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“And that’s just our take on covering a mainstream sports,” he adds, “because it’s undeniable that live sports is huge right now. It’s actually the only aspect of linear TV that keeps it interesting – but it doesn’t enable the audience to obtain a connection with the players or even, to some extent, the sport itself.” Maljaars explains: “If you have always been a fan of a sport, then watching it live is great, because you’re already invested. But if you are new to a sport and you’ve seen a documentary or a series of stories about an athlete or athletes who are attached to that sport and, whether you love them or you hate them, the next time you see them live on TV, you will want to root for one and not the other – our stories make live sport interesting.” Insight TV is also creating short-form content as a driver for its channels, Maljaars says. “It’s built into our production process, so, for every series on Insight TV, we create something short form to go with it. It could be a one-, three- or six-minute snippet of a series itself, or it could be an exclusive piece of digital content that has been created specifically as a call to action for a series.”

INSIGHTFUL IDEAS Insight TV offers different perspectives on mainstream sports, such as football players visiting inmates in their hometowns

We then offer this short-form content to the athletes and ask them to share it on their social media channels. The exclusive digital content we create – videos with graphics for example – goes down really well and we often get athletes coming back to us demanding for more,” he laughs. “And actually, we always create more for them, because we think it’s important. A brand can’t exist in this digital era without a presence on social media.” DIGITAL LINEAR While Insight TV’s big attraction is its 4K content, Maljaars stresses that the

resolution is irrelevant if the content itself isn’t good. “We know our audiences watch Insight TV on a multitude of devices and platforms. So, for instance, if someone was watching it on their mobile or on Amazon Prime Video Channels, they wouldn’t get to experience 4K quality. It’s important to us that the story comes first. The 4K HDR element is just another facet that makes us unique,” he says. Insight TV is also developing its digital strategy by branching out into digital linear TV, which is essentially just like ‘normal telly’, but on digital platforms. Programming is presented in a linear fashion, one programme after the other, and you can choose to enter the stream whenever you want, but you don’t get to choose what’s on the channel. “We’ve partnered with TV manufacturers LG and Samsung to deliver our content via digital linear TV and it’s working really well for us, particularly in the US and especially with the younger audience – our target demographic,” Maljaars enthuses. “We worked out that our target audience were still buying TV sets, they just weren’t buying cable or satellite. Instead, they’re using their TV sets to connect to the internet and watch content online. Now, the first thing they see after connecting to the internet is the Insight TV content Samsung and LG bought from us and put onto their platform. They have also extended all our channels to HD.“ He adds: “And you know what? It’s performing great – well, at least for a niche broadcaster like us.”

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