When it comes to mustering a strategy for a massive multi-media business then few can top the task of Casey Harwood, senior vice president of digital media at Time Warner-owned Turner Broadcasting Europe.
Harwood's role - or at least the breadth of discussion at a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch grilling yesterday - touches on everything from aspirations to launch a CNN documentary and lifestyle channel on-demand, the Nuts TV experiment to its recent YouTube and Bebo deals.
The importance of Nuts TV
Because of Turner's powerhouse business operation in the US the company, says Harwood, takes a bit of an attitude of "risk in the regions" where it can "afford to take a few bets".
An example is Nuts TV, the Freeview channel based on the lads magazine brand owned by sister company IPC.
"It moved us out of our comfort zone," he explains, referring to the four hours of live studio-audience based content the show provides, as well as access to participation TV, gambling and ad-funded programming the venture dips its toe into.
"If we were to replicate it 40 times around Europe it would be a big business," he says in an off-the-cuff manner, noting later that there isn't necessarily a "single solution" for all markets.
When the show moves to the BSkyB and Virgin platforms Nuts TV will be bolstered to 12 hours and will start to feature long-form programming ("even four hours of live TV is an awful lot").
And the "dual viewing experience" philosophy means that there is no desire just to replicate Nuts magazine on-air. "We are not wedded to Nuts forever, there could be breakout strands," he explains.
"Time to eat someone else's lunch"
"We've seen wave after wave of people eating our lunch, not its time for us [to do the same]," he explains, speaking of the opportunities the company has identified to launch into new genre areas.
"I believe we probably should have launched a CNN Documentary and lifestyle channel, now we have a second chance in the on-demand world," explains Harwood.
1,000 buckets of revenue
With regards to Turner's bread and butter - its TV channels - he says that "over the next two years we will be pulling them apart".
What he means is that there is demand for the company's brands and programming - but not always for a solution offering a 12-hour TV channel.
In the new world, he acknowledges, that the "price of entry" for new media deals is revenue share, giving up the "hell freezes over attitude" of retaining all TV ad sales money.
He likens the digital revenue stream strategy to creating "1,000 buckets catching raindrops of revenue".
CNN International creates 160 hours of content per week, content that Harwood's people have been scouring and categorising to look for trends that can be monetised.
What has emerged is 14 "content bundles" - such as big interviews with entrepreneurs and gurus - that could be parcelled out as packages in a digital world.
A look at the top 1,000 downloads on CNN.com showed that the top 10 stories - while each pulling in massive numbers of views - only accounted for 15% of all downloads.
An interesting nugget was that apparently over the last four years Cartoon Network's games offering on Sky has hauled in 20m "Plays" at 50p a pop.
Good money, notes Harwood, but these games are often used strategically to "retain viewer loyalty at key times" dipping in and out of programming.
Bebo, YouTube et al and digital acquisitions
Recent deals with the likes of Bebo and YouTube Europe are symptomatic of a European operation that - not being a "beast" like CNN US - needs to get out there to win customers as well as secure future routes to mass audiences.
Being involved is like "one huge focus group" which is "immersive, interactive", says Harwood.
"They will need good content to push to the next level and we have that," he says, arguing an era of symbiotic partnership between old and new media.
Unlike parent Time Warner or AOL's recent acquisitive nature, Turner has been more of the organic growth camp when it comes to buying businesses.
However, the "tone" in this area has changed and while the company isn't looking at anything of a scale of an "ITV or a Flextech" it is interested in having a sniff about good-fit companies - possibly technology-enabling.
"Digital in Europe has been profitable almost from day one with logical, steady investment playing to our strengths," Harwood explained. "[The problem] with big acquisitions is a worry over how fast the market moves - last year MySpace this year Bebo, I'm not sure we want to pin our colour to the mast of any of them right now, although I'm not saying we wouldn't."
