Free to access, SLT is aimed at following audiences from broadcast to digital video and creating new, quality opportunities for marketers.
By Greg Dool for www.foliomag.com
Consumer-facing publishers—especially those in enthusiast, passion-driven markets—increasingly find themselves tasked with creating new and innovative touch points with their audiences.
Taking that approach to heart is Bonnier Corp., the special-interest publisher known for titles like Field & Stream, Popular Science, and Saveur, who announced on last week the launch of SLT, a free-to-access SVOD platform geared specifically toward saltwater anglers.
Currently live at Saltwater.TV, SLT offers a growing collection of over 150 videos—both created by Bonnier in-house and sourced from outside producers—including the company’s popular “Sport Fishing Television” series that airs on Destination America.
By DelphFishing (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa
“To stay relevant as a consumer brand, you have to be where the audience is,” Bonnier’s VP of brand strategies, Matt Hickman, tells Folio:. “Our audiences are looking for us on social, they’re subscribing to our email list, they’re trending toward mobile for consumption. It’s a very dynamic customer ecosystem. We feel it necessary to continue to evolve our brands to meet the needs of our audience.”
A major motivation for the launch of SLT, says Hickman, is the need for a hybrid distribution channel, something to ease the effects of waning audiences for linear, broadcast video.
“In our own experience producing TV shows within the hyper-endemic category of saltwater, we found a need to go beyond broadcast,” adds Hickman. “We’ll continue in broadcast, because broadcast is still powerful, but the viewership within any channel has, from our perspective, been in decline. There are more people watching, but they’re watching more channels.”
