The media and entertainment landscape has shifted towards an increasingly diverse set of products, audiences, regional variances, and priorities. Today, we are in an era of genuinely hybrid service delivery that must operate across multiple fronts – simultaneously – 24/7. With traditional broadcasters looking to supply more on-demand options to complement their linear services, ultimately providing viewers with access to even more content.
The opportunity: delivering social change content to more viewers
Enriching viewers with even more content across more platforms is exactly what Together TV, the social purpose broadcaster and a British free-to-air channel, wanted to do. Under the slogan of ‘Channel Your Inner Good’, Together TV is the leading channel for social change, focused on empowering viewers to do more for their local communities. It provides entertaining shows that focus on wellbeing, creativity and the quirky essence of British life while highlighting the effort and work of the charitable and voluntary sectors.
Together TV wanted to make its unique content available to an even wider audience group to support its purpose of empowering communities to engage with change-making campaigns. When the team set out to expand its offering to provide consumers with more viewing options via on-demand and streaming, it needed a partner to deliver a service that worked alongside its existing linear TV channel and on an AVoD basis.
“We were hugely excited to launch this new service and provide our content to even more viewers. But, in order to be confident our plan was implemented properly, we had specific requirements that we needed our service provider to meet,” said Alexander Kann, chief executive officer, Together TV. “Ensuring our partner could deliver a service that works in parallel with a linear TV channel on an AVoD basis, without too much operational support from our side, was an absolute must because we run several projects — including our BAFTA-winning Diverse Film Fund and our mass-participation behaviour change Challenges — with a small and busy team.”
Together TV also wanted to ensure that the high-quality linear content, for which it is well known, was consistent across its streaming offering. Managed media service partners, such as Red Bee Media, help ensure in-house teams can focus their efforts on the most value-add activity.
The solution: bolstering linear content with on-demand and streaming
Together TV opted for Red Bee Media’s managed-service OTT streaming capability for the range of platforms it distributes to across TV apps, mobile and tablet apps and on desktop. It also offers flexibility for branding, content management, video monetisation and organisation through advanced targeted advertising capabilities performed on the server-side (SSAI). Together TV’s OTT offering helps to extend the broadcaster’s market penetration and enables viewers to access catch-up content and video-on-demand whilst protecting brand values and content rights.
Red Bee Media’s OTT platform will also ensure Together TV’s content is handled with capabilities including content protection with just in time delivery of DRM (digital rights management), CMP (consent management platform), geo-blocking, and security and content management processes. All of that is delivered by a company that has extensive experience of executing this for many of the world’s major broadcasters. Red Bee Media works closely with video personalisation specialist Nowtilus to harness its Serverside.ai dynamic ad insertion platform across Together TV’s live-linear, video-on-demand and catch-up content. This ensures a seamless viewer experience, enriched with highly relevant advertising catered to a unique and valuable audience.
The Red Bee Media service combines the service assurance required to get your content seen on any screen with the technical expertise needed to take advantage of the latest platforms.
Kann added, “We selected Red Bee Media based on the company’s service delivery expertise, market understanding and as a reliable and experienced company to work with. We are delighted to have worked so closely with the team and its partner, Nowtilus, both of which have worked tirelessly to help us with this launch.”
The outcome: channel your inner good with Together TV, Red Bee Media and Nowtilus
Together TV’s catch-up service was soft launched earlier this year and will act as an extension of its linear TV channel. The programming will continue to include factual entertainment, thought-provoking documentaries, and original content created from the BAFTA-winning Diverse Film Fund initiative. The content catalogue will become richer and deeper, with more fan favourites as the channel’s programming becomes available to catch up and stream.
The UK-based streaming service is now available through app stores and online for iOS and Android devices, on desktops and tablets; now including LG TV and Samsung TV apps for smart TVs too. The streaming service is completely free to use, and input is based on the established free-to-watch advertising model utilised by the likes of ITV Hub and Channel 4. The advert structure aims to mirror Together TV’s linear channel, making the content freely available to the widest audience possible.
Thanks to the service provided by Red Bee Media and Nowtilus, Together TV’s on-demand and streaming offering connects programming to genre-specific resources and campaigns to “Channel Your Inner Good”. For example, those watching a gardening series will be encouraged to “Channel Your Inner Grower”. Viewers will find more information about the Sunflower Challenge; a behavioural change campaign using entry-level gardening to improve wellbeing and reduce social isolation.
“As well as our gratitude to Red Bee Media and Nowtilus, we are also grateful to all our own partners who have worked with us to help inspire the nation to do good for themselves and their communities,” concluded Kann.
By partnering with Red Bee Media for a complete managed OTT service, Together TV is empowered to focus its resource and creative thinking on its content and market offering.
