History Television’s Ice Pilots NWT reality series is sending viewers on an online scavenger hunt to beef up its third-season website.

The digital extension comes courtesy of design studio Switch United, social games producer Pug Pharm Productions and FanTrust.

Using Pug Pharm’s proprietary technology, Vancouver-based Switch United turned the Ice Pilots NWT website into the homepage for Air Hunt, where fans for the TV series are invited to collect hidden cargo by flying around dodging birds, bad weather and other aircraft.

The flight-related mini-game is targeted at the show’s core audience, which consists mainly of men aged 35 to 45. It allows players to collect and manage their virtual cargo and connect with other fans of the History Television show through an in-game email communication system.

Fans also have the opportunity to win weekly prizes and a grand prize trip to Yellowknife to see the stars of the show, says Brian Krenzer, associate creative director, Switch United.

Three weeks into the latest Ice Pilots NWT TV cycle, online fan engagement on Icepilots.com is up, with website page views up 17% and pages per visit up 34%,  Switch United reports.

“We’re delighted that Air Hunt is increasing online engagement, and that fans keep coming back to Icepilots.com to play between episodes,” said Gabriela Schonbach, vice president of Omni Film, and executive producer of Ice Pilots NWT.

Backed by funding from the Bell Fund and the Canadian Media Fund, Switch United developed and launched earlier interactive online extensions for Ice Pilots NWT for the first and second seasons.

This is an excerpt. Click here to read the full article on StrategyOnline.ca 

One thing that has characterized these developments is that they haven’t involved many actual, reviewable new series. (One exception was the Kiefer Sutherland vehicle “The Confession” on Hulu, which didn’t cause much of a stir but may be turned into a feature film anyway.)

The notion — driven by the success of Netflix and the rapid convergence of television and Internet technology — that there’s serious money on the horizon in streaming video has led to this latest excitement about Web series and a new interest in the crazy quilt of video sites that carry them. But for the most part there’s still a disconnect between the money and the creators, who range from D.I.Y. independents to successful but largely anonymous production companies.

Excerpt from an article in the New York Times. Click here for the full feature.

MOSCOW, June 16, 2011 – Executives from the world’s leading media outlets in North America, Russia, Europe and Asia will gather in Moscow on June 24, 2011 for a global forum on the future of media hosted by the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

“The current influx of new technologies means that it’s a fascinating time for journalism all over the globe,” said editor-in-chief of Guardian News & Media Alan Rusbridger in an interview with the Russian news agency. “Never before has the news industry been presented with such a proliferation of ways to gather news, communicate with the audiences and increase our influence.”

The International Future Media Forum will provide an opportunity “to debate how we can better operate in this ever-expanding digital arena, what we can learn from each other, and how we can continue to experiment in order to pioneer new forms of story-telling for our tech-savvy audiences,” said Rusbridger.

Panelists and keynote speakers include heads of media companies as well as executives from international organizations, innovation companies and analytical centers focused on media market development.

“With audiences at the centre of the media ecosystem, social media jockeying for position against mass media, and new financing and revenue models shaking things up, this group couldn’t come together at a better time,” said FanTrust Entertainment Strategies president Catherine Warren, who will speak on the topic of media profitability at this Moscow event. FanTrust provides business development for the media and entertainment sectors, coalescing content, commerce and consumers.

The Future Media Forum is planned as the core of this year’s celebrations of the RIA Novosti media agency’s 70th anniversary.

“We hope that this forum will become an open platform for a broader discussion of possible paths for media development, looking beyond the media community,” said RIA Novosti Editor-in-Chief Svetlana Mironyuk. “We were keen to bring together leading representatives of the international media market and the audiences, the end consumers of these media products, to discuss the interaction between the traditional and increasingly popular innovative media.”

The sessions will be broadcast live on the RIA Novosti website in Russian and English. Questions to the panelist can be posted at www.facebook.com/FutureMediaForum.

View the Forum agenda, list of speakers and partners at www.fmf-eng.rian.ru.

But what does it take for rights-holders to build out a property that appeals to brands and channel partners for a fan-friendly online success?

Here are FanTrust’s top tips for connecting content creators and rights-holders with distributors and brands.

· Work in parallel with prospective sponsors and distributors before signing your deals

· Determine where you are on the spectrum of commercial versus pure-play content:

• Content only
• Sponsored/underwritten
• Branded entertainment

· Create a premium package for any sponsor:

• Audience (either massive = 50m monthly impressions; or supremely desirable and targeted)
• Content (feature a popular star or popular online genre, such as comedy)
• Distribution destinations (deploy on the brand’s channels as well as relevant destinations and portals)

· Obtain projections for traffic based on similar content for every distribution channel

· To negotiate the best deals with brands and distributors, come to the table with an audience (e.g. via social media or the stars/bands featured in your content)

http://bellfund.ca/annual-reports/2010/en/home.html

2010 Highlights

·         $11,133,214 was invested in the production of 83 cross-platform television and interactive digital projects

·         $860,575 was invested in the development of 22 projects

·         $122,000 sponsored 22 professional development activities across the country

1997-2010 Highlights

·         $93,222,308 invested in Canada’s cross-platform industry

·         $86,072,915 has been invested in the production of 614 cross-platform television and interactive digital projects

·         $6,291,833  has been invested in the development of 175 projects

·         $857,560 sponsored 149 professional development activities across the country

The Board of Directors salutes its Vice Chair and Treasurer for the past decade, Chris Frank, as he retires from his various duties this year.  Thanks to Bell TV’s contributions to the Bell Fund and his dedicated participation in Bell Fund activities, the Fund has invested $93 M in 938 cross-platform television and interactive digital media projects, since 1997.

Sure, fans can be evangelists for your brand, your distribution channel or your content. Fans can friend you on Facebook, critique you on Twitter and mash up your stuff all over YouTube. Fans can help you with your core business, secure second season pick-ups or boost international television sales. Fans can also inspire you take your entertainment business in new digital directions: onto apps and consoles, social networks and social games. Next up: fans will stand up and count for investors.

Soon, fans will be part of your business valuation, M+A strategies and financings. Here are some reasons why, based on some trends FanTrust tracks:

• The average value of a fan is as high as $136 bucks, based on product spending, brand loyalty and willingness to recommend.

• Fans are more likely to remember brand messaging than other audiences, a powerful reason to build a fanbase as part of any campaign. This is especially true when it comes to mobile fans, according to big brands like Marks & Spencer.

• Facebook fans of big brands like Starbucks and McDonalds spend twice as much as other customers.

• The estimated value of Starbucks’ Facebook Audience: $1.8 Billion.

The right number of fans can not only help you to secure deals with brands, broadcasters and distributors, but increasingly fans are part of the investment mix. Producers raising money to finance media properties need more than just great content for the right demographic, they need a baked in fan-base or at the very least accurate projections about audience reach.

For the past ten years FanTrust has seen lots of business models (and many strange bedfellows) — but only recently an increased attention to audiences, and fans in particular.

We’ve witnessed and advanced this steady rise in both television and new media companies valuing their fans, fan relationships and fan communities.

This is an important development in an entertainment industry where audiences have traditionally been seen as amorphous blobs, like ratings or bums on seats. Valuing fans will bring media rights holders, brands and investors closer together, speaking a common language and putting the committed consumer first.

Next time on the FanTrust blog, FanTrust’s top tips for connecting content creators with distributors and brands.

Sin City’s sprawling Consumer Electronics Show offers a peek at the newest devices vying for your dollar, and every year, something emerges as the main attraction. One of this year’s stars was the Web-enabled television set. Every major company that makes televisions, including Sony, Samsung and Toshiba, has been rolling out screens that connect not just to a cable or satellite box, but directly to the Internet. This will change the way you think about TV, and broadcasting companies are taking notice.

The option to watch television through the Internet has been around for a while, but it has required some patience or expertise with technology. However viewers located a show – by paying Apple for it, streaming it from legitimate or not-so-legitimate websites, or downloading it illegally – they had to be willing either to watch it on a computer screen or jury-rig a connection from a laptop to the TV.

It wasn’t much of an incentive to cancel the cable subscription, and very few people have. Specialty channels, which earn money through advertising and by charging to cable and satellite providers a monthly fee per subscriber, collected roughly $1.4-billion in subscriber revenues in 2009, an increase of almost 7 per cent from the year before, according to CRTC numbers.

But as the Web begins to come to the television more seamlessly, media companies face far more competition from online services (also called “over-the-top” services) that don’t come through a cable TV or satellite feed, but feel an awful lot like simply watching television.

Last year, Netflix launched its online streaming service in Canada, which can be fed directly to a TV, thanks to partnerships with more than 200 device manufacturers. Xbox or PlayStation consoles are no longer just for games; they have been delivery systems for online video for some time, and the Netflix partnership only increases ease of access. Meanwhile, Apple revamped its Apple TV, a device that plugs into your set and beams video you’ve bought through iTunes from your computer to the bigger screen. Google is set to bring its own TV product to Canada this year.

Excerpt from The Globe and Mail, January 21, 2011. Read the full article here.

"I don't think that fan cult and fan culture is new. I think what we're seeing is how it unfolds and how it manifests in real time." - Photo by Dominic Schaefer

If there’s one thing Catherine Warren has learned from her media career, it’s how powerful an audience can be.

It’s what convinced her 10 years ago to launch FanTrust Entertainment Strategies, through which she has helped broadcasters, game companies and TV and film producers around the world to use digital media to build fan bases and drive revenue.

“The audience used to be looked at as an amorphous group,” said Warren. “They were not looked at as a community or as individuals who could provide things like viral marketing and context.”

FanTrust [Warren] has helped everyone from the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and Microsoft Corp. to British Columbia Lottery Corp. expand their fan bases using the web and other communication channels.

When Nokia and Orange Telecom France formed a strategic alliance to increase video game use on their mobile products, they called on FanTrust to build game developer momentum for the alliance.

When the Public Broadcasting Service’s KCTS station wanted to penetrate the Canadian market, it turned to FanTrust [Warren] for the initiative’s finance and business strategy.

Warren’s reputation and roles in the media world continue to grow thanks to her ability to bring together the right content, communications channels and partners to build fan-base passion.

Among her loftiest roles is jury chairwoman for the experimental stream of the newly created Canadian Media Fund. The $27 million fund supports high-risk interactive digital media content and application creators.

During the stream’s first round of funding in October, 27 projects were approved for a total of $12.9 million.

Lynda Brown-Ganzert, another Vancouver-based digital media mover-and-shaker, who also sits on the experimental stream’s board [jury], describes Warren as a great synthesizer.

“Catherine has the ability to take things in what can be a pretty confusing space and link them together,” said Brown-Ganzert. “She’ll look at what’s happening around the world – different trends, emerging technology platforms and human behaviour – and she’ll weave it all together into a well-thought-out strategy.”

Warren is a jury member for both the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which hosts the Emmy Awards, and the Rose d’Or, a European festival that recognizes quality television.

She has been a board member of the $18 million Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund for 10 years and is the fund’s communications chairwoman.

In September 2009, Warren was appointed to the board of the United Nations’ World Summit Award for New Media, which promotes digital content and information and communication technology applications that can improve lives.

More than 20,000 applications from 157 countries were included in the 2009 awards competition.

Excerpt from Curt Cherewayko’s article in the January 11-17, 2011 issue of Business in Vancouver.

Click here for the full article.

“We are truly impressed by the vast quantity and diversity of projects submitted thus far,” said Valerie Creighton, President and CEO of the CMF. “The demand for funding from the CMF’s Experimental Stream by pioneering Canadians reflects the demand by Canadians for innovative content and content delivery and points to the need for financial support for these types of projects.”

Excerpt from CMF Press Release. Read the full release here.

This session will consider whether widespread broadband penetration will change the way brands need to communicate to large audiences to drive response, the importance of balancing awareness and relationships and the opportunities and potential pitfalls of being a true market leader in the digital realm.

Date and time: Thursday, May 22, 4pm

Location: Granville Island Arts Club Theatre, 1585 Johnston St., Revue Stage