With the Canadian government considers mandating BDUs to introduce a “pick-and-pay” option for TV services, Toronto-based IPTV service VMedia announced this week that it is bringing a “choose-your-own-adventure” model to the market, courtesy of its UChoose Store.
The store boasts more than 60 Canadian channels that can be purchased on a standalone basis, and more than 40 that can be selected as part of what it calls a “pick-a-pack” option. The channels include several premium offerings, including Showcase, History Television, Food Network Canada, FX Canada and MTV2.
VMedia currently offers nearly all of the channels available through traditional BDUs, said advisor George Burger. Exceptions include the NBCUniversal-owned channels CNBC, MSNBC and the Golf Channel, as well as TLC and some smaller less widely distributed digital services.
Standalone channels typically cost $2.25 per month said Burger, while the “pick-a-pack” option, featuring a variety of channels, reduces the cost to about $1.50 per channel.
VMedia debuted in 2006 with a model for delivering multicultural TV packages to consumers. It expanded its business to include Canadian channels when the CRTC awarded it a BDU license in 2011. It currently has about 3,500 customers in Ontario (plus some Internet customers in Quebec) appealing primarily to males 18-36.
Burger, a veteran broadcast executive whose career has included stops at Alliance Communications (later Alliance Atlantis) and The Fight Network, said that VMedia is attempting to position itself as a more flexible alternative to Canada’s big cable companies.
“We keep expressing the concepts of choice and flexibility and great value, because we built our business from hearing what consumers are saying they want,” he said. “At the same time we’re extremely conscious of the way the Internet and VOD technologies have completely redefined the ways people engage with their content.”
In an era where premium content is abundant and theatrical releases can be watched at home within months or even weeks of their premiere, Burger likens the current TV environment to 50 years ago, when a movie that played in theatres wouldn’t arrive on TV for eight years, and then wouldn’t be shown again for another three years after its original airing.
“The conventional television model is a little bit like that compared to where people’s current expectations are and how they can command what they want to watch,” said Burger. “How could we not do this?”
VMedia soft-launched its VBox service – an Android-based set-top box that delivers both TV and over-the-top content such as Netflix – in March. It plans to begin marketing the service early in 2014, said Burger. Preliminary work will be done in-house, although VMedia does plan to hire an agency, he said.
