When viewers have a remote in one hand and a smartphone in the other, the rules of the game change. Canadian broadcasters are working hard to play along
Social TV has come a long way in 10 years. Before Twitter and Facebook and back when Ryan Seacrest was a blonde, American Idol had fans texting in votes for their favourite singer.
It was easy, it was interactive, it handed viewers power (you, Couch Potato Joe, hold Sanjaya’s mohawked fate at your fingertips) and—thankfully for broadcasters—it ensured people kept talking about the show because they felt they were part of it.
Yet the more things change, the more they stay the same. Broadcasters today are still obsessed with keeping viewers talking about their shows, but it’s become a lot harder because of the way viewing habits have fragmented. Thanks to time shifting, binge viewing, plus, with many viewers just as likely to hold a smartphone or tablet in their hand as a TV remote as they cozy in on the couch, everyone has their own TV schedule and device on which to watch it.
Competing for attention in this cluttered landscape involves much more than merely monitoring tweets. It’s about forging deeper connections with viewers through second-screen experiences and improved website offerings so that they remain fixated on a show.
So how can broadcasters create experiences that will engage audiences with what’s happening on the TV screen, whether it’s during the show itself or even between episodes? How can they captivate them with the show’s story, but also produce potential revenue opportunities that connect audiences with brands or sponsors during the commercial breaks too?
The concept of second screen-experiences is still relatively new and there are no clear cut solutions yet. That said, Canadian broadcasters have been creating second-screen experiences and co-viewing apps for the last few years to keep viewers from getting sidetracked by the plethora of nearby distractions and to keep them connected with their shows—and ideally sponsors—on their terms.
Because while many viewers take it upon themselves to slap a hashtag in front of a show title and tweet about it, the real power—and potential money-making opportunities—for broadcasters come from leading that conversation. By putting out complementary content or offering rewards that will keep viewers connecting with shows—through websites and co-viewing apps—broadcasters are making deep connections with communities of passionate fans. Those fans that will ultimately drive viewership, provide consumer data and maybe even help writers craft storylines.
But, as with nearly every foray tethered to technology, there are kinks to be ironed out along the way to making TV more social for viewers. The audio syncing between the TV and co-viewing apps doesn’t always work, for instance, and unless an app is easy to download and play along with, some potential users will be turned off.
Here, Marketing explores ideas that are working, along with the challenges along the way and what’s in store for the social TV space.
Prompting audience participation
It’s tough to get viewers to care enough about a show to participate with it between airings. But CBC managed to do that by offering a reward to viewers of Over the Rainbow—the competition show which allowed the public to vote for their favourite Dorothy for a stage production based on The Wizard of Oz. It came in the form of 500 extra votes towards a contestant.
The challenge was posted on the show’s website, Facebook page and Twitter feed on a Thursday in the middle of the season, and asked fans to print off provided posters of their favourite Dorothy, plaster them around their town, then submit a photo as evidence of their efforts on the show’s Facebook page. (The Dorothy with the most photos got the extra votes.) On that single Thursday, the Rainbow site had roughly 150 times more page views than the Dragons Den site did during a broadcast that had four times the audience on TV.
CBC also offered a second-screen experience in the form of a “play along” companion app which featured photos, polls, trivia and, of course, voting. The app was synched with live performance episodes of the show on Sunday nights. Tessa Sproule, director, interactive content at CBC, says over the course of Rainbow’s season, between 1% and 10% of viewers played along with the Rainbow app, depending on the episode. It was a smaller portion of the audience than she wanted, but there was still a pot of gold at the end of this Rainbow.
By the end of the show, roughly 60,000 loyal fans had downloaded the app. This was a strong community that CBC could then reach out to between broadcasts. “If you can’t reach the people outside the broadcast, then it’s just a number,” says Sproule.
People that used the Rainbow app spent 32 minutes—more than half of the episode—engaged with it during the hour-long live performance episodes.
Sproule and her team are trying to replicate the enthusiasm around the Rainbow challenge and engage with viewers through co-viewing apps in different genres, she says. She believes tapping into the behaviour of people talking about TV shows “will absolutely contribute to ratings.” And of course bigger ratings means happier advertisers.
Let’s watch together
People are thirsty to share musings and criticisms on everything from Beyonce’s Superbowl performance to the latest hook-up on Girls.
Live television in particular lends itself well to social TV discourse because it’s satisfying to collectively cheer or jeer about a sports call, red carpet hairdo or weepy eliminated competition show contestant as it happens. Veronica Holmes, president, digital at ZenithOptimedia Canada, is excited by the way viewers can take part in a show and interact with others about the content using whichever platform they have open, whether that be Twitter, a blog or an app like GetGlue, which allows people to “check in” to the shows they’re watching. “That changes TV to much more of a lean forward, engaged environment,” she says.
And if there’s one thing that gets people leaning forward—and riled up in social networks—it’s a contentious vote off of, well, any tropical island. “You really want to watch Survivor at 8 o’clock on Wednesday when everybody else is because everybody is talking about it,” says Barb Williams, senior vice-president, content at Shaw Media. “Social media is regenerating a whole bunch of interest in reality television and driving people back to watching it all when it goes to air. It drives back the value of a schedule.”
The trick for broadcasters is getting those conversations going beyond just Twitter. Second-screen apps, whether for specific shows or the network itself, have to pack added value for viewers to bother using them while watching a show. Williams points to Big Brother Canada, which airs three nights a week on Slice. In addition to the TV broadcast, there’s a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week stream of what’s happening in the house at Slice.ca as well as an online game that allows viewers to earn points to influence what goes on in the house—everything from food options to the types of challenges. “There are so many ways for people to stay engaged with the show and… truly influence what happens in the house and how the game plays out,” says Williams.
Get insight in new ways
Writing for a show is like throwing a wet sponge at a wall—you never know if it’s going to stick. But second-screen apps have opened up new doors—and feedback options—for broadcasters and advertisers alike. Take CBC’s “Ride Along with Republic of Doyle” companion app, which launched with the show’s fourth season premiere in January 2013. The app has since reached roughly 10,000 downloads and its most successful element in terms of audience engagement has been a red button that says “Oh yeah!” (a catchphrase the main character uses) when clicked.
Sproule’s team tracks when and how many viewers are clicking the button throughout the show. Some of the beats are predictable—like when Allan Hawco, the lead actor, takes his shirt off—but some are more surprising, like when a bad guy character threatened to kill one of the good guys. Averaging out which beats really resonate with the audience across all time zones essentially serves as a real-time focus group for the content producers, says Sproule. This type of insight could be used by the show’s producers and writers to, say, figure out which characters are worthy of more development.
Giving direction to (one day) get dollars
Finding ways to monetize the attention broadcasters are driving to second screen apps and websites is still a big issue. Sproule feels the broadcaster is on the cusp of tying that to revenue models. Now that the decorating and lifestyle show Steven and Chris has improved its calls to action, for example, she has seen promising spikes in page views. “It’s not just ‘Go to our website for more,’ ” says Sproule. Instead, recent messaging in the show pushed people to the site to get more information on how to make a particular food dish, which caused a big surge in traffic.
How can that translate to dollars? Sproule gives a hypothetical scenario in which viewers could be directed to the site to get a coupon for a dress they just saw on the show. “I can imagine we’d be in a good position to manage a coupon system on behalf of a sponsor,” she says. “We’re building this plane as we fly it. We’re open to exploring lots of models here.”
Once broadcasters have made more solid developments on the e-commerce front, Holmes believes ZenithOptimedia’s clients will get onboard. “When there is a companion app that has natural and organic drivers to e-commerce, our brands will be there,” she says.
