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ABC: Access all areas
[Thu 30/10/2008 11:55:15]
With a third phase of the national broadcaster's digital strategy being unfurled this month, Brad Howarth and Ben Cooper look at the ABC's strategy to be everything to everyone.
The ABC has catapulted to the forefront of digital video distribution in Australia, skipping past commercial competitors with
a range of services that rival those on offer in Europe and the US.
In early July, it launched its ABC Shop Downloads service, where consumers can purchase ABC programs online and download them to their PC. Later that month it launched its internet television service, iView (perhaps inspired by the
BBC’s iPlayer, but developed for a fraction of the cost), which lets viewers watch a range of programming streamed to their PC.
October sees the third prong, a so-called "white player" strategy. The general manager of digital content development
for the ABC’s commercial division, Robert Hutchison, says the white player (also referred to by the broadcaster as its "commercial player") both lets third parties embed the ABC’s player and video content in their own websites, or have their
content hosted by the ABC.
“Because of the nature of the internet, if you want any kind of reach you have to go out into a bunch of new places,” Hutchison says. “If you’re doing a new comedy and you’re not uploading a whole pile of clips into YouTube and MySpace simultaneously and making them available on mobile phones, then you’re doing nothing more than reducing your reach.”
He says there is also potential for content producers to utilise the ABC’s proven online transaction processing system, as content can be purchased from directly within the media player.
“The power of our media player is you can put it onto anybody’s site, and the transaction capability travels with it,” Hutchison says.
Hutchinson says that because many Australian’s make their first-ever online purchase through the ABC shop, there is already a high level of comfort in using it as an e-commerce medium, particularly amongst older users. However, he says
that for any service it is important that they be as simple to use as possible, mirroring what they are used to with television and DVDs. With a third phase of the national broadcaster's digital strategy being unfurled this month, Brad Howarth and Ben Cooper look at the ABC's strategy to be everything to everyone.
“People push play and watch or listen to it, so I don’t see how different that is. And that’s’ something we’ve really emphasised – when you get to the content you want it to play.”
While the ABC Shop Download site is allows consumers to download and own their favourite shows, the iView service is designed for catch-up viewing of recently broadcast shows. The white player however will allow a much greater variety of
niche online "channels" to be created. He says that it is possible that the ABC will acquire content and stream it through iView, then release a DVD of that content without it ever having been broadcast on free-to-air TV.
Numerous broadcasters around the world have embraced online streaming and downloading in the past year. The BBC’s iPlayer went live last December and is now estimated to account for five percent of all UK internet traffic, generating five
million page views per day.
The BBC has also joined forces with commercial UK competitors ITV and Channel 4 to develop Project Kangaroo (possibly to be changed to SeeSaw), which will allow consumers to purchase content from a back-catalogue of all three networks.
US networks have taken a different approach with the creation of Hulu, a website that offers advertising-supported streaming of content from NBC, Fox and other networks, but streamed at a quality inferior to broadcast television.
Hutchinson believes an independent attempt at creating an online video aggregation service, Joost, has struggled to attract content is because it does not respect the traditional industry models. “And as much as you have a culture out there of content for free, it's really important to understand that an organisation that says it will respect and reward content makers is going to succeed, because that is music to a content maker’s ears.”
All three sites, however, place restrictions on what content can be viewed from Australia due to content licensing restrictions. Hutchinson says there a number of white player models that the ABC is currently exploring for both would-be producers and content hosts, including technology that will make it easier to transport video content to different formats, such as from a PC to a mobile device.
“We’re slowly rolling out all of these things we’re developing, and over the coming 12 months a lot of these things will be available,” Hutchinson says. “If you’re a content retailer, and in two years time you don’t have a really easy-to-use digital
content download format, then you’re letting go of an awful lot of consumer dollars.”
This article appeared in IF #114 October 2008
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