feature content distribution
Rule One: Know your market or work with someone who does
Beyond the delivery of content itself, broadcasters making the leap from their home country to new markets have a slew of other challenges to face. Market knowledge is the first of them. Is your content what the viewers in your desired target market want to watch? What rights issues, state or cultural censorship or norms must be taken into account? Broadcasters going global need to consider the need to regionalise content. The content has to be relevant (or be made relevant) to their target market and broadcasts must be both legal and culturally appropriate. Cultural norms, rights issues and state censorship are hurdles that must be overcome, with features such as programme substitution, graphics insertion and subtitling. The football match shown in a broadcaster’s home market may encounter legal issues if it is broadcast beyond borders without securing the necessary rights. Similarly, the bikini pageant shown in the broadcaster’s home territory may raise eyebrows in more conservative regions of the world. Having programme substitution set up allows the service provider to swap out those offensive broadcasts and replace them with alternative content.
Rule Two: Know how to get where you’re going
There are no shortage of ways to deliver content around the world in the 21st century: Internet, fibre and satellite to name a few. For non-live content sent sporadically in standard definition, an Internet-based solution may be the way to go. But for
The concept of global reach combined with regionalised content is one that every
ambitious broadcaster and media organisation is either considering or already laying plans for.
regular, high-quality delivery of broadcast-quality content, satellite and fibre optics are the most reliable and, when used wisely, the most cost-effective route to get content where it needs to be, quickly and securely.
When it comes to the physical delivery of the content stream around the world from the broadcaster’s home market to the desired target market, choosing a partner with both a satellite and fibre network is key. This is because it is generally less expensive than satellite when used for point-to-point delivery, ie from the company’s headquarters in the home market to the point of playout for the region to which it will be delivered. Once the content has reached the point of playout, satellite is the best method to reach DTH viewers, cable headends, IPTV and mobile TV headends. The so-called ‘hybrid’ delivery model is therefore the most cost-effective way to bring content to the target market and uplink it to pepper the whole region with content.
Rule Three: Work with a global partner
It’s clear that especially where a multi-region rollout is on the cards, broadcasters need to work with companies that are on the ground in all of the targeted regions. From a technical support, market knowledge and logistical perspective, there is no substitute for having actual manpower working for your channel in both your home and target markets.
Service providers that have offices around the world have found that their presence in every key market can be of huge assistance to broadcasters looking to expand.
For example, GlobeCast initially set up offices and technical facilities around the world to bring content from point A to point B. Being global was simply a way of making sure that someone was standing at both ends of the pipe. However, as broadcasters started coming to the company for value-added services, it became clear that having teams physically present around the world was the way to offer the real on-the-ground local expertise, and the company started developing this geographic advantage into a strategic one. Its World TV division in the United States now provides consulting for channels looking to expand beyond their borders, and this is achieved first of all because in most cases the company has broadcast sales and marketing experts stationed in each channel’s home market as well as staff on the ground in the channel’s target broadcast market. In addition to this capability, World TV and GlobeCast are able to leverage the relationships that they have with over 500 broadcasters worldwide. The concept of global reach combined with regionalised content is one that every ambitious broadcaster and media organisation is either considering or already laying plans for. The business benefits are significant, but it is a daunting challenge nevertheless for broadcasters to put together their own globalisation/regionalisation operation. The trend of market development to date indicates that careful and expert regionalisation is an important key to reaching out successfully to a global audience, and combined with a cost-effective and robust delivery infrastructure, it is this crucial value-added service that eases a broadcaster’s route to the world.
18 l ibe l march/april 2011 l
www.ibeweb.com
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