On Par plots blue-sky plan to revolutionise audience engagement

Welsh indie On Par Productions has won a £50,000 government grant to develop a project that will “revolutionise audience engagement with broadcasters”, the indie has revealed.

The purpose of the service is to potentially equip producers with a service to bring interactivity into pitching conversations and harness innovation to bring hard-to-reach audiences back to broadcasters.

Toby Cameron, founder and exec producer, told Broadcast On Par’s principal focus are younger viewers who consume content across an array of online platforms. He wants to leverage this habit to bring them back to the traditional broadcasters.

Cameron cited Netflix’s interactive series You vs Wild Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch and HBO’s Mosaic – which was broadcast as a TV murder mystery but had an associated mobile app allowing viewers to choose the different perspective from which to watch drama unfold – as examples of how interactivity can be built into traditional programming.

He said one way of hooking young viewers is meeting them on the social media platforms they frequent. For example, if making a TV true crime documentary, the service could offer digital content allowing viewers to watch on TikTok but from different perspectives such as a wrongly imprisoned person or the police investigation.

As part of the research phase, Cameron has been consulting with local Welsh games companies on how best to incorporate this interactivity into broadcast content.

“The hope is that we will also be able to work with and support other production companies when they’re developing ideas and advise them on how best to reach these audiences through different forms of interactivity,” he said.

“It’s a service and once we understand how to do it, we want to be able to share our knowledge with broadcasters and indies.”

The Cardiff-based indie secured the grant from Innovate UK, part of the government’s academic research funding body UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), to progress its Revolutionising Audience Retainment project, which aims to use the latest technological innovations to boost content engagement with hard-to-reach audiences for broadcasters and indies.

On Par makes digital and commercial content, as well as traditional broadcast programming such as coverage of the Green Man Festival for S4C and BBC Wales doc Jim Roberts: Legends of Welsh Sport and is in development on a four-part series for the latter channel.

Cameron said he wants On Par to straddle both worlds.

“We want to develop and create content for linear TV but that also works across different platforms,” he added.

“This goes beyond simply taking little clips and putting them on socials. We want to keep audiences engaged across the broadcaster’s platforms for longer, so we want to figure out how we can use the different platforms get the audiences onto the broadcasters’ platforms.”

While the project is in the early stages, Cameron and his team have already discovered that there is no one singular approach that works, and they are looking across a range of technological innovations, such as AI, augmented reality (AR) and VR to hone their solution.

Cameron is seeking discussions with other producers, commissioners, behavioural experts and tech innovators as part of the six-month research, before he and the On Par team report back to Innovate UK with their findings.

“Our plan is to have one really developed idea that will work for linear but then also discusses all the different types of content and ways that we can try and grab and reach these different audiences,” he said.

“I want this to be a core part of our business and what we do and to be a vital consideration in every single programme we’re developing.”