David Bloom:
Hi, I am David Bloom with Next TMT here at the StreamTV Show's live studios with Jason Harvey, general manager of BET Plus, the streaming service of BET, the 45-year-old cable channel that's been super serving black audiences for a very long time.
Jason Harvey:
That's right.
David Bloom:
And actually, in fact, you guys are one of the older streaming services. You predate both Disney Plus and Apple TV Plus and never mind all the folks that came afterward. So you've been around for a while. Let's start with the role that BET Plus has within the BET universe, which includes the just concluded BET Awards and the BET experience, the channel itself. Where does the streaming service fit with all of that?
Jason Harvey:
Well, it's just another opportunity for us to, as you mentioned, super serve our audience. We have tent pole events that we provide. We have our cable net, which offers a multitude of content, both library of content as well as new content. And then BET Plus slots in right at that intersection of kind of technology and entertainment, allowing folks that are actually cutting the cord to have an opportunity to view new and original content.
David Bloom:
I mean I'm thinking a smaller focus channel like you might be slightly vulnerable as these cable packages shrink, so having that direct to consumer option is even more important for a smaller channel that might be vulnerable otherwise, right?
Jason Harvey:
That's right. I mean, we were noticing that our black audience overindexed in cord cutting, we said this is an opportunity for BET Plus.
David Bloom:
They overindexed in entertainment consumption but also in cord cutting.
Jason Harvey:
That's right.
David Bloom:
So they're very progressive about finding the next value.
Jason Harvey:
That's right. And so it was a perfect opportunity for us to partner with a Tyler Perry who has obviously a wealth of not only his own library, but he continually puts out hit after hit, whether it's on our platform or other platforms. So we partnered with him to build this business, which has been going on now for almost six years, as you mentioned. And it's a difficult industry to be in. We've seen players come and go within the streaming service industries.
David Bloom:
I think we've had three years of streaming in the last six years, and then we're fully into a new one. And it's an interesting time for direct to consumer operations that you might actually be in better position than say a second level general streaming service. What do you think about that?
Jason Harvey:
Yeah, I mean I think there's pros and cons, right? So we are small, we're all specialty. We super service specific audience that loves black storytelling, and our whole audience is not black. We have audience actually that are non-black that really come to BET Plus to be entertained and to engage with our stories. But it's kind of a double-edged sword because we're also small, we don't have the deep content budgets, we don't have the deep marketing budgets, and therefore we have to be hyper-efficient with the money that we do have to support our platform.
David Bloom:
Well, that brings me to the next topic, which is what you're going to be talking about here at the StreamTV Show. You're giving I think, a keynote about how you all use AI. So talk about how a smaller service, a focused service can really leverage and be bigger than you are with AI.
Jason Harvey:
That's right. I mean it's fundamental for a service like ourselves that don't have the same level of resources as a-
David Bloom:
Disney Plus.
Jason Harvey:
A Disney Plus, for instance, to really hone in on how do we become hyper-efficient. And that's efficient at not only acquiring content, but also acquiring subscribers, retaining subscribers. So we leverage AI not to produce a bunch of content. We leverage AI to make specific decisions around what is the optimal marketing spend that we can leverage across multiple channels to reduce our CPAs and give us our highest return on [inaudible 00:04:11].
David Bloom:
Now, you mentioned to me before we got on camera that you all use AI to watch behaviors that are emblematic of future cord cutters of your service.
Jason Harvey:
That's right.
David Bloom:
So you can step up your engagement with them to try to keep them around. How does that work?
Jason Harvey:
So we have something called the NARCS model, which basically allows us to take a bunch of different inputs around watch time, around frequency of watch, around whether they added something to their watch list or not, and pull all of that together to identify the likelihood of somebody to churn. So it's our predictive churn model. And each one of our cohorts of subscribers get a score, they get a retention score, and that score could be a high score, meaning that-
David Bloom:
They're not going anywhere.
Jason Harvey:
They're not going anywhere to a lower score. And then we leverage the data that we get, we push it into our CRM. And for those lower scores, they may get targeted personalized emails and communication that ideally prevents them from churning. And for the higher score, we just give them additional content like a coming soon or so it's very tailored, personalized communications that allow us to improve our retention scores.
David Bloom:
Great. Well, in our efforts to retain an audience, we probably should wrap this up right now. I'm David Bloom with Next TMT here with Jason Harvey, general manager of BET Plus. Thanks so much, Jason.
Jason Harvey:
Thank you, David. I appreciate it.