The Programming Strategy

The Challenge of Television Content Services A SUCCESSFUL PLATFORM FOR AN ISLAMIC TELEVSION CHANNEL

The Programming Strategy INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................................................1 ISLAMIC TELEVISION PROJECT COPYRIGHT2003 ........................................................................................................................................................1 THE CONTENT SERVICES VALUE CHAIN ......................................................................................................2 ISLAMIC TELEVISION CHANNEL FUNDAMENTALS .........................................................................................3 THREE KINDS OF CHANNELS ...................................................................................................................3 THE CHALLENGES OF SERVICE COMPLEXITY ...............................................................................................3 ELEVEN CONTENT COMPLEXITY FACTORS ..................................................................................................4 STARTING SIMPLY .................................................................................................................................5 THE BIG LEAP: CHARGING MONEY ............................................................................................................5 THE PRICE OF CHARGING ........................................................................................................................6 THE RICH CONTENT EXPERIENCE...............................................................................................................6 THE MYTH OF THE MISSING ‘KILLER SERVICE’.............................................................................................6 THE NEED FOR RAPID PROTOTYPING .........................................................................................................7 THE ANSWER: UNIFYING THE VALUE CHAIN ...............................................................................................7 THE BENEFITS OF ENABLING THE UNIFIED VALUE CHAIN ...............................................................................8 CHANNEL ISLAM - DRIVING VALUE FROM CONTENT.................................................................................8

Introduction The explosion of content-centred business models generated from the Television gold rush has subsided. Many of the early television content businesses (primarily advertising-driven) have failed. Today, with the rise of digital television, a new generation of content services is starting to emerge, from video on demand to digital television e-learning to streaming sports and news clips by the red button interactivity.

Islamic Television Project Registration Number 4138904

Copyright2003


Not surprisingly, the new digital television content players are proceeding with due caution. Not happy to throw money at building unproven content services, these new players are taking a long, hard look at business models, cost bases and break-even points. Today’s Content Service Providers (digital television Channel’s) are looking for ways to start with simpler services that have the flexibility to grow and change rather than committing to expensive, inflexible ‘silo’ services that require repeated bespoke development. This paper explores a new approach to content service provision that allows Islamic television Channel to rapidly develop lower cost services without sacrificing the ability to respond to future demands at equal speed. Instead of a series of expensive, high-risk ‘silo services’, the Islamic television Channel starts with a platform that builds cost-effective, rich content experiences based on re-usable content and service components. The result is a low-risk, high-return strategy that lets the market (viewers) choose the best services and lets the Islamic television Channel respond quickly to these choices.

The content services value chain The value chain for new content services is still in a fluid state. But it can be usefully simplified into three functions, with any single company capable of playing any role or any combination of roles simultaneously:

No content service can be delivered without all three of the content service functions being played by someone: Content creation – originating and structuring the original content Network operation – owning and managing the ‘pipe’ to the consumer Content service provision – packaging the content into a purchaseable content service and delivering the user experience It is important to realise that any single company can fill one, two or all three roles in this value chain. Of these three functions, content service provision has been the least understood and most inefficiently performed. Despite the existence of high-quality content and the increasing availability of bandwidth necessary to deliver attractive services, the market has not yet figured


Copyright2003

The Challenge of Television Content Services A SUCCESSFUL PLATFORM FOR AN ISLAMIC TELEVSION CHANNEL out how to package and deliver new content services cost-effectively and timeefficiently. This is the single greatest challenge in fulfilling the promise of digital television. Doing this means breaking free of the expensive, one-off service development approach and moving to a flexible, repeatable model that lowers the cost of each service while taking advantage of the potential of digital television.

Islamic television Channel fundamentals In a digital television world driven by rising user expectations and increasing complexity, Content Service Providers cannot hope to succeed if they cannot master the three fundamentals of content service creation: 1) Lowering the cost of new services – Islamic television Channel must find a way to dramatically lower the cost of creating, piloting and scaling new services. Spending millions on unproven services is no longer an option. 2) Getting to market faster – Islamic television Channel cannot invest years in developing and perfecting new services. They must be ready and able to generate and test new services in weeks. 3) Responding to users – Islamic television Channel must be able to adapt services to reflect user acceptance. Hard-wired, inflexible services escalate the risk of failure. The major obstacles to achieving these three goals are the increasing complexity of content services and the tendency to repeat the mistakes of the earlier projects.

Three kinds of Channels The Content Service Provider (Islamic television Channel) role can be filled by three different kinds of Structure: Content owner Channel, who package and deliver their own content service brands to users rather than (or in addition to) wholesaling their content to another channel. Network operator Channel – who generate the content services that run over their pipes rather than just selling commodity bandwidth. Third party Channel – who get content from other sources, package it into whole content services and deliver it through someone else’s channel to the consumer. Whether or not they have another role in the content services value chain, these companies become content service providers when they package new services that can be charged for. The digital television production (programme or content providers) industry will hit £15 billion by 2010. Network service providers own the channels but are missing chances to provide value-added services through in-house production.

The challenges of service complexity Content services can fall anywhere along a continuum, from the simplest to the most complex.


Copyright2003

The Challenge of Television Content Services A SUCCESSFUL PLATFORM FOR AN ISLAMIC TELEVSION CHANNEL The simplest content services demand little bandwidth and are sent over a single channel, in a one-to-many mode. They are free to users, offer no interactivity and are presented in one version only. The standard digital channel, such as Zee TV is an example. The most complex content services demand high bandwidth and are multi-channel, interactive, personalised and paid for in a range of versions and charging methods (subscription, pay-per-view etc). A digital television games-on-demand service might be an example of this or even the red button interactivity, such as the ones currently offered by the News channels (SKY, BBC and ITN) .

Eleven content complexity factors These eleven factors are the key drivers of complexity in content services: Content factors • Bandwidth intensity – text, images, video, game? – (speed of the footage) • Channel diversity – one delivery channel or many? – (multiplex or simplex) • Richness – one experience or many? – (Types of programming) Service factors • • •

• •

Interactivity – a one-way or fully interactive experience? On-demand – scheduled, staggered or on-demand? Personalisation – one flavour or highly personalised? Payment options – free, subscription, pay-per-view, promotional offer? Versions – one or many?

Business factors

• • •

Content sources – one or multiple? (In-house Vs Outsourced productions) Rights – protected or unprotected? Partnerships – revenue sharing, licensing?

Islamic television Channel may not need to add these features to their services today, but as digital television develops, complexity will increase. Islamic television


Copyright2003

The Challenge of Television Content Services A SUCCESSFUL PLATFORM FOR AN ISLAMIC TELEVSION CHANNEL Channel must prepare now for this complexity without sacrificing their ability to deliver simpler, more profitable services today.

Starting simply There is no value judgement inherent in the dimension of complexity. The simplest service may be the best for some purposes. In fact, the cost and difficulty of creating and delivering a service rises with its complexity, so most digital television Channel are motivated to choose the simplest service that can still meet the needs of the user. Complexity factors may or may not add value to the user experience. But they will always add cost and difficulty to the Islamic television Channel. The key is to be able to start simply, then add functionality to meet changing user demands. As digital television develops, services will get more complex (see the Eleven complexity factors sidebar). Islamic television Channel needs to prepare for this complexity without hampering their ability to always create sustainable services. The challenge for Islamic television Channel is to identify and support those features which add value to the user experience. Critical to this is the ability to test new services quickly and cost-effectively rather than creating expensive, multi-channel, interactive, personalised services when demand for the generic, single-channel form is still profitable.

The big leap: charging money Perhaps the greatest complexity factor in a content service is also the one that can no longer be avoided: charging money. The first generation of digital content services were free to the user, depending on advertising revenue (who can forget the failures of Money channel and TV Job Shop). The new generation of services vary in many ways but they cannot be free. Creating and delivering rich services is too expensive to allow them to be given away. Unfortunately, charging money for content services generates complex functions that must be created and managed for each and every service, including usage tracking, billing, settlement and revenue sharing. Not only that, but charging customers brings with it new responsibilities in ensuring quality of service. Unreliable services will not earn revenue for long and may impact other parts of the value chain. Most content providers, for instance, go to great lengths to protect their brand values – a responsibility the Islamic television Channel needs to live up to and even guarantee. Today’s Islamic television Channel must find an efficient way to solve the problems inherent in charging for their services. The systems involved in tracking, billing, settlement, revenue sharing and quality of service cannot be so expensive that they make the service unaffordable and cannot take so long to build that each service is delayed beyond viability. Alternatives to subscription based payment, such as subsides from charitable wing or membership are a proposed solution to this.


Copyright2003


The price of charging Charging money for a content service instantly multiplies that service’s complexity because of the need for: • Usage tracking • Billing • Settlement • Revenue sharing • Quality of service Islamic television Channel must meet these challenges without burdening service development and delivery. However, if the channel management does choose to charge for the regular or extra services for the services, then this activity may be outsourced to NDS Plc. The secondary content may form part of the extra services, see below for details.

The rich content experience Beyond charging, several other complexity factors will become increasingly unavoidable for Islamic television Channel as it will strive to meet rising user expectations. Interactivity is already inherent in two of the fastest-growth content services: games and shopping. It is growing in other genres including sports (Sky’s ‘playercam’) and light entertainment (viewer voting). Interactive services are much harder to create and manage than one-way services. Richness of content can add significant value. The programmes with interviews, trailers, script and ‘making of’ features is becoming the norm. Islamic television Channel must manage all this ‘secondary content’ along with the primary content. On-demand scheduling – Near-video-on-demand has raised the appetite for viewers to see what they want when they want it. Islamic television Channel must start to face the challenges of on-demand and near-on-demand services now. This is known as the TiVo culture, although the TiVo has radically declined in demand, the new television sets are manufactured with similar hardware. Personalisation and versions – Users may want to be able to choose services presented in their preferred way. Islamic television Channel needs to manage variety without clogging up development times or doubling costs. These are just a few of the complexity factors that are already raising the bar for Islamic television Channel striving to develop profitable content services in the digital television world. The new digital television content services are significantly more challenging than the early digital services because they have to do more while costing much less.

The myth of the missing ‘killer service’ Early content services were criticised for their failure to identify the ‘killer app’ that could justify content services. In fact, this was not a business model or killer app problem; it was simply a cost problem. Many of the early content services could have


Copyright2003

The Challenge of Television Content Services A SUCCESSFUL PLATFORM FOR AN ISLAMIC TELEVSION CHANNEL succeeded if they hadn’t cost so much to create, taken so long to deliver and been so unresponsive to changing demand. Today, as content service complexity increases, the need to solve the cost, time-to-market and flexibility problems are the greatest challenges facing every Islamic television Channel. The interesting question is no longer, ‘Will users pay to see Islamic programmes on a digital television channel?’ It is ‘Can we deliver this service at a low enough cost to make it feasible, practical and sustainable?’ In this sense, the only ‘killer app’ in content services is an infrastructure that can support the cost-effective delivery of a wide variety of contents and programmes.

The need for rapid prototyping The first generation of digital content services involved guessing consumer desires and building expensive services specifically designed to meet them. This high-risk approach can no longer be sustained. The, ‘ISLAMIC TELEVISION CHANNEL’ needs to be able to react quickly to new ideas and opportunities by building prototype or full pilot services quickly and costeffectively. Each prototype can test a range of variables such as content presentation, pricing and payment models, delivery channel, etc. These nimbler, more flexible services can be changed to reflect early user experience, and then scaled up to millions of users when ready.

The answer: unifying the value chain For Islamic television Channel to succeed, they will need to turn the informal content services value chain into a properly functioning, integrated supply chain. The commercial relationships between the value chain players are taking shape now, but the technological integration is still a major hurdle. What is needed is a technology infrastructure that will enable Islamic television Channel to bring the value chain together into a smoothly functioning machine designed to deliver content services. This Content Services Infrastructure (CSI) must perform these functions: Automate the most resource-intensive content handling tasks – including content cataloguing, loading, tagging, aggregation, retrieval and delivery. Automate the service creation functions – including scheduling, tracking, validating, billing, accounting and rights management. Manage the aggregation and re-packaging of multiple content sources – each content owner must have controlled access to the repository to populate and update content and manage the rules governing its use. The aggregator/service provider then orchestrates new services based on approved Allow Islamic television Channel to create content and service rules once and re-use many times – all content objects and service rules must be captured and componentised for easy re-use. Essentially, a Content Services Infrastructure can remove the need for each service application to re-invent the logic and rules that govern the use of content in a


Copyright2003

The Challenge of Television Content Services A SUCCESSFUL PLATFORM FOR AN ISLAMIC TELEVSION CHANNEL complex content services operation. Released from this burden, each new application can be developed quickly and cost-effectively. Content Services Infrastructure must describe and manage content, model content services and uphold business and service rules for multiple services.

By re-using content and service rules, the platform approach dramatically reduces the cost of each new content service and the number of services that can be delivered in a given time.

The benefits of enabling the unified value chain The CSI platform approach delivers powerful benefits to the Islamic television Channel:  Speed to market – the ability to get new services to market faster and with fewer resources.  Service cost compression –a ‘do once, use many times’ philosophy which means quicker development and more sustainable operations with fewer people.  Quality of service – the ability to control the quality and security of all services and the consistency of the content brand.  Flexibility – the ability to re-use content assets across all digital channels and all payment options (subscription, pay-per-view, on-demand, etc.).  Service scalability – the ability to start with a limited pilot and ramp up by scaling quickly, easily and with no service interruption. Taken together, these benefits reduce the risk of content service creation and delivery. By designing, prototyping, piloting and scaling quickly and with a minimum of manpower, digital television companies can now find and exploit their most profitable opportunities sooner.

Channel ISLAM - driving value from content Channel ISLAM is established with a global vision to develop an Islamic television channel, which will provide high-quality content and broadcasting experience. Our


Copyright2003

The Challenge of Television Content Services A SUCCESSFUL PLATFORM FOR AN ISLAMIC TELEVSION CHANNEL consultancy and expertise enables us to provide the platform to create, deploy and operate profitable content services, quickly and cost effectively.


Copyright2003

The Programming Strategy

Recommend Documents