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40 Executive Summary Taking the pulse All together now


David Abraham CEO, Channel 4


Region: UK Interviewed by: Ann-Marie Corvin


By encouraging viewers to visit a separate universe for catch up TV and on demand, broadcasters are becoming imprisoned by their linear path warns Channel 4 chief executive David Abraham. “If you perennially build up online brands such as the iPlayer or ITV Player into this destination, then in the long term you are moving towards discontinuation of your linear brands,” he says. “Broadcasters need to get them to work together – that way you are constantly reinforcing the strengths of both sides of what you do.”


Abraham used IBC2014 to announce the broadcaster’s intent to discontinue its well- established 4oD platform later on this year in favour of a more cohesive, All 4 offering. This is a bold move, considering the free to air commercial broadcaster’s platform is performing well commercially – last year its online revenues grew to reach £60m. It has also now racked up 11m registered viewers and boasts the usership of half of all 16-24 year olds, the ad man’s dream demographic.


As Abraham demonstrated at the conference, All 4 – scheduled to be launched iteratively over the course of 2015 – promises to be more than just a catch up service and features a home page offering archive, simulcasts or a coming next option.


Further layers incorporate elements such as the broadcaster’s short form content service, which launched this summer, as well as interactive gaming.


All 4 will use the channel’s iconic ‘4’ logo to represent all its channel brands – which are reflected by several distinctively colour-branded animation blocks, which all link up to form the figure. A viewer may move seamlessly from one block to another and the purple E4 block will be replaced by Film4’s red


block.


The former advertising executive, who has also worked for Discovery Networks in the US and the UK, thinks that the channel-branding element is important for the channel to maintain. “There is enduring strength in channel brands,” he says, “Ultimately linear brands are navigational tools – ways of reducing down infinite choice into something more managable.”


Thanks to Channel 4’s ‘Big Data’ initiative, which for the past three years has seen the broadcaster use Amazon’s cloud services to crunch vast amounts of user data, the All 4 experience will be increasingly personalised, containing recommendations based on viewing habits as well as carrying targeted advertising. “We will be able to know who you are, what you like, what device you are using and where you are watching us, which will allow us to tailor the user experience accordingly,” adds Abraham. As well as increased personalisation and ad targeting there is a third area that observers have speculated big data can play a part in – the testing of programme ideas for TV commissioning. However, Abraham thinks this aspect of the initiative has been over- egged. “It has


been


reported that Netflix literally do commissioning by data, but I’m slightly dubious about that. I think they look at the data and then make similar decisions as we do about what viewer’s tastes are. Big data does not spell the death of commissioning editors.” He does, however, think that it spells the beginning of new revenue streams. “Our online business has the potential to be a £100m business and I expect more than half of that revenue to be data driven or enabled – so it’s driving yield and growth. He adds: “We’ve effectively


created a market that didn’t exist before – where big advertisers can use the tools that we’ve now got to target and advertise in an ever-more personalised way. “


“Having separate universes for catch up, VOD and linear TV is a big mistake”


theibcdaily


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