Broadcast and Web 2.0: from tv program to brand

During the iMMovator Crossmedia Café Wessel de Valk (see photograph below), a veteran in new media, presented a case study of how a consumer program changed over a period of 5 years. In 2002 Kassa! (Cash!), a Dutch language consumer program of the VARA, a public broadcast station, was a classic program. It was broadcasted 42 weeks, every week except for summertime; attracted 1,5 million viewers and had a contact frequency of 64 million times. Once a program had been broadcasted and repeated once, it went into the broadcast archive.

Now in 2007 the contact frequency has been extended to 232 million times. Over the years the program has been built out to a brand, crossing over from television to other media. The ingredients are: Kassa on TV; Consumer TV; Q&A; The golden hint; The experts,; Forums; News; News quiz; Product polls; polls; Themes; Tests; Newsletter; Links; Contact. The program is broadcasted on analogue and digital television and the program has a hybrid form of an analogue broadcast, which is continued on internet and later on broadcasted as the prolongation. The program is also part of a consumer channel broadcasted on a digital channel. Also radio has now a daily consumer show. Besides the internet prolongation of the television program, the program can be retrieved for a month. There is also a weekly newsletter, announcing the items of the upcoming broadcast, but also comments on the past broadcast. And there is still Teletext, text television, and the RSS feeds. And now at last a print magazine will be published. And this might not be the end of the media tail, as narrowcasting has not been probed yet.

This net of programs is delivering its fruits. The site has daily 40.000 unique visitors; monthly 1,2 million visitors. The newsletter is received by 130.000 subscribers. And this tool has created its own community of faithful subscribers. No less than 23.000 consumer questions are launched in this forum. There is now a database with 200.000 answers, with only 55 questions which could not be answered. When a subscriber launches a question on the forum, he/she will have reactions within an hour. The community has also organised itself by subjects.

Consumer matters have attracted a faithful flock of followers, who check many of the various programs and use the newsletter and forum tools frequently. In five years the television program Kassa has been built out to a crossmedia brand and community. The crossmedia format is now being applied at the section humour. The broadcast station is famous for its humour programs on television and radio. In order to use the crossmedia format 100 television and radio programs have been chunked into 2.000 fragments and stored into a database. Selections from the database can be used in order to start up a program on the digital television channel as well as internet video and radio programs and, yes, soon there will be a printed magazine. Besides this expansion of humour programs, the community of humour and cabaret lovers is being strengthened. The newsletter is the cement between the newsletter subscribers and forum participants.

Television and radio broadcasting is changing dramatically. Did all the attention of viewers turn around the particular television or radio broadcasts on a particular time or evening, now these programs are usually the appetiser followed by an extension or cross-over to other media, which can be viewed at any time. The interesting part is that this is not only a technical and brand building movement, but it has also a reciprocal movement as it also solicits community action.

Blog Posting Number: 911

Tags: broadcast, web 2.0, crossmedia