54 May-June 2017
The changing face of time in the world of broadcast
The media business has always been a slave to time . From the days of the print industry when the business was run on getting the news to press to meet dispatch times for planes , trains and automobiles to regular , scheduled radio news bulletins or the cable news channels ’ news on the hour — everything was deadline driven with the hard-stop on the dial .
This digital age is almost the same : everything is deadline-driven . The one difference is that the deadline is that second when you lose your customer . And this will literally kill your business . Delivery cycles have gone from being set by print or broadcast times to near continuous .
KPI monitoring reflects this transition in delivery cycles — traditional metrics having gone from being monthly readership and circulation figures and overnights to data fresh off the analytics-press , every second of every day .
These new deadlines and their monitoring have forced a tectonic shift in the world of broadcast where a traditional broadcast organisation is being forced to evolve to survive in this new ‘ timescape ’. This evolution has the following major phases :
First , there needs to be a technology focus where measurement forms the core of the digital product . Technologists architecting and implementing the products have to build in the correct measurement capabilities . Without the ability to measure interactions , granularly and accurately , the growth and adoption of any service will be throttled .
Following on from this product development is the real-time data deluge of the individual user journey : Who clicked what ? Why didn ’ t they click ? They clicked , watched but didn ’ t complete ? Did the pre-roll lead to abandonment ? Such hyper-granular click journeys must be captured for each user and the mountain of data piles up high and fast every millisecond of every day .
A new analytics capability needs to be developed in traditional broadcasting organisations , where the research teams broaden their skill-sets to live and breathe digital , and where the new metrics of adoption , conversion funnels and churn form the nexus of a new measurement paradigm . This functional group must tell the business not only what happened but also the why . They literally have to sift through the mountains of muck to find the true gems of real insight .
Even if an organisation cracks the time-sensitive analysis piece and constructs a true picture of what is happening , the traditional broadcaster needs to know how to react to these insights . It is great to know what needs to be done ; it is a different proposition entirely to ‘ do it ’.
So how can an organisation adapt to act on this insights from analytics ?
The days are gone where silos operate in organisations . The new deadlines put paid to the old ways of working and interactions between departments . A new unison across different departments — product , analysis , marketing , operations and programming — is required to make everything tick .
All of these departments need to develop a way of functioning together , organically where the traditional boundaries are broken down to form a unit with a singular purpose and ability to react as the data is analysed . Working in this up-tempo rhythm , an organisation has a shot to respond to the ever shifting land and time scapes and deliver a proposition that promotes , delivers and selects the best user proposition . Again , the right decisions have to be made but there is no luxury of time — do one thing wrong and your customer will be gone in a blink .
The Rolling Stones once optimistically sang : Time is on my side ... in this day and age , it isn ’ t anymore . All we can do is adapt to meet the new deadline . �
SHAD HASHMI VP , Digital Development , Global Market & Operations , BBC Worldwide Asia and APB Panellist