Spotlight: Entertainment streamers share wisdom on viewer engagement

Source: Xinhua| 2019-12-10 14:44:41|Editor: Wang Yamei
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by Julia Pierrepont III

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Experts and insiders from the entertainment streaming industry gathered at the Variety Innovate Summit recently to discuss their latest strategies of attracting more viewers, which is considered the core of the industry.

The summit delved into the impact of digital innovation in the fields of advertising and marketing in traditional media, cable, and streaming services, as online content platforms, data mining, machine learning and the customization of viewer experiences transform the industry and its content choices.

"These are exciting times in our business, with a lot of turbulent changes going on," Andrew Wallenstein, editor of U.S. media company Variety, told Xinhua Saturday.

ONLINE STREAMER

Leading media providers, including Disney+, Hulu, NBC Sports Gold and Conde Nast, sat down to discuss the strategies they're adopting to attract and retain users.

Disney+, which launched last month, aims to expand Disney from a traditional media provider to an online streaming tech and content company.

"It comes down to building a compelling consumer experience that is easy to use ... which helps people find stuff to watch quickly," said Michael Cerda, vice president of Disney+.

Echoing this consumer-first strategy, Jim Denny, vice president of product management for Hulu, a subsidiary of Disney, said that "with any consumer product, you have to start with the consumer."

"When we look for product managers, one of the key things we look for is empathy," he added. "You need to understand what your customer is trying to achieve."

MAGAZINE, SPORTS CHANNEL

Lindsay Silver, vice president of product of Conde Nast, a publisher of fashion and lifestyle magazines, noted the challenge of fitting into the digital arena.

He stressed the need to maintain curated editorial content for readers, because "some of the value that a user derives from viewing the New Yorker was in getting something unexpected that had not been wholly generated by a customization algorithm."

However, "asking an editor used to writing 5000-word stories for The New Yorker how he can turn this into a tweet-length digital concept with multiple images and some video-enriched media is a completely different story," he said.

By contrast, NBC Sports Gold enables its users to access the content they want to see, when they want to see it -- with minimal editorial input.

"Fans know what they want to see," said Portia Archer, NBC Sports Gold's vice president and general manager. "They are not as interested in our editorializing. They want to get as close to the experience themselves as they can."

She added that the challenge at NBC sports is finding a balance for the "very passionate, engaged and informed storytellers on staff," who are very knowledgeable about sports and want to engage fans even further.

"But sometimes our job is to just get out of the way," she said.

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