Case Study: Bringing the Mountain to Online Viewers

The growing popularity of VOD is not unique to Shadow Mountain, says Mountanos; it’s something he sees across his client base. And this high demand for on-demand Christian content translates to longer-than-usual viewing time. The average viewing time for Christian material (both on-demand and live) is higher than ordinary Internet fare because the audience is self-motivated. "The audience wants to learn," says Mountanos. "These messages are messages they want to hear." Consequently, while the average viewing time for general content streams over the Internet is usually 4-5 minutes, viewing time for religious content is 15-20 minutes, Mountanos estimates. Viewing time for live events is also considerably higher than the general-content Internet norm, clocking in at about 40-45 minutes, he says.

Nine Systems offers its clients various ways to monetize their content. However, this is a delicate subject for many ministries. "There's a Catch-22 with many ministries," says Nine Systems' Alan Haefs. "They want to get their message out, but they don't want to charge." They are torn between the desire to make enough money to recoup their expenditures for video production and streaming, but they don't want to alienate their audience by seeming too pushy and commercial. "Their primary goal is to build relationships, so they have to be careful," says Haefs.

Most ministries are experimenting with both subscription and donation-based models, says Haefs. Also, some ministries are offering their content for free at low bitrates while charging money for the same content at a higher bitrate. The low-bitrate streams whet consumers’ appetites, but if they want premium quality, they have to pay a premium.

Nine Systems also offers DRM, but Mountanos says that most ministries find they don’t want or need it. The conditional access methodologies that Nine Systems supplies its clients seem to suffice. "Many ministries feel that the added complexity associated with DRM is not worth the tradeoffs," says Mountanos.

But no matter how popular streaming is becoming in this market, don't expect American ministries to cancel their cable shows anytime soon. "They're not going to stop using traditional broadcasting, such as cable," says Mountanos. "For them Web streaming is complementary. It is just an additional outlet."

That's certainly the case at Shadow Mountain Ministries, where TV and radio broadcasting is handled by a separate division, though this division does help Jerry Harder with his Sunday Webcasts by sending over to the church a production crew (including six camera operators). In a backroom at the church, there is a control center with rackmounted video production and streaming gear, says Harder. The digital video is "fed right into the server" says Harder. From there it goes to the Nine Systems, which handles everything from that point on.

Shadow Mountain uses Windows Media exclusively. In the past they used Real Networks but found the system to be "problematic and temperamental," according to Harder. Nevertheless, the ministry has future plans to revisit the use of Real. "We want to get the widest possible audience," Harder says.

Right now the streaming operation at Shadow Mountain Ministries is rather limited, says Harder, and for that reason, the use of Nine Systems is a good fit. He was particularly attracted by Nine Systems' pay-as-you-go, consumption-based fees. "We didn't want to have to worry about bandwidth. We didn't want to have to predict bandwidth," says Harder. "We didn't want to gear up for full-time streaming, and we didn't want to have to pay for ’round-the-clock bandwidth. We didn't want to have to pay for bandwidth we didn't use."

Both Mountanos and Haefs see a bright future for streaming in the ministries market. "Streaming can play a huge part in getting the Word out, and that is something that they are very compelled to do," says Haefs. "And it is a very inexpensive way for them to get the Word out."