The disruption to media delivery and distribution has only just begun as interactivity and gamification enter the conversation, said panelists from NBCUniversal Local, Samsung TV Plus, Fremantle and more at TVNewsCheck’s Programming Everywhere conference last week.
LAS VEGAS — Media companies and content creators are busily building content businesses across a wide range of platforms, each of them applying their own approach. While some things remain the same — viewers are always seeking connection to talent and strong storytelling — the way content is delivered, measured and monetized is changing rapidly and drastically, said panelists at TVNewsCheck’s Programming Everywhere conference here last week.
Creators, who develop strong one-to-one connections with their fans, are the next big thing that everyone is trying to tap into. Social media removes the middleman, allowing creators to connect directly with their audiences any time they want and for as long as they want.
“I think of creators as that next generation of talent on television. They are the household names that our kids are going to know,” said Takashi Larry Nakano, VP, content and programming, Samsung TV Plus. “How do they evolve into this next generation of television and how do they start creating and crafting their art in a television ecosystem?”
Content Creators’ Head Start With Audiences
Finding and developing talent that can eventually grow into bona fide TV stars is nothing new, Nakano said. The difference is that they are getting a head start by building their brands on social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Twitch and YouTube.
“I used to be at HGTV and Food Network, and we saw talent come up from a cooking competition, for example,” Nakano said. “We found talent from a food show like we find people all over the place and as they work at it, you refine their craft and tailor their engagement for television.”
To some extent, traditional TV is working backwards, taking existent talent, such as news, weather and sports anchors, and building them up on social media to increase their engagement with their local communities.
“That’s actually a big initiative for us right now, and we really do have some very good reporters and anchors who know the social space and who have great followings,” said Therese Gamba, CMO and EVP of acquired programming at NBCUniversal Local. “It’s really more about what they are experts in. You don’t want to make anybody suddenly have to become a social media star if that’s not their comfort level. But for some their comfort level is, ‘I’m an expert in this arena, and I can share the information that people want and that people need.’
“The other big part of it is that you have to be consistent. It can’t be like, ‘I posted three weeks ago. I guess it’s time again,’ because you don’t know how often the audience is looking for that type of information,” she said.
Making that transition can be difficult in either direction, whether it’s turning TV talent into social media stars or vice versa.
“Over the years, we have tried to take people who were big on social, bring them over to a linear broadcast and we end up putting them in a box,” Gamba said. “We want them to be on television, and then they lose their authenticity because we put them in big talk shows or big latenight shows, and the audience just isn’t there to follow along with it. I think it’s very important that we think about putting the right people on the right platforms.”
Making Audience Connections
For their part, many content creators work hard to connect with viewers across several platforms.
“Being able to make content that’s appropriate to watch in all those different formats is super important,” said Brian Saviano, creator and star of the Bricks O’Brian channel, which runs on multiple platforms, including YouTube, Samsung TV Plus and Kidoodle. “Not every creator has that mindset, but especially for family-first content like mine, meeting fans where they’re at has been instrumental.”
Another way that content creators are influencing more traditional media brands is through the production and distribution of shorter-form content.
“We are the OG creators,” said Laura Florence, SVP, global channels, Fremantle Media. “If you think about it, Steve Harvey is a content creator — he’s very viral and he stars on one of our biggest shows, Family Feud. A lot of where that show performs is via short clips on YouTube.”
Fremantle takes its vast content library and repackages it into linear and digital channels for providers all over the world. For example, last July Pluto TV picked up 25 of Fremantle’s FAST channels to distribute in 13 countries with each channel individually curated for that market.
“We have specialized teams on the ground building productions that are local, that understand the market, and that could be short-form or long-form content,” Florence said. “We’re making content for the right venue. If you need a bigger venue and format, like a higher-level broadcast, we can make that for you. But if you need something more bespoke, we can do that, too. You still need insight, knowledge and expertise to be able to do all of the technical things to have the relationships and all of the other things you need to do to get content distributed.”
How Data Guides Decisions
All of these creators — whether a one-man band like Saviano or a global content shop like Fremantle — use data to help guide their decisions. Data has become much more than just measuring who’s watching and then trading on that information. Data now informs other operations, such as personalization and targeting.
For Samsung, which operates in 30 countries and has more than 600 million devices in service, data is practically ubiquitous, so the company has to be selective in how it deploys data to make decisions.
“As content creators, broadcasters and platforms, we need to think about content not as ‘what do we have and how do we monetize it?’ It’s more ‘how do we super-serve the audience that we have yet to reach?’ How do I super-serve a viewer at any time of day, bringing them the content in which they are most likely to be interested in?” Nakano said.
Fremantle uses the data it collects from both its direct-to-consumer platforms and its social media channels to program more bespoke solutions. As primarily a producer of programs, Fremantle never used to have access to performance metrics, but becoming a D2C provider has changed that.
“Now, in real time we can actually see who’s watching and how long they are watching,” Florence said. “And now we’ve connected ad servers to that content. There’s so much insight in that data pipeline for us to use to make new content. In addition, it helps us to program better. We can program by daypart. There also have been a lot of assumptions that full episodes do better than clips, but the data shows that that is not accurate. It’s really hard to argue with good data.”
Of course, Saviano, as a YouTube creator, gets analytics that give him precise information about each of his videos.
“That’s the beauty of YouTube,” he says. “It tells you the exact moment when somebody clicks away. I also really take to heart what my community specifically wants out of me.”
Deploying Interactivity
That kind of interaction sets creators apart from traditional media, but interactivity is the next frontier for everyone, whether as a part of the content or of the advertising. Producers, even of traditional media, are finding that interactive content is stickier, keeping viewers around longer.
“We’ve been doing a lot of ideation around these new digital feeds where you can do integrated gamification,” Florence said. “We have a beta on the floor at NAB with Grand Designs, which is one of our long-running series, where you can engage with any element of the show on your mobile phones. There’s so much opportunity now to engage more deeply with viewers.”
Interactivity and gamification also appeal to advertisers and content providers are playing around with both. In March, Samsung TV Plus introduced “Game Breaks,” an interactive ad unit that turns ad breaks into branded trivia experiences.
“All of a sudden, we can take an ad and make it completely interactive,” Nakano said. “Right now, you can answer a trivia question and then go into a 30-second ad. The possibility of that is mind blowing. We’ve been waiting for decades to be able to do this.”
Interactivity is innate to the content-creator experience and it’s certainly something they exploit.
“I’ve been a video game fan for years, and that interactivity part of it is what’s so compelling,” Saviano said. “To have it be part of the viewing experience makes it that much more valuable. You get a much deeper connection with whoever the audience is if they can have direct input into what’s happening. That builds an even stronger community.”
While the traditional media business has been deeply disrupted, that process is still in flux as technology evolves.
Said Florence: “In the future, I don’t think it’s going to look like this. I think it’s going to be a VOD experience that’s probably personalized with all of these gaming elements in the middle.”
