Creating Successful Social TV and Multiplatform Strategies

October 11, 2012, TV Next Conference, Santa Clara, CA—Rob Relick from CBS Interactive talked about the multi-screen space and how they are addressing it. In a constantly shifting marketplace, programmers need to experiment and invest in new platforms to address the changing consumer expectations.

The entertainment industry has grown 82 percent between ’10 and ’12. In the first quarter of this year, people averaged 35 hours of viewing per month across all screens. Those with PCs watched 5 hours of programming per week on the Web. While watching programs, users were multitasking, 45 percent used their phones and 30 percent used their tablets on show related functions. This change represents an opportunity to enrich dialogs.

The social networks saw 441 million comments last season, and 44 million were about CBS shows, equivalent to about 20B earned impressions. The business has seen 45 consecutive months as the number 1 network. Now, they have to integrate social TV, a chaotic, unpredictable medium, into their programming efforts. The main theme is to make digital a part of the story-telling process.

For example, at this year’s Grammy Awards, they covered the events across multiple platforms. They had a live app, and live content, mixed with the social media reporters to highlight the Grammy legends through a video series. They used many portals and outlets for their online content and developed unique transmedia, multi-platform content. In one social media function, key words in Words with Friends generated links to a Grammy app. These efforts built a companion experience.

The 13 million comments on the Grammys was more than the number of comments for the SuperBowl, and showed a 25 times increase in just one year. The Grammy app was the number 1 free entertainment app in the App Store, and had over 1 million unique users before the show aired. This illustrated the interplay between digital and the show.

One challenge for scripted show is how to integrate the other media into the show experience. For “NCIS:LA”, they created a second screen app that integrates and synchronizes to the dialog to show exclusive content. This audio synchronization highlights key elements and spotlights technologies as well as other back stories.

The next level will be to build buzz for new shows. Multiplatform is a marketing vehicle that can tease out content before a show. For example, in “Elementary”, an online game displays a scene with a major clue before the show airs. This different approach allows extensions and extractions from the broadcast. Often, this content is behind the scenes material that shows the details of the production. They are also streaming the concert performances from the Tonight show to Live on Letterman.

By increasing the scale of their operations to over 5 million people (the former threshold defining a hit), they can nurture and facilitate dialog in a social setting to drive fan engagement. The value from the dialogs is users can contribute ideas and see a response in a relatively short time. These online dialogs with the shows are at the time when people are most interested.

They also started a different mode of delivery. “Flock to unlock” is their policy to unlock all the extra materials in the various sites when a threshold of social comments is passed. For “BigBrother”, much of the extra content is live after the show and the fan inputs impact the on-screen voting and live chats. They change the show in response to viewer inputs.

Events and special offerings get scheduled for the fans. They are working to tap into the mass of like-minded audiences through social media. These efforts allow them the ability to create spinouts of new shows in any platform. Cross platform capabilities drive awareness, cross pollination, and cross promotions in places like their Facebook app and allow them to partner up with many parties. Essentially, they work to pick a star to hang with.

In addition to the content, they award fans with other online materials and goodies. The cross platform digital media drives engagement. The latest activities were previews and the premiers of the new season. They used all online elements to drive users to their social sites. This year, all of the shows achieved their thresholds to unlock extra content.

So is this social TV or just cleaver marketing? They work hard to understand their audiences and aggregate materials based on monetizing entertainment. Their ad partners and third-party brands help to balance the market and build the brands. Their goal to make money and up-sell premium product with premium services.

Most of their catalog is in play for these extra tie-ins. So far it has been a learning experience requiring total staff involvement to integrate the media. Comedies and scripted shows are still on the low end while live events and reality shows are all in. There are some small efforts to bring in more social products.

Looking forward to coming and long-term changes, they are working with good content creators and the digital efforts will increase over time. They manage the volume of content by outsourcing some, and the balance is internal and with partners. The internal efforts are where they have domain expertise, and their partners are aggregators, platforms, tools, and some contractors. All of their efforts are geared towards making it simple for users. They coordinate technology and creative people with the tent pole events and schedules.