Indies develop cross-platform strategies

IBC:The past year has seen an explosion of growth in broadband video services, with many programmes and channels now legitimately available online for the first time.

The past year has seen an explosion of growth in broadband video services, with many programmes and channels now legitimately available online for the first time. This allows producers and broadcasters to extend their brands online and build a direct relationship with the consumer. While producers are not blind to this development many have still to work out a coherent digital strategy. It's a major theme up for discussion at IBC.

TwoWay Traffic (owner of Celador's pioneering cross-platform brand Who Wants to be a Millionaire?) along with Endemol ( Big Brother) and Fremantle ( The X Factor) have nearly a decade's experience in taking TV properties cross-platform. But multi-platform production is no longer the preserve of super-indies and nor is it restricted to money-spinning quiz and voting formats. Indeed, a digital strategy is viewed as imperative regardless of genre.

'We don't have a digital strategy since that implies parts of our business have no strategy,' says Paul Bennum, director of strategy at Somethin' Else, which produces regular podcasts, radio programmes and mobile and web content for the BBC among others, along with UGC show MyTV: Homegrownfor Trouble TV. 'Everything we do is inherently cross-platform. All indies have to adopt that attitude or they are going to find themselves in trouble.'

Comedy producer Baby Cow is experimenting with original shortform content for distribution by BBC Worldwide; True North has BBC1 religious current affairs programme Life from the Loftin development, which proposes to build a substantial online community around its weekly broadcast; Tiger Aspect is developing an online presence for Channel 4 programme Cook Yourself Thin. Cookyourselfthin.co.uk is a collaboration with healthy-eating portal Weight Loss Resources and will include web tools, advice, recipes and forums.

Until recently, Hat Trick Productions has had a minimal interactive presence, but this is about to change. In addition to having a standalone interactive drama in the works, it recently signed a new output deal with Virgin Media TV. The agreement will see it embark on original shortform production for the first time, creating content for the comedy section of the Virgin 1 website. Hat Trick will work with its established talent and a new school of comics and writers to develop content across a range of categories including animation, stunts, sketches, podcasts and stand-up. The content will air on the website under the Comedy Flannel brand.

'We're not known as a funky youth producer so by launching online under a new brand name we can address a slightly different audience,' says Hat Trick head of interactive Jonathan Davenport.

'Digital content is now integral to Hat Trick,' he says. 'Yet as an established production company used to making half-hour series, making shortform content (necessary for online/mobile viewing) is problematic. We need to learn how to produce on lower day rates, using cheaper equipment like Z1 cameras and Final Cut Pro software and multi-tasked personnel.'

It's a dilemma faced by many indies that want to boost their online credentials but don't have the budgets to do so effectively. 'The big issue for indies when moving cross-platform is how to demonstrate to the buyer what they are trying to achieve,' says Magic Lantern managing director Anthony Lilley. 'You can't demonstrate interactivity on paper very easily.'

Guerrilla's head of TV, Ed Pettit, urges producers to turn web and mobile platforms to their advantage. 'You can test ideas out online for very little money compared with broadcast. What annoys me is seeing broadcasters give away Ł800,000 of their mobile/web budget without trying out a single idea. Why not try 10 ideas on a smaller scale and see what works?'

Testing times
That's the model TwoWay Traffic's head of interactive media, Selma Turajlic, says she will adopt. 'We view the internet as an inexpensive test platform for ideas and formats as we work out how best to address a new audience of active rather than passive consumers.'

Another key decision for indies embarking on cross-platform production is whether to go it alone by setting up internal 'interactive' divisions or to partner with digital agencies whose experience some say is more attuned to creating an interactive experience.

'You don't have to pay a digital company to create interactive content since broadband video is good enough to allow people to watch content online,' says Davenport. 'Mobile technology too is bedding down. It's got to the point where the digital space can become the core competence of production companies.'

'Intellectually, producers understand interactivity but they've a business to run,' counters Alex Morrison, chief executive of digital media developer Cogapp. 'They've got existing commissions to fulfil and don't necessarily have the time to move into a different world, or the knowledge about how to do so. Things are happening so rapidly that collaboration is essential. Some companies might take the view that they can build digital skills organically but they'll miss the boat.'

Fremantle Media operates both FMX, a division dedicated to sourcing concepts for non-TV platforms, and a separate department creating cross-platform content for its TV brands, such as exclusive online videos for The Bill. Companies on a smaller scale are more likely to look externally for partnerships.

Tern TV, for example, which has just launched subsidiary Tern Digital, intends to develop expertise in-house but says it is not averse to co-producing with digital agencies. 'We recognise we need to take our core competency, which is making audience-centric programming, onto other platforms and that the best way is to retain those skills in-house,' says producer Simon Meek. 'But we're not big enough to do everything, so we will bring in specialists versed in programming or mobile platforms as necessary. In any case, traditional media companies are moving towards the centre ground. In five years, there won't be that distinction.'

But now, he says, there can be a tension between the two groups, 'since neither company wants to feel threatened.'

Suspicious minds
Guerrilla's Pettit agrees: 'I recently attended a briefing for broadcasters and indies which, for the first time, also included digital production companies. There was discomfort between all parties. There was an element of fear among producers, a lack of respect even, about what these [computer] programmers were doing there.'

It doesn't help that '360-degree commissioning' remains a nebulous term with no clear indication of business model, rights issues or working relationships.

'We'll continue to see bolt-on websites while the commissioned process remains fragmented,' believes Bennum. 'One UK commercial broadcaster until very recently saw its web activities as simply marketing for its TV programmes. That attitude should have disappeared five years ago.'

As a member of Pact's Interactive Media Policy Group, Cogapp is helping to steer the way the BBC and other broadcasters handle their multiplatform content.

'It's not just about securing rights but about establishing frameworks that we can all be comfortable with,' explains Morrison. 'The next big campaign programmes for public service (such as Test the Nation) should be multiplatform and not simply a website. It no longer makes sense for broadcasters to commission big subjects without using the same public engagement strategy, research, production structure used to create linear content for multiplatform content.'

These are skills, he suggests, which companies that have long worked on large-scale projects involving interactive websites, kiosk, DVD or mobile, are better able to deliver. Indies on the other hand have unrivalled skills in storytelling and working directly with audiences.

Bennum agrees. 'We need to combine TV production skills with the skills of those who have knowledge of interactivity to create more profoundly interactive and editorially led content rather than pure money-generating devices,' he says.

Adam Gee, C4's new media commissioner, believes he's identified an emerging structure for cross-platform projects. 'There is a fundamental difference in the way TV producers and interactive agencies think,' he says. 'TV programmes are broadcast once with little ability for an audience to interact with the content, whereas with interactive you have to think in terms of a project's life-cycle. The editorial content which is a TV producer's forté needs to merge with marketing and community management.'

It's still easier to take a solid televisual proposition and move it cross-platform than it is to take an internet property and create a TV show, he says, but as the TV audience fragments, the only production strategy worth following is to engage with people where they wish to be engaged - and that won't necessarily be the TV.

Case Study 1

Where are the Joneses?
Over the past three months this dotcom comedy from Baby Cow has launched daily episodes and encouraged viewers to script the next day's episode. The series is funded by Ford whose communications agency Imagination created the format. It has been posted on MySpace, Facebook, Flikr and YouTube (www.wherearethejoneses.com).

'It's free to view and free to spread to others so we maximise audience participation,' says David Bausola, Imagination's head of strategy for digital communications.

Bausola views media agencies as a vital broker between indies and brand-commissioned content. 'We're matching up brands with particular narrative structures and the indies best able to produce those. Indies will find it hard to arrange these deals on their own,' he says.

Joneses is an experimental project with which Baby Cow and Imagination aim to refine future ideas. 'It will help reveal where viewers want to take narratives and how to create the best possible entertainment without obtrusive advertising,' Bausola says.

Case Study 2

Waking the Dead
BBC drama Waking the Deadwas the subject of a 360-degree proposition encompassing TV, interactive broadband video content and iTV.

The service was updated after each episode with new content mirroring that week's drama.

In the TV show, evidence is pieced together in the Waking the Deadoffice on a glass wall. It is a pivotal piece of the show, the 'hub' where links and cases are made, or discounted.

Immediately after the second of a two-part Waking the Deadmystery was aired, the website and eTV went live with an interactive 'case-files' interface.

On the website, which was developed by Leeds-based digital agency Numiko, viewers are presented with an introductory clip that aims to draw them into the environment. They are then presented with the evidence wall, in a navigable 3D Flash interface. Sketches, images and mini-documentaries with real-life forensic experts enabled viewers of the show to delve into topics such as blood-spatter patterns and Nazi social experiments.

'Increasingly 360-degree content creation is a collaborative process that involves working with a TV commissioner and then a number of other agencies, producers or heads of department,' says Numiko managing director David Eccles, who worked with iTV commissioner Louise Burrlock and interactive drama and entertainment commissioner Andrew Whitehouse on the project.

'We're trying to replicate the emotional involvement a viewer has with a TV programme in a cross-platform environment,' adds Eccles.