While broadcasters today are universally aware of the Internet's potential to help maximize the value of their existing brands, Toronto-based ChumCity International could sense something big might be brewing as far back as six years ago, when they formed ChumCity Interactive, the company's online content division.

According to Maria Hale, managing director of ChumCity Interactive, "We weren't too sure what the true power or direction of this Internet tool was going to be, but we thought we'd try it."

MuchMusic was the first of the broadcaster's stations to offer an Internet tie-in. But in the early days of the World Wide Web, this type of marketing device was, for the most part, a novelty.

"[The technique] way back when was just to throw up a wwwdot address, and people would go there out of curiosity," Hale says. "People are beyond that now. I'm a consumer, I'm an average person - tell me what I'm going to get if I go to your website. What is the value for me?"

Viewers/Web surfers can now visit individual online destinations relating to seven more of ChumCity's stations, including: www.citytv.com; www.bravo.ca; www.muchmoremusic.com; www.spacecast.com (for Space the Imagination Station); www.star-tv.com; www.clt.ca (Canadian Learning Television); and www.pulse24.com.

Each of the sites offers streaming video content with full sound, because, as Hale explains, "we're a broadcaster, and that's our true vein. We don't have a lot of existing material in print form, so the nature of our sites tends to be very visual, very video-based, and it lends itself more closely to a broadband experience."

The Citytv site offers information bytes relating to news, movies, and music - the station's three main areas of focus. While there is some text, such as the latest movie box office and video rental figures, visitors can also watch movie trailers or the latest Speakers' Corner clip, or they can select from a Speakers' Corner archive.

Interactive audience experience

Hale insists ChumCity didn't want to use the sites simply to advertise television product.

"It's less about promoting the specific shows," she says. "We wanted to avoid becoming a digital tv guide. It's about extending our brands online, to improve and enhance an audience experience."

Interactivity is behind the early success of the recently-launched pulse24.com site, which complements the all-news multi-screen CablePulse24 specialty service. The site features 120 traffic cameras set up throughout Toronto, as well as news reports that are accessible story-by-story, as opposed to having to sit through an entire newscast.

"It's not just streaming the channel [on pulse24.com]," Hale explains. "It's actually taking advantage of the Web in the way it's meant to be used. Provide [visitors] with information on demand, games, polls, a communication device to allow them to interact not only with us but with each other, and I think you've got a successful tool."