Tou.tv provides 10.8 million video screenings since January launch, Radio Canada says

OTTAWA—Radio-Canada’s Tou.tv, an online video service offering 2,000 hours of francophone content from eight public broadcasters, is proving popular with youth, providing 10.8 million video viewings since it launched in January 2010, Geneviève Rossier, executive director of Internet and digital services with CBC/Radio-Canada said Wednesday. “It is young people who are on the site, very much younger than what we see in our traditional platforms,” Rossier said Wednesday at the Reinventing Canadian Media symposium hosted by the Public Policy Forum in Ottawa. Rossier said 25-to-44 year-olds make up the largest group of visitors to the Tou.tv website, and that Radio-Canada sees the service as a success story. Rossier said she expects 50 per cent of TV viewing to be non-linear by 2020, and that the Tou.tv service is a way that Radio-Canada intends to meet that demand. Tou.tv has relied on online advertising and public funds to help support the content. “Our model is ad-based and the model is going very well so far on that particular platform,” Rossier said. She added that Radio-Canada is considering a micro-payment model of the service to complement the ad revenue. Rossier appeared to be demonstrating Tou.tv’s successes in a content industry in flux. Experts have repeated their calls for regulatory reform to address convergence and new technologies. CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein has said telecom, broadcasting and radio communications regulations should fall under the authority of one act. At another panel at the symposium, titled “The role and relevance of national cultural policy makers and regulators in a borderless world,” Sheridan Scott, a partner with Bennett Jones LLP in Ottawa and former head of the Competition Bureau, said CRTC regulations such as Canadian content and local, over-the-air television obligations, are becoming meaningless in the shift to on-demand culture and ubiquitous Internet access. “These sorts of rules are meaningless in an on-demand world,” Scott said. “Where single programs can be accessed at whatever time of day and regardless of where they originate. They are increasingly unenforceable in a world where content may reside on a server located outside the country.” CRTC commissioner Peter Menzies, who also took part in the panel, said the commission is using 20th century tools in a 21st century environment. “The acts are old and it would be helpful, at some point in the future, to have a modernization of those tools,” Menzies said. Menzies said government regulators must respond in a way to meet consumer expectations and facilitate market forces instead of suppressing them. But Scott said an overhaul of the existing broadcasting rules could take decades. “If we’re not thinking about this now the cliff will come,” she said. The panel Rossier participated in, meanwhile, was titled “Alternative content production and distribution models,” and focused on the future of journalism and how it can be funded with the erosion of traditional advertising. Donna Logan, president of the Canadian Media Research Consortium (CMRC), took part in the panel and presented six possible models to fund journalism: an online subscription model or the requirement of micro-payments to read articles, which the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times have employed; a non-profit, hybrid news model that relies on foundations and trusts for funding; government-supported news, such as the public broadcaster CBC; charging a premium fee for content and additional services, which The Economist has experimented with; hyper-local news “ecosystems” in which news organizations work with their communities to provide coverage through traditional news, blogs, and social media; and non-profit funding for investigative journalism, such as Pro Publica in the United States. “I think it’s not going to be either or. The future is going to be a total mashup of all these existing models,” Rossier said. The CMRC conducted a study on attitudes toward media that found 77 per cent of Canadians read the news online. The survey was completed in October 2009 involving 1,015 respondents. The survey also found that only five per cent of Canadians currently pay for online news. Logan said that when respondents were asked whether they would pay for their online news, only two per cent said they would pay for what they were reading online, but 22 per cent said they would pay for some content. Hard news, investigative journalism and business news were cited as the types of content people would most likely pay for. David Beers, founding editor of The Tyee, an independent website that provides regional news and information in British Columbia, said that in some instances The Tyee has relied on reader donations to produce stories. During the British Columbia provincial election in 2009, The Tyee asked its readers to select from a list of about eight categories issues that mattered most to them during the course of the election. The news service then promised readers that, with whatever funds were donated, the site would focus on the issues identified as most important. “We thought we would raise $5,000, but we ended up raising $25,000 in 10 days,” Beers said. “We used that money, basically, to lead the province in election reporting.” He said the money was spent in a month and went toward producing 260 original pieces covering a wide range of issues. Beers said the The Tyee has raised $93,000 from its readers over its six-year history. “Readers will continue to be a source of revenue for us but they won’t pay the bills,” Beers said. The news service also receives funding from an investment fund associated with the labour movement, but Beers said the site is independent from outside influences. jmigneault@thewirereport.ca

Tou.tv provides 10.8 million video screenings since January launch, Radio Canada says

Broadcast | May 20, 2010

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