M+E Connections

Whip Media Exec: COVID-19 Social Distancing is Redefining Viewing Landscape

The social distancing being used to fight the coronavirus has led to not only increased TV viewing, including binge watching, but it has redefined the viewing landscape, according to Carol Hanley, chief revenue and strategy officer at Whip Media Group.

“The coronavirus has disrupted industries around the world, including entertainment,” she said April 9 during “The Quarantined Content Consumer” webinar.

“In fact, every aspect of entertainment is being called into question,” she told viewers. “But in the middle of these massive hardships, there is a bright spot: Increased video consumption in the home is opening opportunity and fueling the expansion of the streaming wars,” she said.

Over the next few weeks, major networks and studios will be “launching even more direct-to-consumer streaming services,” following recent high-profile launches including Disney Plus, she noted.

“With all of these choices, it seems the ultimate battle for the consumer will be found in the ability to attract viewers through the curation of compelling content libraries. And, to do that, it’s going to be critical to understand not just what the consumers are watching, but why they’re watching,” she said.

Whip Media combined various assets together – including the Mediamorph content value management platform, the TV Time movie and TV tracking platform, and tvdb community-driven entertainment database – “because we believe success in today’s world requires automated systems to make your business efficient and effective, and probably there’s been no better demonstration of that than the past month,” Hanley said.

“Certainly, we all could have the opportunity to make even better smarter business decisions if we have data as well,” she said, noting that, in mid-March, her company conducted a survey of over 4,000 TV Time users. She explained: “We just wanted to take an early pulse on how people were feeling about self-isolation and social distancing. We intuitively knew that people would watch more television. But we didn’t expect the increase to be quite as dramatic as it’s been.”

As it turned out, 84% of respondents to the survey said they were planning to isolate and also said they were intending to increase their TV viewing. “Not a single person said that they were planning on decreasing their TV consumption,” she said.

The most in-demand TV viewing choices among the respondents were dramas and comedies, followed by science fiction and fantasy, she said, noting the top choices indicated viewers wanted some relief from all the ominous news. News was not heavily in-demand. There was even lower intention to view children’s content and sports-related programs, she said, but noted that was a result of the timing. The “full impact” of school closures and cancellation of live sports events “hadn’t hit” at the time the survey was given, she said.

While 86% of respondents said they wanted to watch shows already on their playlists, others said they just wanted to escape from reality, laugh and feel comforted, according to Whip Media.

“We knew there was a thirst for more content” and knew what viewers wanted to watch and why – “the only problem was COVID-19 brought production to a screeching halt,” Hanley said. Some shows were delayed, while many were completely canceled and “movie release dates have been shifting all over the place,” she noted.

So, entertainment companies are clearly facing some challenges to bring content to viewers who are craving more of it.

“There really is no time like the present to innovate,” Hanley said, adding: “So, enter Hollywood innovation. Emerging out of the pandemic is the first primetime, scripted series to embark on a virtual production.”

She pointed to an announcement by CBS that its drama “All Rise” was returning to production with one upcoming episode, airing May 4, that has a pandemic theme and is being shot extensively using FaceTime, WebEx, Zoom and other available social media and online technology.

“The relevance and the innovation to this approach has the potential, in my opinion, to really be transformational,” according to Hanley. “It’s a risk, for sure, but it’s one that’s bound to help change the way creative uses online technology,” she said.

“Streaming services are certainly poised to benefit” from the current viewer demand,” she said. The current issue those services face isn’t will viewers watch the content being streamed – “it’s how much are they willing to spend [and] how many platforms are they willing to invest in,” she noted.

So far, consumers have shown they are still willing to pay more for good content. As an example, she pointed out that, after the TV show “Friends” was pulled from Netflix, sales tripled for the DVD box set of the show.

Curiosity, meanwhile, is driving viewers to try the new Quibi short-form content streaming service, she went on to say. Once potential viewers hear the description of the service and the short content it is offering, they become four times more likely to subscribe to it, she said polling suggested.

“There probably is a ceiling for how much people will be willing to invest in” when it comes to streaming services, “but I do not think we’ve hit it yet,” she said.