Beyond the limits of a television channel
INTRODUCTION
I conducted this study while I was Research Director at Paramount (Iberia) for the Comedy Central channel, in 2018, in collaboration with The Cocktail Analysis.
At the time, it was an innovative research of which I am very proud, both for the courage of its much broader study framework, which transcended the boundaries of a TV channel and was looking for inspiration, projecting into the future new possible business models and, also for its methodology, inspired by Design Research, combining different approaches and introducing the collaborative way of working, applying Desk Research, Qualitative, Ideation Worshop and Quantitative.
CHALLENGE
To gain in-depth knowledge of the consumption of the comedy/comedy genre in order to detect trends and business opportunities, expanding the boundaries of television, in this case Paramount's Comedy Central Pay TV channel.
In a context where the channel's audiences were not growing and competition was increasing, changing the focus of the research was a clear necessity.
RESEARCH
The research design followed a quadruple approach:
Internal data analysis (Audiences)
Qualitative approach (Focus Groups)
Worshop (Co-creation)
Quantitative approach (Questionnaire)
Listening to +40 people with diverse profiles, we learned that comedy plays an essential role in everyone's daily life, even having a therapeutic role, and that above all, it is part of the Spanish culture and lifestyle. The joke, well, it's very typical of spanish people.
And therefore, there is a huge demand for comedy content, for all tastes, and for all times.
The limits of humor are wide and the diversity of tones opened the possibility of a great variaty of "types of comedy", beyond the mainstream or familiar.
In addition, the proloferation of platforms also meant and forced to rethink the formats and their distribution in the face of a complementary and 360º vision.
The future around comedy was going through a change of approach: from a linear TV channel adapted to the different platforms to an entertainment player with content adapted to every need.
After a co-creation session between the channel's team and the consulting team, many ideas emerged and a winner: the "My Comedy Central platform".
Through an online survey to a representative sample of the Spanish population between 16-44 years old, of 1000 people, we wanted to measure the trends observed, segment users and understand the "journey" of comedy without missing anything
The way comedy is consumed depends on the moment and the user profile.
Depending on the function it fulfills at any given moment (to entertain, to accompany, to evade...) some devices, formats and specific contents will be more relevant for each identified user typology: "Acid" (the politically incorrect), "Naif" (who prefers a simple, white humor) and "Mainstream" (the common places).
"MY COMEDY CENTRAL"
The tested idea passed the first test. 56% of the sample declared themselves "interested or very interested", but, the "My Comedy Central" platform should ensure:
Broad Catalogue of content: widen the boundaries of humor, not only the mainstraim and whitest humor to also offer niche content
Flexibility to watch it whenever and wherever
Easy to find content (UX)
Multi-device
Possibility of sharing.
And this was the end of a study that opened many paths for us and confirmed the enormous potential of a genre that could go beyond the television screen.
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