aircraftinteriorsinternational.com
MARCH 2020 107
F or years, airlines have looked to either content
service providers (CSPs) or to internal IFE
departments to select and licence movies for IFE
using little other than their own judgment. In years now
long past, being an IFE movie buyer for an airline had
some very cool perks. Representatives of airline IFE
departments would fly into Hollywood every couple of
months to screen 35mm film prints of upcoming movies
in private Hollywood screening rooms. A few such buyers
requested to be driven in limos to and from the screening
rooms, and one or two may have been known to request
champagne to quench the thirst that accompanies
such private screenings. At the very least, a nice lunch
or dinner was surely involved, and buyers had their
favourite restaurants.
Such screening junkets disappeared into
ephemera as screenings were able to be
accommodated via videotape and DVDs,
and the process eventually migrated to
online screenings. Over time the use
of CSPs for content selection has
limited the direct engagement
between airline IFE managers
and the Hollywood studios.
The process has more recently
been that content providers – the
major motion picture studios and
independents – announce which
movies are available for a particular
exhibition month around 90 days
ahead of the exhibition date. For
example, in January 2020 (or possibly
even earlier) content providers announced
to airlines and CSPs which movies and
television programmes were to be available
for exhibition in April 2020.
These availability announcements include information
as to the availability of collaterals – such as alternate
languages, subtitles, closed captions, audio descriptions
and airline-edited versions – that may be required by the
ABOVE LEFT: THE TOUCH ANALYTICS
SOLUTION IS AN AUTOMATED WEB
AND APP-BASED DATA ANALYTICS
TOOL THAT IS IFES AGNOSTIC AND
EVALUATES ENGAGEMENT QUALITY
BY MEASURING ACTUAL CONTENT
PLAYTIME AND BOUNCE-RATE
BELOW RIGHT: KEVIN BIRCHMORE,
VP OF TECHNICAL SALES AT SPAFAX
airlines to serve the needs of their passengers, as well as
providing access to the online screening of the movies
and other content.
Airlines and/or CSPs make licencing decisions
based on such factors as anticipated box office success
(although choices must generally be made before the
actual theatrical success or failure is clear) and on other
information, such as surveys, that the airline may have.
Sequels to ‘franchise’ pictures that were successful are
generally easy choices, and, more in the past than in
the present, certain stars paired with certain movie
genres – like Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock paired
with romantic comedies – were good bets.
Once the licencing decision is made, the airline or
CSP orders the delivery materials and digital files that are
Understanding
passenger navigation
“Our latest addition to Spafax IQ coming this year
is understanding passenger navigation – providing
additional metrics to see which categories passengers
flow between. This will help target and improve GUI
to drive better content discovery. It will help answer
questions like how many passengers visited
a movie category but didn’t watch a movie, then
visited a TV category and watched a TV episode.”
Kevin Birchmore, global VP
of technical sales, Spafax
IFE C ONTENT D ELI V ERY
“CSPs have limited
engagement between
airlines and Hollywood”
/aircraftinteriorsinternational.com