“A lot of community programming in the past has been dimly lit studios with linear channels,” says Shawn Omstead, vice-president of products for Bell Residential Services. Bell’s recently launched community programming service, Bell Local, wants to break out of that mould and, as Omstead said, “redefine what community television is.” Its goal is to distribute content produced by and for the public to better connect Bell with local communities.
It’s doing so using an on-demand format through Bell’s Fibe TV. As Omstead explained in an interview with Marketing, as part of the service’s license as a BDU, the CRTC mandates it to contribute 1.5% of its gross annual revenues from broadcasting activities to local TV programming.
As Fibe TV (launched in 2010) and its 1.5% of gross revenue have grown, Omstead said that beyond that mandate, Bell wanted to provide a more localized face for Bell . “Our mission is to engage all communities we serve and empower people to connect through their stories.”
Bell Local is available on-demand through the Bell Fibe storefront and at Bell Local’s website, which went live last month. “We’ve made this a 100% on-demand experience; there is no linear channel,” said Omstead. “That helps unshackle us from the dial and bring in people that are crazy, over-the-top passionate about their topics and give them a voice that [viewers] don’t have to wait to tune in for.”
Omstead’s thinking about forming Bell Local was much different from putting out something like a new set-top box. (His team, which works on Bell’s residential products and services, was the one that created Fibe TV.) Combining his team’s product capabilities, he then added in the content element with Bell Media.
Discussions between Omstead’s team and Bell Media led to a concept that he said “was more than just rolling out programming with the Bell logo on it.” Instead, for the four or five months leading up to its launch, the company took a more traditional marketing approach and put a lot of thought into the service’s DNA and value proposition—both the consumer and the people that would come up with content ideas to distribute on the new service. “It was more of a consumer brand strategy the way we approached it, and then the programming around that brand strategy,” said Omstead.
The programming itself is widely varied—everything from one-off documentaries to miniseries. Using the Bell Local website, content producers—both experienced and first-timers—can submit content ideas that are then corralled by a senior producer. Some of the people that have submitted ideas so far have already begun producing community access programming and are now looking for help to improve, said Omstead.
Bell Local teams in Toronto and Montreal—each staffed with full-time producers, an editor and camera operators—are available to help with that. They’ve met with community groups for several months in the lead-up to the launch to feel out content areas that would be in line with Bell Local’s brand DNA. Once content creators get a green light, a producer and editor are assigned to that programming project, which is then shot in HD. “A lot of stories get pitched and then we form the meat around them,” said Omstead.
Take Sheldon Neil’s Culture Shock, a series that its host pitched with a loose idea, and then Bell Local’s team took and transformed into a multi-episode format that sees Neil trying out different activities and visiting local events in Toronto—everything from a fan expo to a roller derby.
Wilf Dinnick, the senior producer on Bell Local’s Toronto team of seven, joined the team in late June and said that by the end of the year his team aims to have roughly 200 hours of content produced. The amount loaded into Fibe TV has been increasing each week; he said there will be between four and six episodes a week of new shows until the end of the year, then in 2014 that will increase to eight to 10 a week.
The common theme that runs through the content is that its creators are passionate and tell stories that are approachable and inspiring, says Omstead. He adds that Bell Local’s definition of “local” isn’t tethered to geography. It’s based on what people are interested in.
“Local could be gardening….[It’s] what is local to you from the subject matter and allowing people to discover that.”
Bell is working to increase Fibe’s service footprint to 4.3 million homes in Ontario and Quebec by the end of the year. In its Q2 results for this year, BCE reported that Fibe had more than 346,000 subscribers (more than double the number it had at the end of the same period the year before).
There hasn’t been an official marketing campaign around Bell Local yet because, Omstead said, the team wants to have more hours of content in the store first. “We’re not at a point yet where we’re loud and proud,” he said, adding that will change next year.
