Reuters TV finds value in giving its content to other publishers

Laura Hazard Owen of the Nieman Journalism Lab writes about the strategy behind Reuters Television, which people can watch on their phones.

Owen writes, “Since the offering rolled out in November, ‘dozens’ of publishers have integrated it onto their sites, ‘with more signing up each day,’ Showman said. Reuters wouldn’t give me a full list of participants, but pointed me to an Entrepreneur.com article and to Canada’s Globe and Mail. (If you have an adblocker turned on, you have to turn it off to see Reuters TV’s widget.)

“The Globe and Mail added the widget to its main news page on December 9, and plans to roll it out on mobile later this week. ‘We’re testing reader appetite for five-minute news verticals,’ Cynthia Young, The Globe and Mail’s head of audience, told me. ‘We wanted to see whether our readers like that kind of packaging for news.’

“Of the users who view Reuters TV on The Globe and Mail’s site, 20 to 25 percent of them watch the entire five-minute program, according to Young. ‘We expect to see higher than that on mobile,’ she said. (The Globe and Mail audience’s use of adblockers is not particularly high, she noted.) The Globe and Mail — and other Reuters TV for Publishers users — have to go back to Reuters to ask for analytics, though ‘their turnaround is quick.’

“In general, experimenting with products like this is a great way for a publication to ‘test out content theories,’ Young said. ‘We could produce a similar thing, but Reuters has done the format very well.’ Down the line, if The Globe and Mail were to decide to produce its own short news segments — say, with a Canadian emphasis — ‘we would work with Reuters to look at the product they’re producing and, maybe, figure out some ways that we could license it.'”

Read more here.