High on Tech
Network Looks To A Future Beyond the Television Screen
by Stewart Schley -- Multichannel News, 6/22/2008 6:00:00 PM MT
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RIGHTS STUFF
SPANISH VERSION
Now that it’s 10 years old, Lifetime Movie Network is itching to get out of the house a little more.
“We’re starting to look at mobile, and how we can serve people content on their cell phones, so that the underlying concept of anytime access is fulfilled,” said Lori Conkling, Lifetime executive vice president of distribution.
Figuring out how to export the movie channel’s content to mobile-video devices is part of a busy new media agenda for the women-targeted channel. LMN hasn’t decided yet exactly how its around-the-clock schedule of movies will translate to an on-the-go video environment, but executives want to make sure the brand infiltrates the world beyond the living room TV screen.
That includes not only the possibility of live streaming to mobile video players, but making content available for download on iPods and other devices. LMN in March made its first foray into the land of mobile video by distributing its original drama The Capture of the Green River Killer on iTunes. The title generated a strong buy rate of more than 5% — the percentage of users who bought the series after sampling a video clip. Encouraged by that performance, executives are hopeful they can build momentum in other new-media channels.
“Three years ago if someone had said, 'you’re going to watch video on an iPod,’ you would have laughed,” said Dan Suratt, Lifetime executive vice president of digital media. “Now, it seems as if three-quarters of the people I see on the subway are watching an iPod.”
His observation jibes with a recurring theme from Lifetime’s consumer research: Women are eager technology adopters who are quickly becoming acclimated to a digital and networked world. “Women are really logged in,” said executive vice president of research Mike Greco. “They aren’t only online but they have broadband, and nearly every woman has a cell phone.”
RIGHTS STUFF
A key to LMN’s digital media migration comes from movie-rights agreements that give the channel leeway to distribute acquired titles and associated movie trailers beyond the confines of the network’s linear program feed.
Of the roughly 1,200 movies available to LMN, about half now sport brief clips or trailers that will be available later this year on its reconstituted Web site.
Lifetime is now building a new site for the channel that will incorporate a video player from Brightcove, allowing for more prolific and more responsive video content. In addition to summoning up movie clips, users will be able to assemble “mash-ups” using scenes from LMN films. That application, currently housed on Lifetime’s mylifetime.com site, will move to the new LMN portal when it’s launched in the fourth quarter. Suratt also has in development a community-conversation application that will be part of the new site.
Suratt said each of LMN’s new media incarnations is designed to reinforce the network’s core offering of feature films, and to make movies accessible in whatever delivery formats viewers prefer. “It’s all about the love of the movie,” he said. “We are trying to enhance the way people can experience movies in a linear and nonlinear way.”
SPANISH VERSION
On the nonlinear side, LMN has devised a Spanish-language variation, Lifetime Movie Network Español On Demand, in a bid to help its distributors appeal to a growing Hispanic population that is eager to embrace new technologies. “The Hispanic audience is very interested in new media, and it has been under-served in some markets” said Conkling. “We are really trying to answer what distributors tell us is a focus of theirs.”
Another LMN digital brand extension was a high-definition TV feed that launched in November 2006, fed by roughly 500 movies. Today distributors including Cox Communications, RCN, AT&T and Verizon’s FiOS TV carry the HD feed.
A December 2007 online survey of women 18-54 conducted by Lifetime found that movies in high-definition garnered more interest among women (85%) than any other program genre, and a second survey showed close to half of women living in HD homes with three or more digital TV sets said they wanted to add either Lifetime or LMN to their HDTV package. The Lifetime Networks survey also showed that about 90% of women are involved in the purchase of HDTVs, “so it made sense to get it out into the marketplace,” Conkling said.
But exactly how LMN’s digital extensions play out economically, and in concert with the network’s primary affiliates, is a puzzle president and CEO Andrea Wong is working to solve.
Wong said she’s sympathetic to comments voiced in May by Time Warner Cable’s CEO Glenn Britt about the uncertain interplay between freely available online TV shows and programming delivered to TV sets by cable affiliates that pay big licensing fees for the same content.
Wong thinks one solution may be to devise ways to make online content accessible or more easily available through distributor-owned Web sites like Comcast’s fancast.com. “We need to move forward and figure out a model that works,” she said.
Past Honorees
01/27/2008More Women Want Lifetime Movie Network
06/22/2008What Women Want
06/22/2008Selling True Stories
06/22/2008
