TORONTO – Okay, I’m going to take Paul Robertson’s advice and resist the urge to get all cynical about what I heard Thursday at TV Day.
A panel of five senior Canadian broadcasters (Corus Entertainment’s TV head Robertson, Rogers Media Television’s Leslie Sole, TVA’s Pierre Dion, CBC’s Richard Stursberg and Canwest Global’s Leonard Asper) gathered in front of a crowd of mostly advertisers and agencies – plus some of their broadcast peers – to give their visions of the future during a panel at the Television Bureau of Canada’s TV Day, moderated by journalist Michael Vaughan.
The message that came through? It’s not good enough for broadcasters to say their content is available on all platforms and that they want to help bring their clients’ messages to consumers wherever they are on whatever device they are using.
We have to back the entire industry up and involve advertisers and agencies in the creative process, they say, so that during the making of the programming, clients brands and messaging can be considered in the content and the platforms at the genesis of the shows so that viewers are engaged not only in the entertainment, but the commerce, the advertisers.
(Cue screaming from the writing community)
But what is engagement – and more importantly, how is it measured? If broadcasters can directly influence sales of products using new platforms and such, should it get a cut of those sales? Maybe if more KD is sold during CBC’s Kraft Hockeyville, the broadcaster should make 5-cents a box, wondered Vaughan.
Stursberg said engagement might have five levels where a viewer watches a program, then maybe downloads it, then goes to a site for more information, then plays an online game from the show and then finally, makes a purchase.
But a definition of engagement and how to monetize it? “There is not a common set of understanding of what this means between ourselves and the agencies,” he said. “How can we define it and how can we set premiums?”
The broadcasters spoke of building deeper relationships with the agency community so that multiplatform content can be created from the ground up in new ways that will benefit broadcasters, advertisers and viewers.
“I think you have to completely rebuild the development process,” said Stursberg, involving all the stakeholders in the content development track.
That sounded alarm bells for Vaughan, a TV producer himself, who said “that sounds like a Royal Commission where you won’t get any decent programming.”
While content creators tend to think of themselves as artists, broadcasters are vehicles of delivery for their clients messaging. “We have to think like we’re an agency. We want to work with them to sell more Kraft Dinners and more Tide… We have to sell more of their goods,” said Asper.
TVA’s Dion noted that his company is busy integrating its sales force so that the silos of newspapers, magazines, internet and TV are, if not broken down, at least lashed together. As of two months ago, the company’s Toronto sales forces collectively report to a new VP and no longer to him, with the mandate of selling across all company platforms concurrently.
“They sell the whole buffet of services at the same time,” he said. However, each team has an expert in each silo and in the end, those experts are accountable to their traditional division, “so I make my numbers,” said Dion.
Doing all of this isn’t an easy thing, noted Asper. “It takes a certain type of person to manage communications with multiple bosses and stakeholders,” he said. “You really have to work as a team.”
Rogers’ Sole, however, reminded the audience that all this new technology and group planning still grows from a germ of an idea by a creative person looking to entertain an audience.
“I think we’re trying to put a square peg in a round hole some days where we want to put the right coffee mug in Batman’s hand as he gets into the right car, chewing the right gum chasing the right bad guy who’s wearing your competitor’s running shoes.”
“The programs have to be organic. It has to be something that makes sense to the audience.”
