Viewers can watch all sorts of programs from Burnaby company

BY MICHAEL MCQUILLAN
NewsLeader  ( BUSINESS & MONEY )

Critics often complain the concentration of ownership of the news and entertainment media leads to homogenization, meaning newspapers, televisions and radio stations owned by the same company provide the same information.

One Burnaby Internet company is playing a role at whittling away at that homogenization.  INSINC (www.insinc.com) provides Internet broadcasting of events that traditional television stations can’t touch.  For example, while TV provides countless hours to National Hockey League games, Insinc broadcasts Ontario Hockey League, Western Hockey League and B.C. Junior Hockey League games.

They also provide netcasting for the B.C. Legislature, the Vancouver School Board and will soon be broadcasting Burnaby council meetings.  The company also works with Report on Business TV, broadcasts quarterly earnings reports and shareholders meetings for various companies.  They broadcast horse races from around the world and are involved with education symposiums.

Some of the broadcasts are subscription services, like junior hockey, others reach members only while are others are free and open to all.

Currently the company is providing games for the Royal Bank Cup, which the Burnaby Express is playing in.  Earlier this spring, INSINC worked with the Canadian Soccer Association and broadcast the Canada versus Austria men’s soccer game.

The idea behind the technology is pretty simple.  A television signal is fed through a digital encoder and then to Insinc.  They then send it out on the World Wide Web or to content subscribers.

The audiences can be as small as 300, said INSINC president and CEO Hugh Dobbie, or much larger.

“In the million-channel universe, if you’re trying to attract left-handed fly fishermen, there might be enough people out there to sustain a channel,” said Dobbie.

The first time they tried the idea was with the University of B.C. Thunderbirds baseball team.  The team’s management knew it had a die-hard fan base and felt those fans would pay to watch the games.  They were right.

“That caught us by surprise because the Internet is suppose to be this free medium,” said Dobbie.

“ We’ve gone from 0 to 200 channels but there’s a whole world out there from channel 201 to a million that couldn’t go in a traditional media domain because the costs prohibit it,” he said.  “We don’t have to spray out to 100,000 people, our clients can go to the 2 or 3 or 400 people who really want to watch it.”

Not all people are content to watch nothing but the NHL, the evening news or the sports highlights.  Many people get very involved in other activities that draw a smaller audience, said Dobbie.  INSINC is able to feed their interest.

“They pay $4 a day for a coffee or $15 for the newspaper they look two or three times a week.  To get them $5 to $10 a month so they can watch, they’re all over it.  It’s just giving a little bit of an alternative access,” he said.