The big publishing houses are doing it, regional publishers are doing it - and now specialist publishers in the B2B sector are also using their own TV studio and video production. WEKA Industrie Medien already started in the Corona era with a TV studio and specialist video news.
Kress reports on how the WEKA TV Video Studio is steadily gaining relevance with its own news programmes - cross-media, live and via streaming.
Antje Plaikner, freelance journalist and media scientist in Innsbruck, interviewed Beatrice Schmidt, Managing Director of WEKA Industrie Medien, on behalf of Kress Magazine. You can find the complete interview at kress.de
WEKA Industrie Medien in Vienna is a subsidiary of the German Weka Group. The group focuses on specialist information and training, has 19 subsidiaries, employs a total of around 1,500 people and says it achieves an annual turnover of around 210 million euros. WEKA Industrie Medien in Austria publish twelve media, employ 65 people and achieved an annual turnover of more than 8 million euros in 2022.
Beatrice Schmidt, Managing Director of WEKA Industrie Medien GmbH
Beatrice Schmidt has been managing the business since 2021:
Our company is based on four pillars. These are print, online, event business and services. Services include agency, corporate publishing and TV/streaming. We still make the strongest turnover in the print sector, which accounts for 55 percent of total revenues. Here we have been growing slightly again since Corona. The remaining 45 per cent is evenly distributed among the three other revenue areas.
During the pandemic period, the newly launched event streaming already earned around one million euros per year, according to the company, but the end of the Corona period brought a complete slump to the business because the real events started again.
But the entry into moving images remained. In the current year, Schmidt is aiming for a turnover of about 350,000 euros. The managing director also sees growth opportunities in the video and event sector in the future:
We want to reach the turnover of 1.6 million euros again in the event business by 2025. That is the turnover of the pre-Corona period in 2019. And we want to further develop the streaming and TV business. The TV studio is my own 'baby'. We started it shortly after the outbreak of the pandemic and it has given us three nice years of turnover, says Beatrice Schmidt.
However, she describes the start as less rosy. In the Corona era, she was still in charge of the events division of Industrie Medien, which immediately collapsed at the onset of the pandemic. Instead, the development of virtual meetings, events and functions began. The staff received further training, including programming. According to Schmidt, in order to raise these virtual events to a permanently professional level, a green screen, for example, was necessary, and the step towards their own TV studio was therefore obvious.
Also because 50 per cent of the investment costs for the studio, which cost around 180,000 euros, were funded by the Austrian government's "Digital Transformation" programme during the Corona period. Studio planning began in spring 2020, studio construction took place in the summer, and the first event broadcast went over the air on 20 August 2020. The "Industry Magazine News" launched in January 2022: a 30-minute format that works live and on demand.
In the studio, Weka Industrie Medien relies on its own production, such as the news or videos on certain occasions, but also on external commissions. In the case of in-house formats, the news is transferred to other brands; in the case of third-party orders, promotional videos are produced, which can then - if required by the customer - also be played via the company's own channels.
The pilot project
The "Industry Magazine News" are broadcast live every Wednesday at 11.30 am. Before the start of the broadcast, an IM newsletter reminds you of the start of the broadcast. The news informs about the Austrian industry: in a moderated news format. In addition to the news, the 30-minute format includes a studio talk, other contributions and once a month an economic compass explaining the current economic situation.
The editorial team of the magazine also takes over the moderation of the programme and provides the content. This includes, for example, annual reports from companies, innovations in the product or production area or problems in the industries. According to Schmidt, the necessary expertise requires that print and online journalists also implement the TV news:
We make sure that we get as specific as possible and present our expertise. And this expertise can only be provided by the respective editorial team.
And as a small specialist media house, multimedia is the order of the day anyway:
Everyone has to be able to do everything, because we are simply too small a media house. That's why we constantly train the editorial teams.
For the studio itself, there are editors, sound and studio specialists in the house - four people in total.
Function and range
The "IM News" are played out via three channels: via their own website and Linkedin via livestreaming and subsequently on Youtube. The video is then shared and filleted. At industrymagazine.at, Instagram and Linkedin, short posts will be dished out.
For a few months now, the programme has also been broadcast weekly on Friday evenings on the Lower Austrian regional broadcaster NÖN-N1-TV is repeated several times and is accessible via the NÖN-Mediathek retrievable. The regional broadcaster pushes the reach of the "Industry Magazine TV News" additionally via its online presence. According to Austrian web analysis, NÖN.at has around one million unique users per month. The TV station achieves a linear technical reach of around 400,000 households.
Marketing
The video formats generate revenues through various marketing opportunities such as Preroll, instream and logo placement, but also content cooperation. The "expert talk" as part of the news also makes a decisive financial contribution to the format. Such a TV appearance costs "Industry Magazine TV News" according to the media data 2,500 euros.
The "Economic Compass" introduced this spring is also such an embedded advertorial, which appears in cooperation with a consultancy firm. In addition to its own news format and integrated forms of advertising, Industrie Medien offers commissioned videos as a service: Schmidt:
Our 'Top Seller is the advertising format ,Product in picture'. That's not surprising, because B2B products in need of explanation are brought to the point here.
Many industrial products are too special and are only accessible to potential customers through a clear product presentation and explanation as a video. According to the media data, the format costs 2,900 euros per broadcast, additional playout channels via various websites or newsletters and integration in online articles cost extra.
Actually, Weka Industrie Medien also wanted to rent out the studio. However, the demand is only small. "Besides, we are fully occupied three out of five days a week," says managing director Beatrice Schmidt.
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