Select Yle experiences on audience participation in the beginning of the new millennia

1. Collaboration with the audiences - experiences from Yle
Tuija Aalto Yle Strategy 2016
Aalto / HY 29.1.2016

2. Topics covered today
1. Yle 2020 strategy, goals and actions
2. Exploit & explore - examples
3. Management challenges

3. Tax-funded since 2013
• Public service broadcasting company owned by
the Finnish people, funded by a special Yle tax
from January 2013.
• Yle's operations are governed by the Act on
Yleisradio Oy.
• About Yle

4. Yle Management 2016
● CEO Lauri Kivinen
● Unit directors Ismo Silvo, Ville Vilén,
Atte Jääskeläinen, Marit af
Björkesten, and Chief Operations
OfficerJanne Yli-Äyhö
● Director of HR Teijo Valtanen
● Director of Financial Affairs Maisa
Hyrkkänen
● Director of Strategy Gunilla Ohls
● Director of Legal Affairs Katri Olmo
● Director of Communications Reija
Hyvärinen

5. Yle Organization 2016

6. Yle Strategic aspirations 2016
● We reach all Finns.
● Yle is important on a personal level.
● Finns appreciate Yle.

7. Yle Strategy 2020 in english

8. Yle 2020
• We anticipate the drastic change of television.
• We will keep in the forefront of audio and video
publishing to always guarantee the best public
service.
• We expand Yle Areena and make it irreplaceable.

9. Objectives
• Eight essential development objectives for 2016–
2020: 2. We will renew television.
• We will make Yle Areena online service the most important
distribution channel of the new television, and we will make it an
easy-to-use and superior media service.

10. Objectives
• Eight essential development objectives for 2016–
2020: 7. We will find new ways to serve young
people.
• We will strengthen content offerings for teenagers and young
adults.
• We will develop ways that help young people to find the content
in a place where they use the media.
• We will create content together with young people.
• We will develop means to try new things boldly.

11. Concrete goals
• National News & Current Affairs as well as World
News and Current Affairs will increase the amount
of constructive journalism stories (Elina Ravantti &
Riikka Venäläinen)
• Creative Content will develop factual, culture &
entertainment and drama transmedia content and
increase its reach (Ilkka Lehtinen, Minna-Mari
Parkkinen & Jarmo Lampela)

12. Concrete goals
• Yle Media department will create and renew the
brands for the New TV in a dialogue with the
audiences (Risto Kuulasmaa)
• Yle Prophecy 2015 feed, blog

13. Yle's strategy 2020: Among Finns
• Yle promises to create space for different kinds of
ideas and shared experiences and to make Finland
an even better place to live in.

14. Why crowdsourcing
• Variety of views, voices
• The audience expects to be heard

15. The Act on Yle
1) The public service programming shall in particular:
support democracy and everyone’s opportunity to
participate by
providing a wide variety of information, opinions
and debates as well as opportunities to interact
Chapter 3 The duties of the company Section 7 (635/2005) Public service
https://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/1993/en19931380.pdf

16. Your experiences from media
1. Think of your favorite media brands. In which ways
do they invite you as a viewer/reader/listener to
participate?
2. Do you follow a media brand via social media?
Have you ever noticed a call to action for
participation via their account or elsewhere in
social media?
Collaborative notebook for students' experiences

17. An audience researcher’s observation
from focus groups: people can’t remember what
they’ve shared
The decision to share is quick, intuitive and emotional

18. Especially liked Especially shared
Creative content / Anna Lahelma
me myself, warm
heartedness,
cheering others,
good news,
everyday, celebrities,
peek into backstage
“A little smarter
me”; societal
issues, worries,
humour,
mischievousness,
facts, opinions,
visual material

19. Exploit & explore
Examples of audience engagement and participation

20. My friend, the horse

21. My friend, the horse
• A crossmedia brand under the Summeri brand
• Successful in its niche (reaches horse fan girls)
• Fan-created content: esp. Instagram

22. Uusi päivä (New Day)

23. New day
• Forerunner in Yle: extensive rights with actors
• Crossmedia experience
• Web resources 0,2 M€ vs. TV 5,3 M€
• Fan-created content: esp. Instagram

24. A2 evening

25. A2 evening
• Crowdsourced manuscripting gives new
perspectives, questions to ask the show guests
• Concrete solutions, peer support for those involved
• A better understanding of the topic for the team
• Stakeholder praise: A2-theme Developmental
disability had a positive impact on how
developmental disabilities are portrayed in the
public, said Inclusion Finland KVTL

26. A2 evening

27. Constructive process story (Upola)
● Open end
● Dialogue
● Solution-oriented approach
● Branding of the story entity

28. Constructive process story steps (Upola)
1. Preparation
2. Open dialogue
A provocative point of view
Case and point-of-view -crowdsourcing
3. Ideation: more precise plans.
4. Stories side by side: online, tv, radio
5. Conclusions, wrap-up, solutions
6. What next. Community lives on

29. Secrets

30. Secrets, Finlandssvenska hemlisar
• Inspired by a DR radio production
• Social storytelling formats travel, too
• Building the audiences

31. Social storytelling benefits (Lindh)
• Projects with strong focus in participation have
resulted in
• Bigger audience
• More visibility
• Younger audience
• More content for broadcast
• A greater sense of purpose and
meaningfulness

32. Social storytelling in a nutshell (Lindh)
• Find those who care and involve them
• Create continuous dialogue around niche content
• Clear call to action, feedback loop
• Be prepared to change direction
• Be transparent.

33. Audiences pick the issues
● Journalism by crowdsourcing, case De Monitor
○ Build it - A DR crossmedia project
○ Who to talk to for more: Tomas Lindh @Tomas_Lindh

34. Fix the nursing home care

35. Fix the nursing home care
• TV insert series followed the development project
• initiated by the Yle Current Affairs team
• an experiment in constructive journalism
• To have a positive impact on elderly care in Finland
• To incourage regular people to volunteer in
nursing homes and share the evidence
• The change for the positive was visible and lasting
• Stakeholder praise by The geriatrics’ association
and The Finnish Red cross

36. Marja Hintikka Live

37. Marja Hintikka Live
• Talk show about parenting
• Created an engaged community of families
• The experience talks, not experts
• Regular crowdsourcing produces experience material for
broadcast and online journalism.
• Online team: Three fulltime roles: web producer,
web editor, community manager
• Journalists produce web content
• Partnerships with the Family Federation of Finland and The
Finnish Association of Mental Health: material for web content

38. Kuningaskuluttaja

39. Kuningaskuluttaja
• Weekly TV show for consumer interests
• Early adopter of crowdsourcing at Yle
• Example: The recent “Cosmetics challenge”
resulted in 600 shared pictures #kosmetiikkahaaste
• Content for TV, online journalism

40. Fan-filmed documentary video

41. Fan-filmed documentary
• Filmed by fans, TV documentary and online story
series
• Made possible by a devoted fan group on
Facebook of 27 000 members
• Process was led by two professionals at Yle
Musiikki: Yle directors Kaisa Alenius and Harto
Hänninen gave weekly challenges to fans
• Practical advice & guidance along the way.

42. Fan-filmed documentary
• Same method is used in Fellow Imagineers - A
Film from Fans to Nightwish this spring
• Appr. 60 filmers around the world in 40+ countries
• Tasks on social media to even wider groups: selfie
at Wembley gig, tattoos
• Also animation and music to be crowdsourced
yle.fi/fellowimagineers

43. Yle Folk

44. Yle Folk
• Curated UGC video platfom granting money
directly to the creators
• Any Finn can apply for small funding (200-2000 euros) to
realize a dream
• Online-driven. Has also a TV window program Yle TV2
(TV2: Folk Raati, Q4 2015 9 programmes)
• In spring 2016 FOLK programming will be placed to fill the
gaps in TV2 programming. There’s also a weekend loop
running in TV2 nights.
• Seven curators will start their work in February
as FOLK ambassadors in social medias.

45. How we crowdsource
• Timespan of collaboration
• Motivation of collaborators
• Control over the end product

46. real time
Chatting in
Broadcast series
the shoutbox
Interaction online & social media
(send pics, videos)
Touchpoints
Timespan and activities

47. real time
Timespan and activities
● Live radio, tv
● online journalism
● daily, weekly topics

48. several weeks
Timespan and activities
● Process stories -
social storytelling
● Yle Folk funding
● Web service
development projects

49. Issue-based Fan-based
Citizen, consumer, part of community, self expression, utility...
Sources of motivation

50. Yle / professionals The creator
Journalism, editorial decisions
Control
● Yle Folk -funded
videos
● Apps developed
with Yle open
API’s

51. Have a portfolio of development projects
Exploit vs. explore

52. Business as usual
Exploit
● Clear goals
● Measurable
● Efficient use of
resources

53. Learning projects
Exploring
● What is possible?
● What is desirable?
● What does
success look like?

54. Management challenge
Issues on the social frontier

55. About social
Benefits
• Direct, open dialogue with
stakeholders
• Constant innovation by the
platforms
Costs
• Content, product
development & R&D cost
of adapting to platforms
• Keeping up with UX
standards
• Aggregating and
analyzing data from
various sources
• Managing complexity.

56. About social
Opportunities
• To reach younger
audiences
• To reach audiences often
• To collect customer insight
Threats
• Heavy competition of user
attention / time spent
• Brand experience gets
blurred?
• Dependency of platform
in relationship to users
• Dependency of platform
in publishing decisions
(nudity, breast feeding).

57. • In september 2015, Yle CEO Lauri Kivinen and
Strategy Director Gunilla Ohls heard from Yle staff
30 and below
Listening to the young Yle pros

58. Visuality
• Video and visual
content to the next level

59. Know your audiences
• The Yle content
creators should be from
the same world with the
target audiences

60. Channels
• The right channels for
reach and interaction
can be chosen by
knowing the target
group well

61. • The environment changes fast, how to be proactive
• Guidelines are created bottom up
• Social platforms as partners.
Management

62. Brand levels
● Company
● Channel (YleX, Yle Teema)
● Service (Yle Areena, News Watch)
● Program
● Personality
● Special interest: Case: a WhatsApp group for
certain kind of horses by Ystäväni Hevonen
There is no limit to how niche you could go

63. Simplicity
• Goal: We reach 75% daily and 95% weekly
• “Channel images” - survey (twice a year)
• Reach 2015: daily 72% weekly 93%

64. Complexity
● Managing five million user experiences.

65. Appendix
Other things of interest

66. Willingness to participate
• 27 % agreed that they "would like to participate
in journalists' work by commenting, discussing,
ideating stories or following the making of stories"
• up from 16% in 2013
Source: Participation surveys by 15/30 Research for Yle

67. Constructive journalism
• 64% agreed that “media should not only
inform, but also bring people together to solve
problems”
• 14 % disagreed
Source: Participation surveys by 15/30 Research for Yle

68. Importance of duties
• Importance: Yle brings people together to
help each other in crisis situations: 5,16
(out of 6 max)
• Performance: 4,45 (out of 6 max)
Source: Survey by Taloustutkimus for Yle:
Yle’s value to Finns 2015

69. Importance of duties
• Importance: Using Yle services you can
share your experiences with others: 3,89
(out of 6 max)
• Performance: 4,06 (out of 6 max)
Source: Survey by Taloustutkimus for Yle:
Yle’s value to Finns 2015