. What’s your thoughts on that type of thing?
MC: Well, fortunately, we found the something very strong. And because bandwidth costs inherently are going down all the time, thankfully it’s virtual, not real permanent costs. They’re just pretending it is.
GOB: So who do you envision as your competitors, then in this space right now?
MC: It’s pretty new so I’m sure there’ll be competitors popping up. As far as we can see, we’re the first model in the English world, and we’ve got the best partner in the Chinese world, so we’re off to a really good start.
GOB: How do you sell and market the service so that people know that it’s out there?
MC: Mainly viral because, as I said, people love the free stuff. So we’re finding it’s growing immensely… by leaps and bounds every week… It’s an exponential rate of growth.
