CBC TV Goes Over-the-Top with IBM Video Services

CBC-TV is using IBM’s cloud-based video platform to deliver OTT (over-the-top) streaming video services to Canadians.  The next-generation, ad-supported video service rolls out with a library of over 600 featured CBC prime time titles including Dragons’ Den, Heartland, and Murdoch Mysteries, along with news, digital originals, documentaries and kids’ programming.

The new video player uses adaptive streaming and bandwidth assessment tools to deliver HD video at what the public broadcaster is calling its highest quality ever. The technology integrated in the IBM Cloud Video platform is also supporting the service’s geo-fencing capabilities, closed captioning and described video, search and discover functions, and cross-screen viewing.

As Richard Kanee, head of digital for CBC English Services, explained, the new service and IBM partnership “is in place to distribute all our long form TV content” and the relationship is really about OTT, going over the top and reaching cord cutters with CBC content, no matter where they are or what device they use. “IBM is not delivering our short-form or social,” Kanee added, and the CBC still has relationships with other digital media and information technology companies, such as third party mobile app developers and service integrators.

(Photo by Kevin Van Paassen for The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)

The new player is part of the overall migration plan to greater digital content creation and distribution capabilities at the CBC, both for pre-recorded content and eventually, even live programming. That migration plan itself is contained in the CBC’s five-year strategic plan, A Space For Us All.

The plan seems to be working: CBC is becoming one of Canada’s largest online media destination for news and information – attracting nearly 15 million Canadians to its digital sites (that’s a reported three million increase in the past year alone).

As CBC/Radio-Canada continues to position itself as the public space for Canadian conversations, it must speak to an audience that lives in many different digital domains.

“We recognize our audience is congregating on other platforms, in other spaces, and in large populations,” Kanee said of the video streaming offerings from YouTube, Facebook or Netflix.  “We need to be present in those spaces, and we need to invest in our own operated ecosystem. It’s a dance, a balancing act, and what you will see in two years will be completely different!”

As such, the CBC is taking “an iterative approach” its own new platform. Kanee said that the CBC is “listening to and watching the audience engagement and consumption levels. When they are at parity, we will transition over to the new player and the old environment will fade away, fade to black.”

Even so, he knows that audience habits can die hard, and that the digital team needs to respect that fact that a lot of people are very comfortable with the current platform, even when the new player delivers what he says is “so much more.”

During the player migration and transition to the new video streaming platform, popular shows will still be available online through the current cbc.ca/player, and on individual show websites.

Plans call for that content to be streaming until the end of the 2024/16 season, at which time programs will then be available exclusively at watch.cbc.ca, the new player space, with its collected and curated library of full-length TV programming, and exclusive digital content.

So much content, so many platforms; how can one possibly anticipate what the audience will latch onto next?

“Well, that’s the hyperbole of it,” Kanee cautions, “but it is becoming a craft”, and he says it’s no coincidence that a recent CBC Arts program reached 14 million people on Facebook!

“That’s not by accident,” Kanee says. “It’s a piece of quality content from the CBC Arts unit. It’s curated, packaged, cross-promoted and leveraged against other properties, titles and content offerings.”

Programmers may not be able to predict precisely what works and what doesn’t, but experienced online content creators are learning and doing certain things right. Consistency and reliability are important levers.

But the mystery is not a digital one: “That’s TV! It’s the same as at the upfront,” Kanee says. “Here are 50 new shows; which will survive? But in terms of TV and digital, it’s thousands versus millions of dollars per title. The risk profile is significantly lower, yet in terms of reach, the reward can be significantly higher.”

For example, CBC and global media company Fullscreen have a multi-year digital media partnership, the CBC|Fullscreen Creator Network. Canadian creators who are part of the network will be provided the tools and support they need to amplify their content and reach new audiences across the country through CBC, You Tube, and other distribution platforms.

So new product offerings. New business models. Risk and reward profiles. Digital partnerships.   Does it all make CBC one of the country’s biggest start-up companies?

“There is an entrepreneurial bent,” Kanee agrees. “The CBC is creating conditions for us to thrive, and yet there is a sense that the permission to fail we have is a gift. It’s an appetite for controlled risk, really a commitment to take advantage of all that is to come. That is fundamental, that’s at the core of our future.”

Kanee has extensive digital experience, having previously worked as manager of new media business development for the former CHUM Television between 2024 and 2024, and later as supervising producer, interactive – music and youth for CTV Inc.’s MuchMusic (now just Much) brand.

He was most recently president and CEO of a Toronto start-up called Creative D, which developed a digital trading card platform; he said his experience there, working hands-on with everything from product development to deep audience analysis was a great foundation for his work at the CBC, and whatever the future will bring to it.