BPN 1720: Dutch content related stats over 2015

Spotify 
Spotify is the most widely used music service in the Netherlands. Nearly five million people used the service in 2015, according to research under 2900 Dutch people. Only 8 percent of respondents say that they are not familiar with the service. After Spotify Apple's iTunes is the most used service. Other commonly used streaming services to compete with Spotify are Soundcloud (11 percent), Apple Music (6 percent) and Deezer (5 percent). Also five percent of respondents use Napster. Spotify, Deezer and Napster have become known due to the collaboration of services with telecom operators KPN, T-Mobile and Vodafone. (Telecompaper) 

11 million YouTube users 
Nearly eight in ten Dutch have in 2015 made use of YouTube, which equates to 11 million users. Only 3 percent of the Dutch YouTube do not know. Over a quarter of the Dutch have used one or more times RTL XL, roughly four million users. The service is known to a vast majority of the Dutch. Other video services like Vimeo, Popcornflix and Viewster have less users in the Netherlands. Between 200,000 (Viewster) and 800 000 (Vimeo) Dutch used these services in 2015. The illegal service Popcorn was used by two million Dutch. (Telecompaper) 

4.7 million Dutch use Dropbox in 2015 
One third of the Dutch (34%) indicate that they have used in the past year Dropbox, which equates to approximately 4.7 million Dutch. This Dropbox scores the highest of the seven measured online storage services. In the period July to November 2015, 1750 Dutch were consulted on storage services. Dropbox also stands alongside Google Drive (26%) and iCloud (25%) in the top three. Both these services are separately accounted for 3.5 million users. (Teleompaper) 

Access to Dutch government sites 
In 2015 the Dutch logged over 200 million times onto governmental sites with their DigiD codes. Compared to 2013, this doubled and was up more than 21% in 2014. DigiD is expected to be available on a smartphone app in the second half of 2016. 

Books
In 2015, for the first time since 2008 book sales have increased to 39 million books. In 2008 47,7 million books were sold, decreasing from there year by year. In 2015 for the first time in years, there was an increase of 4,8 per cent over against book sales in 2014. Financially, there was a total turn-over of 498,4 million euro, 3,5 per cent more than in 2014. (CPNB)

Libraries
In 2015 more than 72 million paper books were lent and another 1.6 million books in digital form. Most books in libraries were loaned to young readers. 46 percent of the 100 most borrowed books from 2015 were written for children. (CPNB)

5 x streaming book and magazine services 
1. Bol.com researches
2. Bruna's Bliyoo introduced
3. Elly's choice expands
4. Mofibo coming
5. Library lendings
(Boekblad listings) 

Delayed TV 
The Netherlands is more delayed start watching TV. The proportion of delayed viewing as part of total viewing increased from five to 6.1 per cent. In 2014 the Dutch state broadcast NPO scored a delayed rate of 3.9, going up to 6.2 in 2015. RTL went from 5.4 to 6 per cent and SBS grew a fraction of 7.2 to 7.3 percent. SBS registers the highest percentage watching delayed TV. (research SKO) 

Online video viewing time 
Dutch looked in 2015 an average of 190 minutes per day watching television. That is 4.8% less than in 2014, due to the lack of major events like the World Cup or the Olympics. The Dutch spend more time with video-on-demand via the TV and video streams online. From January 1, 2016 officially keeps track of how long and how often the public looks to online video. (SKO) 

Use of Adblockers
A quarter of the Dutch (23%) used adblockers on one or multiple devices. Usually that's on their laptop or computer. Only 7% have a commercial filter installed on their smartphone or tablet. (GfK) 

Digital music

NVPI, the trade association of the Dutch entertainment industry, representing most of the Music Companies, publishers of Audiovisual Content on Digital Media and Online publishers of Games and other Interactive Software, estimates that revenues for the music market in the Netherlands have increased with at least 10% in 2015. For the first time the digital market for downloads and streams overtook with 52% the sales of music on physical media (48%). (NVPI)

BPN 1034 Dutch soccer returns home to public broadcast

Dutch public television had something to celebrate last night: it acquired the rights to the premier soccer league. After an outing of three years with the commercial and in the meantime defunct television station Talpa, the premier soccer league has decided for certainty. In the meantime soccer lost 1 million viewers over the past three years and it will get less money for the games than the 35 million euro from the commercial TV station.

The public broadcast station NOS now has the rights to the television summaries on Sunday night and to the radio rights for 20 million euro. The premier league decided to keep the rights of live games to itself. The commercial broadcast companies RTL and SBS had also tendered, but their offers were rejected.

Now everything will return to the old format. On Sunday night 7 pm the tifosi will be in front of the television and watch the summaries without breaks and in the ranking of the competition. Talpa had changed the time, the order of the games and of course interrupted the broadcast with commercials. In the three years of broadcast, soccer lost one million viewers.

As to the rights of the live games, the premier soccer league decided to start exploiting their own channel. There were offers of Liberty Global’s Chello Media (channel Sport1), Tele2, KPN and the consortium Football4all, a consortium of the cable operator Zesko Holding and Canal Digitaal Satellite. Despite the offer of Football4all, the minimum financial warranties of 45 million euro as well as the HD broadcasts and interaction, the offer was rejected. This indicates that that the premier soccer league wants to get more out of their own channel. So far the premier soccer league thinks that it will pick up 70 million euro in the first three years. The aim is to get 600.000 to 700.000 subscribers.

In the months ahead before the start of the premier league in September, a lot of organising will have to be done. A consortium has been set up for this. Endemol has been taken aboard as a strategic partner and the Rabo bank is the financial partner guaranteeing the 70 million euro of the former deal. For the production an open tender will held, which probably will be a fight between Eyeworks and Endemol. Besides the infrastructure for financing and the TV production, the consortium will have to sell the distribution rights of the broadcasts on differnt platforms. So far the IPTV soccer subscription of Tele2 has an audience of 400.000 viewers, among which KPN subscribers; now Tele2 and KPN will be able to negotiate separately. Canal Digitaal satellite channel will bring in viewers. But also Chello’s Sport1 most likely will be an outlet for all the cable operators, unless Zesko starts to open up an outlet of its own.

The premier soccer league has chosen for certainty of the broadcasts of the summaries and the radio rights. It has also decided not to be depended anymore on third parties and has followed the US model of the NBA and other sports organisations by setting up a channel of their own to be distributed by third parties. Given the various existing distribution infrastructures such as IPTV, satellite and cable, it will be able to pick up substantial sums.

As to HD broadcasts of soccer games no statement has been made. The public television companies have decided not to broadcast the coming European Championships in HD. They will experiment with some games but will not broadcast them all in HD. This is a blow for the television shops as they will loose a strong argument for selling HD prepared television sets.

Blog Posting Number: 1034

Tags: IPTV, HD

Cross-channel rights to Dutch soccer premier division

The Dutch soccer world is in a stage of excitement, as the tender to the broadcast rights of the premier division has been closed. For the Dutch soccer team the rights mean revenues, while for the viewer/user it means access to the summaries and games.

The soccer games have become a cross-channel rights circus. Besides the rights to the premier league games of men, the rights are also sold to the games of women. The cross-channel rights concern television and radio over cable, IPTV and mobile. A complicating factor is the formats: previews, live games, summaries and archived games.

The participants in this tender have not been announced, but there were six major candidates for the all over rights. The Dutch public broadcast NOS lost two years ago the summaries to the new broadcast station Talpa/Ten. Versatel, now Tele2 had the rights to the full games and shared the rights amongst others with the telecom incumbent KPN. But after two years the scene has changed dramatically. Talpa/Ten has terminated broadcasting and the rights went to RTL.nl. Versatel hoped to pick up 100.000 IPTV/ADSL clients with the premier league soccer, but this did not work out at all.

Now the potential bidders limited themselves to six candidates: NOS, Tele2, KPN, RTL and SBS. RTL and SBS have not tendered, but a novice surprised everyone: Zesko, a combination of cable operators (Casema, @Home and Multikabel). This conglomerate does not cover the entire country with its cable infrastructure, but to fill some gaps they went into a deal with Canal Digitaal, a satellite distributor of movies, sports and digital channels. It is taken for granted that no foreign media party has turned in a bid for the rights.

The rights have been eagerly fought over the years. When the public broadcast company lost the rights to Talpa, Talpa paid 35 million euro for it. Yet the broadcast station lost at least a half million viewers due to the change in format and the commercials during the broadcasts. This round of bids might top the 100 million euro, which novice Zesko is said to be prepared to pay. Just twenty years ago the rights were worth 1,4 million euro.

The Premier League combination, which is selling the rights, will take its time for a decision. They have had two bad experiences in the past years. The telecom company Versatel/Tele2 wanted to use soccer to draw in new clients and when this did not work it started to sell out its rights to the digital channel of KPN. And the Talpa/Ten transfer of the rights to RTL has not brought the premier league more exposure; in fact due to the change of stations people have lost track of the premier league. So the question for the premier league combination is now, whether they will accept the high bid of the cable operators’ consortium or whether they will cut the package up and offer it to separate companies, who in turn can make their own distribution combines.

From the content point of view this bidding is interesting. We are talking about highly appreciated sports content. There was a day that on Sunday night at 7 o’clock no less than 4 million sat ready on the couch for the summaries; now only 3 million find the proper broadcast station. So why should the price go up, when the number of viewers is going down. On the other hand live games will be able to be viewed with a set-top box or by IPTV subscription. So there is certainty about part of the revenues.

So far soccer content has been a cross-channel commodity for the Premier League combination and the bidders. No cross-media potential has been seen yet in soccer content. The stress of soccer content has been on distribution; only the larger clubs have been able to form a community and have their virtual club house.

Blog Posting Number: 981

Tags: sports, sports content, IPTV

Internet long tail of television programs

Last week Thursday, I was present at a mini-seminar of Nedstat. This Dutch webstats analysis company holds regularly mini-seminars to promoter their products. Charming about their method is that they add value to their company presentations. In this mini-seminar the company had invited the SKO, the Dutch radio and television stats research bureau. SKO charts the stats of radio and television programs for consumers and for advertisers. The statistical operation is executed by GfK and TV Times. So far SKO has kept itself busy with radio and television programs, but not with the internet counterparts.

But SKO now moves beyond traditional radio and television programs and will include internet video. This type of video has been growing in the Netherlands since 1999, but really picked up after 2005. In 2003 the company Financial TV started to present movies on internet, preceded by advertisements. In 2005 the company changed its name into Zoom.tv, which works throughout Europe these days. The video offers now is growing fast, partly because of set top boxes and through internet. Public broadcast as well as commercial broadcast stations like RTL and SBS in the Netherlands have popular play back programs such as Program missed.

SKO has now decided to measure radio and television programs as well as internet programs. In this way advertisers can get the real picture about the viewing of a program. Due to internet a program has received a second lease of life. The number of viewers on internet might not be many, but the program can be watched for a long time after the braodcast. An example of a video of program was shown (see photograph). The internet viewing shows a red long tail.

The combination of radio and television program stats and internet pose problems with business models: subscription; ad supported; content ownership; customer ownership.

SKO wants to make the usage of video on television and internet transparent:
- online live and parallel;
- online live only;
- program missed;
- micro-chunking: partitioning a program;
- micro-chunking of material not shown on television;
- theme channels.
SKO will have daily and monthly reports of the public broadcast companies and of the commercial company RTL by the end of October. After that time other broadcast stations can participate.

During the presentation a dummy of the stats was shown. The internet dummy stats were very low in comparison with the television program. This immediately solicited comments from providers which have video fragments on line. Bas Broekhuizen of de Volkskrant was very happy about these dummy stats as his stats were much better.

Blog Posting Number: 878

Tags video, television video, television, web analytics

History of Tien (2)

The Dutch TV station Tien has a history of two years.

- Beginning of May 2004, John de Mol leaves the tv production company Endemol, a subsidiary of the Spanish telecom Telefonica after a row about the appointment of a Spanish governor.

- De Mol starts talking to the owner of the childrens’ channel Nickelodeon about filling the evening hours. On 9 October 2004 the soccer game Macedonia vs Netherlands is broadcasted on Nickelodeon. With the game De Mol drew attention to his new TV station.

- On November 2004 Talpa (Spanish for mole) is awarded a broadcast license by the Commission for the Media.

- In December John de Mol is awarded the summary rights for the premiere soccer league.

- In the first part of 2005 more and more names of starts, supposed to start to work for De Mol, are leaked to the press. His sister Linda de Mol is followed by local Dutch starts. The name Tien (Ten) for the stations is used but has to disappear as the station SBS claims the name rightfully. The name Talpa is used for the time being.

- On August 13, 2005 Talpa broadcasts its first evening filling program.

- In October Talpa announces to aim at is more important target group of 20 till 49 years old and wants a market share of 10 percent.

- From the beginning the viewing statistics were dramatically bad, except for soccer programs, a soap and a local stars series. Especially the early evening programs scored badly and were several moved around. The soccer programs scored okay, but the format was different from the public broadcast, which broadcasted the soccer games in a different format formerly.

- From October 2006 the name Talpa changes into Tien (Ten), after an agreement was reached with SBS Netherlands, which had the rights to the name Tien. Talpa Media Holding, the holding company of De Mol, insists that a second station with arise along station Tien.

- Towards the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007 station Tien is often in the news, but negatively. The intended torment show The Golden Cage evoked a lot of commotion. It looks like this was a major mistake in the marketing of the station.

- In the second quarter of 2007 rumours have it that station Tien will not be part of the new TV season programming, despite better viewing statistics due to the European Soccer Championships under 21 and Deal or No Deal.

- On June 26 John de Mol announces the end of the Dutch TV station Tien. Programs of the station will be integrated into the programming of RTL Netherlands. This company will start a new station RTL8 next to RTL4, 5 and 7.

Blog Posting Number: 799

Tags: television

Cross country for cross-media (10)

I had not expected anyone busy with print in cross-media. Coming from print publishing, I was eager to hear what could be said about print and digital media. At CMID07 Mikael Malanin of the Helsinki University of Technology presented a paper named New paradigms of print.

In his paper Mikael observes that traditionally digital media have been associated with print media. A new reverse paradigm is to associate print media to digital. Another paradigm in media products is the community generated content.

The paradigms are not really new. In the nineties we have particularly seen the publishers coming up with extensions of their existing print products such newspapers and magazines. It was basically for marketing purposes that publishers went into internet. Usually they saw internet as a potential cannibalism mechanism for their print title. By now publishers have changed this narrow view and exploring editorial concepts as well as marketing concepts. Not all concepts are successful; for example, internet is not becoming the newspaper boy who delivers the pdf newspaper file in great numbers. But most newspapers and magazine publishers have digital extensions to their print product.

So far one cannot speak either of a replacement of the print product by a digital product. Only in a few cases magazine publishers had to change from print into digital edition; the Dutch publisher of Elle magazine changed over from a print to a digital product. So far the great revolution from print to digital has not come around. And given cross-media, analogue products like newspapers and magazines might stay in place until digital paper can compete with analogue paper.

Print products in association with digital products or services have been around since the end of the nineties. I saw as a Europrix2001 jury member one of the Finnish entries of 2001, www.sooda.com, which was definitely a cross-media product. Sooda is a dynamic and innovative online community for young people about 12 to 19 years old. Sooda is full of interactive services, new visual experiences and unconventional content. In summer 2000 Sooda grew into a cross-media product, when a printed school diary was published and turned out to be a hit. The other Finnish hit Habbo Hotel publishes in Finland a diary. In the meantime is it not uncommon that internet sites get printed products. Books are produced from blogs. Magazines are created around a website like recently the magazine RTL GP was created for the fans of Formula 1 in The Netherlands, who follow closely the race website of the broadcasting station RTL.

While the digital counterparts of printed products can usually be categorised as extensions, the printed products yielded from digital sites are often serving a community. This can be Grand Prix Formula 1 lovers (like me), but also a community of bird watchers. Internet, Mikael remarks, has proved to be an effective medium for creating and maintaining of online communities, which operate in the virtual space and are not dependent on geographical boundaries.

These virtual communities are often the proper environment to start new services with community generated content. In an enthusiastic community there are always community members to generate content, given that they have proper online facilities. The mechanics of such a community are most likely that there are 100 percent unique visitors of which 10 percent regular lurkers and 1 percent participating members, who will be part of a community generating content such as blog contributions and video and articles for the printed edition.

The conclusion can be that print is not yet dead.

Blog Posting Number: 715

Tags: cross-media, print, digital paper, community generated content