Turner Broadcasting's Casey Harwood on the digital future: from CNN to Nuts TV
Turner's European digital media boss told the Broadcasting Press Guild that he was looking at taking Nuts TV onto the continent.
November 27, 2007 8:00 AM
When it comes to mustering a strategy for a massive multi-media business then few can top the task of Casey Harwood, senior vice president of digital media at Time Warner-owned Turner Broadcasting Europe.
Harwood's role - or at least the breadth of discussion at a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch grilling yesterday - touches on everything from aspirations to launch a CNN documentary and lifestyle channel on-demand, the Nuts TV experiment to its recent YouTube and Bebo deals.
The importance of Nuts TV
Because of Turner's powerhouse business operation in the US the company, says Harwood, takes a bit of an attitude of "risk in the regions" where it can "afford to take a few bets".
An example is Nuts TV, the Freeview channel based on the lads magazine brand owned by sister company IPC.
"It moved us out of our comfort zone," he explains, referring to the four hours of live studio-audience based content the show provides, as well as access to participation TV, gambling and ad-funded programming the venture dips its toe into.
"If we were to replicate it 40 times around Europe it would be a big business," he says in an off-the-cuff manner, noting later that there isn't necessarily a "single solution" for all markets.
When the show moves to the BSkyB and Virgin platforms Nuts TV will be bolstered to 12 hours and will start to feature long-form programming ("even four hours of live TV is an awful lot").
And the "dual viewing experience" philosophy means that there is no desire just to replicate Nuts magazine on-air. "We are not wedded to Nuts forever, there could be breakout strands," he explains.

This article is saying how Casey Harwood wants to distribute Nuts TV across Europe. I think this should not happen. if it does, they are making all these porny things everywhere, even though they already are in Europe, however, they are contributing to the increase of it. and when people know it has come from England, they might think of England differently.