Assessing the health of broadcast TV - David Abraham's IBC keynote

11 September 2014

I'm delighted to be here at IBC 2014 and to have been invited to contribute to this opening session of the conference.

 

This event has a reputation as the premiere European gathering for showcasing innovation in the technologies through which video content is consumed.

 

I am personally looking forward to exploring the exhibition myself later today and learning about the many new developments in our industry.

 

The job of running a broadcast network today hinges on a central challenge: how to innovate in both the creation of great content and in the means by which it is enjoyed by the viewer.

 

Allocate resources effectively between the two and you remain competitive.

 

Get this wrong and you will rapidly become uncompetitive in a market where so many alternatives exist beyond the local channels on the program guide.

 

For decades broadcasters applied technology innovation gradually while the main screen itself evolved relatively little and in-line with slow replacement cycles and predictable uses of linear spectrum.

 

Today, technological innovation is continual, pervasive and direct to the consumer in a hybrid environment of linear and IP delivery. The management of tech innovation therefore needs to be as central a concern to broadcasters as the creative agenda.

It's no longer invisible plumbing; it's integral of the viewing experience itself, it enhances the financial value of that experience and it has the potential to massively deepen overall brand engagement.

 

In my talk today I'm going to share three types of technological innovation at Channel 4 that illustrate three approaches we have to staying competitive via technology: first, to enhance and deepen the viewing experience of an individual show; second to enhance and deepen the value of that viewing event via data and third, to enhance and deepen long term brand and product relationships between our viewers and our linear and non-linear services.

 

It’s worth saying at the outset that, as a not-for-profit publically owned publisher broadcaster, Channel 4 has finite resources to invest in technology. Our approach has to be lean and agile and generate commercial returns that enhance the overall sustainability of our organisation.

 

Out of our 800 employees, around 100 could be described as technologists – and that’s to run 18 linear feeds, a major on-demand service on 19 platforms and dozens of multi-platform events every year.

 

Having said this, we at Channel 4 are very proud of our history of innovation; innovation that is woven through both the programmes that we broadcast and the technology that underpins their creation, distribution and consumption.

 

Looking back over the last decade or so, we have been responsible for many technology “firsts” in broadcasting.

 

In 2006, we were actually the first broadcaster anywhere in the world to offer our long form content on-demand to our viewers via our 4oD service. Today 4oD generates over half a billion views per annum. This year we will make nearly 7,000 hours of content available on-demand. In the UK, we were also the first PSB to offer HD simulcast channels and the first PSB to launch “+1” channel services”.

 

Channel 4 has always embraced new technologies to drive efficiency and sustain competitive advantage. For example, we were early pioneers in the use of Cloud technology – which has enabled us to scale our technical capability in a far more agile and cost efficient manner than would have ever been possible using physical infrastructure.

 

This is now paying dividends across our operations; from content preparation and video distribution, through application hosting, to the emerging world of big data processing and analytics.

 

Our innovative use of cloud computing and open source technologies has enabled us to stay ahead of competitors despite having smaller pockets. Alongside these innovations our unique remit challenges us to innovate “in the form” of our output and we have embraced technology to allow us to do just that. Today multiplatform commissioning is now an integral component of our creative output.

 

With the internet as our canvas, we have an opportunity to innovate and experiment and as a publicly owned broadcaster we can and often do take greater creative risks online than equivalent digital teams at other broadcasters. Through smart, focused experimentation we continue to take on risks that only Channel 4 would have the stomach for. Let’s take a look at some of the things we’ve done in the past year or so.

 

In addition to innovation in content form we are also advancing new digital content formats. We are already seeing how television on mobile devices has caught the imagination of audiences, opening up new opportunities for individuals to watch programmes on the move.

Recognising this trend, this year we launched a new digital proposition - “4Shorts” that showcase a selection of short form content from C4, designed to be viewed in bite-sized chunks.

 

Alongside clips and promotional videos, cleverly cut together from our existing programmes, we are now commissioning brand new original strands of short form programming.

 

In June we released Educating Binky a series of four short episodes, designed to complement the full TV show – Made in Chelsea. Each of the four episodes was less than 5 minutes long and they have been incredibly popular with viewers.

It’s still early days for 4Shorts – but we are extremely excited about what’s to come in this space.

 

Given the sheer diversity of our digital output, a key challenge for us is to remain disciplined and to not let the endless possibilities of the internet run away with sound editorial judgement.

 

A related hurdle we face is to be able to successfully bring together independent production companies from TV, with independent digital and games production companies.

In 2013 the Channel 4 Online Department worked with 103 independent suppliers, of which 33 were new to our business.

In addition to new content forms and formats, over the last few years I think it is fair to also say that we at C4 have embraced data like no other broadcaster.

We have set out an overall vision to evolve our commercial proposition through data-driven insight.

 

Historically broadcasters have had a fantastic heritage in knowing how to engage their viewers but the connected environment offered by new technology allows new ways for us to do this. We can now develop a direct, two way relationship with our audiences: by tailoring what we offer, we can encourage increased viewing.

 

At the heart of our approach is the development of a new viewer relationship platform.

In essence, we are now inviting and incentivising our viewers to register with us in return for a range of benefits such as: access to archive content; online premieres; exclusive online episodes and personalised recommendations.

 

We have been remarkably successful in developing these relationships. To date, we have attracted a registered user base of over 11m users – adding well over 10k new registrants per day. A half of all 16-24 year olds in the UK have now registered with Channel 4.

 

The wealth of valuable data on our viewers has helped drive increased viewing and engagement through better promotional targeting and recommendation.

 

In addition, we can also use this insight to enhance our commercial model – realising the potential to deliver more targeted sales propositions to the benefit of advertisers.

 

These new propositions offer advertisers opportunities that go far beyond the traditional spot model. We now offer, for the first time, demographically targeted ad packages on 4oD.

 

Trading our main TV buying audiences on VoD has not been possible until now and allows advertisers to reach their target audience with minimal wastage.

 

These new packages are now being taken up by major blue chip brands such Microsoft, O2 and Unilever who are seeing strong returns on this kind of investment in terms of response and awareness rates.

 

Given our modest scale, we have had to be smart about how we approach our challenges.

In many cases, instead of taking the obvious route of teaming up with one of the international tech giants, we have chosen to partner with academic centres of excellence, to explore technical problems.

 

For example, we recently partnered with University College London to explore opportunities to utilise new machine-based learning software, to help improve the accuracy of our viewer recommendation for our VoD service.

 

We are also currently working with the award winning Operations Research Team at Nottingham University, to help us better understand how we can improve the efficiency of the scheduling of our TV advertisements.

 

These ambitious initiatives demand a technology platform that supports the rapidly developing thought processes of our partners and the business units they work with, and scales to meet their needs.

 

Again, the dynamic elasticity of the cloud coupled with the use of Open Source Software allows us to adopt new technologies in a lean and flexible manner and apply them wherever possible to drive new opportunities and effectively control our research cost base.

So hopefully I have given you a small flavour of how we at Channel 4, have been embracing the opportunities presented by digitisation and the internet.

Channel 4 has always innovated and I am now excited to give you a sneak peak of what’s next for us.

 

In 2015 we will roll out All 4 – the brand new digital home of all Channel 4 content. This embodies the biggest step forward for us, since we launched 4oD way back in 2006.

Having been a pioneer of catch-up services in the UK, we’ve come to the view that broadcasters are now at a disadvantage if they separate their on-line brands from their channel brands.

 

We think these two types of services have to work in a much more integrated way. We don’t think the future is about the decline of linear and the rise of on-demand. We think it’s about being very creative and visual about how to blend the two and use the strengths of both.

So, next year we will phase out the 4oD sub-brand and represent all our services within a new evolution of the famous Channel 4 brand. This new version of the 4 logo will incorporate our entire channel and digital estate into one universe for the first time.

 

All 4 represents a complete reframing of our digital estate, to provide a more joined-up online content and brand experience. Linear brands will be seamlessly reinforced in this new environment for the first time in television.

 

All 4 will act as a single digital destination and will house all of our content and services in one convenient location under a single brand.

 

Our teams have gone back to the drawing board and have developed a brand new, beautiful, engaging and intuitive user interface.

 

This will guide users through our new on-line experience which is structured around three temporal states: On Demand, Now and On Soon.

 

“Now” is where viewers can watch live broadcasts from all of our channels. It is also where they will interact with our programmes and engage with many of the interactive formats that I spoke about earlier

 

“On Demand” will house all of our VoD content. The service has been given a complete visual overhaul and it will also (for the first time) contain all of the available programme related information, such as galleries and cast interviews.

 

“On Soon” will be used to drive awareness and familiarity of upcoming C4 programming. It will showcase clips and promos and will also allow users to set reminders and alerts for future shows.

 

For registered users, our ambition is that the entire All 4 experience will be personalised. Ultimately, the content that viewers are presented with will be different for every user. We will use our understanding of viewers to not only bring them more of what they already know they want, but also to surprise them with content they didn’t know, or think, they’d like.

We believe All 4 will deliver the most advanced broadcaster response to changing viewer behaviour. It works as well in a mobile and touchscreen environment as it will in the living room and PC settings.

 

We will be rolling out All 4 onto PC, laptops and iOS devices starting early next year and plan to extend the service to other platforms throughout the year while we deepen the personalisation features as well. Let me now play you a short video to give you a taste of what’s to come.

 

This session is about assessing the health of broadcast TV.

 

In my talk today I hope I have shown how, if broadcasters keep innovating within the new hybrid world of IP and linear distribution, we can, are and will remain healthy, competitive and relevant.

 

Viewers habits and patterns of behaviour are becoming more personalised, mobile and connected but that is no reason for broadcasters to lose relevance or salience – especially when we keep commissioning more of the shows that the UK viewers want to watch in their millions.

 

These are just the next set of challenges we face; how we blend the strengths of linear TV with the opportunities of connected technologies.

In the UK, the public broadcasters are facing this challenge with ambition and innovation I hope we are pointing the way to how broadcasters around the world can remain healthy and remain competitive.

 

Ends.