The learning curve; At Launch
2001-03-06
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These are dark days in the new media world, with dot.gone burnouts and fatalities virtually every week. But while the general picture across the sector is one of gloom and financial failure, at London-based internet and TV convergence outfit Network of the World (NOW), one of the most ambitious dot.com enterprises, the emphasis is very much on business as usual.
NOW launched last June, offering five themed web portals alongside a TV channel, based around the same five content genres, which is beamed to 130m homes in Asia via satellite and is available as a streamed video service to internet users elsewhere.
The operation is a joint venture between Trans World International (TWI) and Pacific Century Cyber Works (PCCW). TWI, the TV rights management and production arm of sports marketing giant IMG, provides the content; and PCCW, founded by Hong Kong new media mogul Richard Li, brings the cash.
When NOW launched, there was a considerable fanfare about the project's ambition to become a global interactive TV and web entertainment player once broadband arrived, and about the Dollars 1.5bn Li planned to invest in the service over five years.
Then, towards the end of last year, PCCW ran into financial difficulties. The global sell-off of technology stocks, along with concerns about the level of debt Li took on to buy Hong Kong Telecom, began to bite. PCCW's Hong Kong-listed share price collapsed.
In October PCCW announced a Dollars 200m annual cap on its investment in all narrowband and broadband pro jects, including NOW, until market conditions improved. Then last month the firm announced it was axing 30 of the 50 London-based staff working on NOW. Following these developments, all eyes have been on NOW, to see if the reversal in PCCW's fortunes would hit the service and its content production operation, which is run by TWI.
However, NOW head of service Rick Thomas is keen to stress that no redundancies are planned among the 400-odd content staff he oversees, and that work is continuing on developing and improving the offering. TWI has an agreement with PCCW to produce content that runs for some years and that has not been affected at the moment,' says Thomas, who continues to executive produce TV shows for TWI, in addition to his NOW role. We're here and we're carrying on.'
The business-as-usual line is reinforced by deputy head of service Patrick Walker, who was working in Asia as a BBC journalist before joining NOW. What's been going on at PCCW is just the reality of the market right now,' he says. They have given figures for what they're willing to commit on an annual basis and Richard Li is still very committed to the business-to-consumer side of the business.'
Thomas adds that he has always been working to a timetable that assumed an 18-month period after the June 2000 soft launch to develop NOW and roll it out globally, before moving to a hard launch. This is still the goal.
NOW's other deputy head of service, Sarah Hicks, says one priority in the first six months since the service went live has been building the infrastructure behind it. This has included developing a dedicated NOW operating system for web and TV content production, which Hicks says combines the best elements of the ENPS TV newsroom system and Dreamweaver website building software.
Another key development has been creating software that synchronises NOW's TV and web content, allowing users to click on a trigger page' embedded in the video stream they are watching that takes them to the relevant page in one of NOW's web portals.
In other areas of NOW's operation there has been a sharp learning curve. Hicks, a launch veteran who was in at the start of now established TV news services Sky News, BBC World and BBC News 24, admits that early plans for a multiskilled workforce who could all shoot and edit their own video footage, as well as writing accompanying scripts and web copy, have been scaled back.
She adds that some individuals have taken to multiskilling. NOW sports reporter David McGrath, for instance, operates as a one-man TV production team, covering events overseas armed with a digital camera, laptop editor and two satellite dishes.
But in general NOW has moved towards hiring people with good old-fashioned specialisms. Subs have been brought in to cast a beady eye over web copy, and yachting journalists have been hired to report on round-the-world catamaran event The Race for the NOW website established to cover the event.
The NOW management team has also spent the past few months refining and improving the TV and internet content offerings. NOW launched with five individually branded web portals and complimentary TV programming strands themed around sport, gaming, film and art, earth and space, and cutting- edge music.
The daily block of TV output broadcast from 4pm London time, which consists of 15- and 30-minute programmes, was increased from two-and-a-half to four hours a day in mid November. A sixth technology themed programming strand, Tech, was launched at the same time and the Tech website went live last week.
Two of the portals have been rebranded, with Emage relaunched as Film and Art, and Mothership transformed into Earth and Space. Explaining the rebranding, Walker says: On TV you try and find funky names that hint at what a show's about. But on the web you've got to be much more specific, otherwise people just click away.'
NOW has also been targeting events around the world that will appeal to the communities it is looking to serve, either picking up internet rights for video streaming or providing other types of coverage in cases where footage of the event itself is not available.
Last month NOW signed a deal with Mean Fiddler, which will allow the outfit to webcast gigs from the music event organiser's 12 UK venues. Thomas reveals that NOW is also talking to Mean Fiddler about coverage of the Reading rock festival later in the year.
As for how much traffic the NOW service gets, Walker says PCCW is not revealing full figures. But he adds: Traffic has more than doubled since we relaunched the look and feel of the website on December 8', and it is now hundreds of thousands of page views per day and millions of page views per month.
The NOW management team is also encouraged by the email response from users, with 200 in the last week alone. The average time spent on the site is around 20 minutes per user,' Walker says. There are real communities being built, which is encouraging from a business point of view.'
On the even thornier issue of how NOW will make money, Thomas says it will be looking for everything from online advertising and sponsorship to syndicating the outfit's TV content to traditional broadcasters through the PCCW and TWI sales teams. He also expects to have more TV distribution deals in place by the time of NOW's hard launch, which will provide extra potential for generating advertising and sponsorship revenue.
It will be a mix of old and new economy revenue models,' adds Walker. Because you can't rely on the web alone.'
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