Interview With Michiel de Gooijer, Endemol

Successful mobile content, we keep hearing, needs to be made for mobile. Endemol has produced a series of successful mobile projects and Michiel de Gooijer, head of mobile TV and video and Endemol’s business development manager, said more and more of the indie company’s mobile TV income will come from tailor-made packages. Endemol has already done several deals including with H3G in Italy and with Orange in France generating what he says are “very, very big numbers”.

In 2005, the infamous Big Brother brand clocked up six million viewing minutes between one million people in Australia, Italy and the UK. “We’re very proud of it and what it has done for our company - the uprising of digital media gives us the opportunity to be commissioned customers we traditionally didn’t work with.” Endemol’s traditional client base is with broadcasters, but on the back of its success in the digital market the company is developing more made for mobile and made for web content. “I think a large piece of our mobile TV and video income will be derived from tailor made, and from smart repackaging of our existing back catalogue.”
-- Four types of mobile content: He categorises Endemol’s mobile content as simulcasts, spin-offs, back-catalogue work and made-for-mobile projects.
Simulcasts, in the case of Big Brother, proved more popular than two-to-three minute highlights. The most exciting aspect is that this is not traditional TV - it’s a whole new medium where the most popular material was supplemental to the TV show.
Star Academy in France is a good example of a spin-off product. “We publish extra auditions which were not shown on the internet or on the TV show and we did a behind the scenes, interview with the director of the programme, the cameraman and so on. Not rocket science, but it’s extremely popular and does really well.” During the last series in 2005, Endemol partnered with Apple on a behind-the-scenes video podcast through iTunes that recorded very large numbers in just a few weeks. “The highlights and other footage that was already on the web and TV did OK, but the special did much better, like the behind-the-scenes Star Academy clips.” Another example of spin-offs are the Totally Frank mobisodes that Endemol worked on for Channel 4. They used the same script writers as the TV show, producing two-to-three minute episodes only available on mobile. Every time, he says, made-for-mobile content is always more successful than re-appropriated TV content.
Another source of material is the back catalogue. Endemol will shortly release a mobile channel called Home Video Junk which repackages archive home video footage and is fronted by two Beavis & Butthead-type animated aliens. “The content of traditional home videos is pretty corny, but by having edgy comments and these funny characters commenting, it makes it much more appealing for 3G users.”
Made-for-Mobile: De Gooijer’s pet project has been Get Close To… Sugababes, produced in the UK exclusively for O2. It combines backstage tour footage from an Endemol DV cameraman with personal diaries recorded by the girls on their Nokia N90 mobile phones. That is footage the camera team would never have been able to capture, and because it is designed for mobile, it offers a better user experience. Vcould send video of their questions and comments to the band members, and influencing the set list and the girls’ outfits. Material was published within 36 hours so it was always topical.
“If you know that people have only got a couple of minutes of spare time, basically that’s mostly when people will use this kind of service and it’s extremely important that you give people control over when they watch. We see the fixed-TV world moving more and more towards video on demand, and for mobile the so-called Holy Grail would be mobile broadcasting? I don’t doubt that.”
-- The risks of made-for-mobile formats: Operators are often reluctant to share information, such as 3G user numbers. That means it’s difficult for Endemol to make the business case for investing in its own made-for-mobile projects without a definite commission. “I can’t make the business case because I don’t have the numbers. We don’t know how many people would get access to it and would be willing to pay.” In three years he predicts the market will be as much as ten times bigger and the public will be much more educated about mobile TV and video services. “They’ll see it everywhere, the user interface will have improved, pricing will,hopefully, be more transparent, user friendly interactivity combined with mobile TV and video will be a reality and advertisers will be on board too. So I’d expect the usage per user as well to increase. Then it might be interesting for us to work more on a mixed model of partially commissioned work combined with revenue share. But currently it is too early.”
Projects like Home Video Junk, on the other hand, are internally financed because it’s an easy, relatively low-risk format to put together and, because it uses Endemol’s own back catalogue, the overheads are low. “We can offer that to all the operators worldwide - we just have to adapt the voiceovers, produce for maybe three months and then sell throughout the year to different operators. That is content which has international potential.” Similarly the Get Close To format has international potential and Endemol is discussing local versions of that format around the world.

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