Blick TV launches in Switzerland powered by Brightcove

Blick TV Launches Switzerland’s First Digital TV Channel, Powered by Brightcove

BOSTON — Brightcove Inc. (NASDAQ: BCOV), the world’s leading video technology platform, today announced that Switzerland’s first 24/7 digital TV channel, Blick TV, is running on Brightcove Live™ and Video Cloud. The newly launched TV channel – which falls under media group Ringier – offers viewers both a live and video on-demand viewing experience online at Blick.ch, as well as in the Blick app for mobile devices (iOS and Android). Blick TV is a significant milestone for Ringier as the media group has invested significant resources into digital streaming including two news studios, as well as a core team of 48 reporters, editorial staff, and hosts to report on news stories daily. Blick TV brings its audiences live breaking national news stories, as well as capitalizes on its partnership with CNN to bring audiences international news stories.

As one of the largest media brands in Switzerland, reaching more than 1.5 million people daily, the Blick Group leveraged Brightcove’s video platform to adopt a mobile-first digital strategy that is capable of delivering a high-quality video experience, as well as allow its audiences to watch content on their device of choice. The launch of Blick TV highlights the importance for media companies to move towards a mobile-first, video-driven content strategy given the major shift in the way people prefer to consume content.

Using Brightcove, Blick TV live streams breaking news topics for its viewers, as well as easily creates segmented clips to store for seamless video on-demand viewing. There are also some notable features of Blick TV that highlight its competitive advantage, including:

• Video Subtitles: Styled and positioned in the video player, an interpreter repeats the content in standard German, which is then converted to text with an opportunity to edit. Enabling smartphone use on-the-go as well as barrier-free access, subtitles are a critical component of the viewing experience and make video accessible to all audiences.
• Portrait and Landscape Viewing: Optimized for mobile viewership, viewers are offered both portrait and landscape viewing, without the quality being compromised if it is recorded in one format and viewed in another. In portrait mode, only the central portion of the video is visible, and is the same stream resized, instead of a separate live stream. Additionally, the subtitles, Blick TV logo, and headlines are customized and positioned differently based on portrait and landscape.

“When we decided to launch Switzerland’s first digital TV station we knew how crucial a superior user experience would be,” said Thomas Spiegel, CEO, Blick Group. “With the ability to offer subtitles, as well as both portrait and landscape viewing, we are not only giving our users a premium experience, but giving ourselves a long-term competitive advantage. We attribute these breakthroughs to Brightcove’s feature-rich video platform. Since launching Blick TV, we’ve been able to increase video on-demand content, cater to all viewing preferences, and become the go-to 24/7 digital TV channel for audiences who want to view live and on-demand video content.”

“By choosing a scalable, reliable platform like Brightcove Live, Blick TV is able to achieve Ringier’s three key pillars of success: informing, entertaining, and connecting with its audiences,” said Justin Barrett, Vice President, EMEA, Brightcove. “We are thrilled that Ringier chose Brightcove to power Switzerland’s first ever digital news channel, and excited our video services are being expanded to more audiences globally.”