Future of Media - In conversation with David Skok of Global News

Last week I wrote about the Future of Media event in Toronto.  I also followed that up with an article on the future of video entertainment.

Today we feature a conversation with David Skok.  David is a senior producer of online content for Global News.  

If you attended the event or followed my tweets that evening you saw that I was less than thrilled with the discussion.  David was the only one who reached out and suggested that he would like to get into more details. 

Following are his unedited comments to a series of questions I posed to him via email:

Is Global News looking at alternative means of distributing their news media?

We are always exploring new ways of distributing our content on various platforms. The fact of the matter is, Canadians are consuming news and information in  a much more personalized way than they ever have before. Our job as a major media organization is to make sure we are where the user is. We can’t sit back and wait for them to come to us.

If so, what tools are they using and why?

First and foremost we are focusing on digital video distribution.  We are the only broadcaster to stream all of our local evening newscasts right across the country, online.

Video is our greatest asset as a broadcaster, so not only do we think we do video better than anyone else, but there is an expectation from our users that we will provide video on the platform of their choosing.  We are also strong supporters of social media tools like Facebook and Twitter to communicate and share with users. These are terrific platforms for us to really be transparent as a news organization with our audience. We also have a mobile website and will be releasing Apps for the iPhone/iPad/Android in the next calendar year.And, of course, our family of web sites, from globalnews.ca to our 11 local sites to global16x9.com. We've experienced serious double-digit growth on all our sites since our redesign 14 months ago. The web, contrary to recent reports, is far from dead. 

What are your thoughts on video?

I’m tremendously excited about video in the news media realm. As I mentioned earlier, from a news gathering perspective it’s now faster, cheaper, and easier for us to distribute our video across multiple platforms.  As a broadcaster, video is our greatest asset. Global News has been doing video reporting for over 30 years, this is nothing new to us, and we are confident that if users have a choice between Globalnews.ca or a print competitor, they will choose us for video consumption.

From a revenue standpoint, we feel that the higher CPM that online video advertising attracts puts us in a great position to be a market leader for years to come.

What about smartphones being a viable tool for news distribution?

There’s no question that smartphones are a viable tool for news distribution. As users continue to consume more news ‘on-the-go’ and are engaged more with the content on their portable devices, it is vital that we go where they are. As the networks, infrastructure, and advertising catches up to the consumer demand  the cost of investing in these platforms will go down, allowing us to experiment more. We also like smartphones for their immediacy, their location-based functions, and their potential as user-generated content tools.  When moderated in a responsible manner, citizen journalism has proven to be a valuable addition to traditional storytelling.

Is the iPad and other tablet devices a better tool to have Global News content on than traditional smartphones?

Where the iPad and tablets have a lot of potential for us is first, simply as a better visual storytelling tool. The presentation on these devices is spectacular and they make the navigation for the user a lot easier than on a smaller smart phone.   But where I see some great possibilities apart from the traditional online storytelling model is using these devices as a cross-platform vehicle to interact with your Global News broadcast. Sitting with your iPad while watching our newscast on your television provides a great opportunity to get participation and 2-way interaction with the audience.  Taking the ‘3-screen strategy’ approach and blending them all into one multi-platform, immersive and interactive experience.  The verdict is still out on Whether the iPad is as truly mobile as smaller smartphones remains to be seen. We haven't seen a lot people walking down the street with iPads yet. 

What have the ratings being like for Global News?  Is technology changing the way Global thinks about distributing their news content? 

You may be surprised to learn that with all the talk about the impending death of the mainstream media, our television ratings have actually increased over the past year. We simply haven’t seen the decline in viewership. Our flagship newscast, Global National averages more than a million viewers per night.

Having said that, we are very cognizant of the changes in audience behavior and particularly how the younger demographic has shifted their viewing habits of news and information. If we only relied on ratings as a measure of future success we’d be left in a dangerous vacuum like the music  and print industry were before us.

From a news gathering point of view, technology is making it easier for us to do what we do best: Reporting. When our reporters were in Haiti after the earthquake, they were able to send their reports through an FTP server over WiFi. Just recently we gave our Global National reporters all iPhone 4’s allowing them to upload multimedia content directly onto our websites.  What used to cost thousands of dollars in satellite trucks and feed windows can now be done at the touch of a button on a smart phone and at a fraction of the cost. Simply put, we can get to more places and tell more stories than ever before.  This was demonstrated during our 86 hours of continuous live coverage of the G8/G20 last summer. Some of the best reporting our journalists did was online on the live blog.

YouTube is doing more live streaming.  Is Global looking at YouTube as a distribution channel?

We’ll wait and see how the YouTube live streaming model works out, but we are already doing live streaming today using our own providers who offer us very low bandwidth usage fees.  If YouTube can offer a targeted distribution model that gives our live content visibility and prominence on their site, we’d be open to any discussions.