EventReview

New York City, NY
[itvt] Issue 4.07 11/26/01

By Liam O'Malley for [itvt]

On Thursday, November 15th, New York's Center for Communication, in conjunction with Filter Media, a strategic consulting agency for the ITV industry, held a panel discussion titled "Video-on-Demand and ITV in the Real World" at the Time Life building in midtown Manhattan. The Center for Communications is a non-profit media forum dedicated to getting students together with leaders of the media industry.

Rebecca Weinberg, program director of the Center, mentioned in her introduction that she was impressed with an ITV forum Filter had sponsored at Columbia University, and that this was the impetus for this evening's panel, attended by about 125 students and other interested parties.

The Keynote speech was delivered by Dr. William F. Baker, president and CEO of PBS station, Channel 13, in New York. Dr. Baker stated that while he was no expert on the subject of ITV, he could see the potential of the technology, and he commented on research projections that estimate that ITV could be a $40 billion industry by 2005. As evidence that the industry seems to be experiencing a "second wind," he mentioned the recent AT&T/TiVo deal, the Microsoft/Charter deal, and the Sony/TiVo deal. While he felt there would be some bumps in the road (particularly in the regulatory arena), he asserted that the "genie was out of the bottle" and services such as EPGs, PVR, VOD, chat and games would be rapidly exploited as they are deployed.

Noting that public television has always been dedicated to communicating with its audience, Dr. Baker was enthusiastic about the potential of ITV to accelerate the move from passive viewing to active participation - saying that technology has finally caught up to public television's mission. Projects in the works include an enhanced version of "Great Performances" (PBS' principle performance series) that would allow viewers to access scripts of plays and music scores during performances, switch camera angles, and access pop-up screens of additional information. Noting that ITV and education go together "like bread and jam," Dr. Baker announced a new math and logic educational series for children 8-11 -- "Cyber Chase" which will be enhanced to reinforce the educational content by allowing children to solve problems, take polls, and collect clues. Finally Dr. Baker mentioned the "Life 360" series and how its 13 enhanced episodes have been developed with Mixed Signals with an emphasis on building local communities. Dr. Baker concluded by stating he was "glad not be around to answer questions" (he noted earlier that his speech relied heavily on information from his ITV geniuses at Channel 13), which got a great laugh from the audience.

The first panel discussion was entitled "ITV 101" and was moderated by Vladimir Edelman, senior partner of Filter Media. Alexander Stevens, director of Cablevision's iO Interactive, gave a complete and pleasingly concise overview of what ITV is today, briefly explaining EPGs (in his view one of the first "killer apps"), VOD (a "killer app" for operators), Virtual Channels, E-Mail, and Enhanced Broadcast. Mr. Stevens' presentation included screenshots from Cablevision's recently launched iO service, as well as examples from "competitors" such as WorldGate and Microsoft, prompting surprise from fellow panel member Todd Kriege of Microsoft. Mr. Stevens explained what ITV meant to operators: it will keep existing customers, increase revenue from those customers, and attract new customers.

The next presentation was by Todd Krieger, senior manager, business development of the Microsoft Platforms Content Marketing Group. Mr. Krieger emphasized Microsoft's mission to "Make the TV more useful, fun and engaging" through the development of more and more powerful set-top boxes. His presentation on what ITV is divided it into four groups: Enhanced TV, Personal TV, Internet on TV, and Connected TV. He noted that Internet on TV seems to be a "teetering" category and that "walled garden" content specifically designed for the TV would be a more successful use of Internet connectivity (as opposed to general surfing the Web). On a nice note to the students in the audience, Mr. Krieger asserted that "you will have time to be veterans by the time this reaches critical mass."

Mitchell Oscar, senior vice president/director of Media Futures at McCann-Erickson easily gave the most entertaining presentation, entitled "ITV: A Cartoon Odyssey," which consisted mainly of New Yorker cartoons, most with new captions. (Best one: Owner to cat sitting next to litter pan: "Never, ever, think outside the box.") Mr. Oscar humorously touched on such subjects as box clutter ( a diagram of a living room with 15 or so set-tops), how PVRs have been marketed ineffectively, the dreaded scrolling program guide, and what the ITV business is really all about: "Greed."

The ensuing discussion was led by Mr. Edelman, who began by noting that we are now seeing more ITV product and actual rollout, and asked the panel if they could explain why. Mr. Oscar happily answered "greed" once again, noting that when cable operators began losing customers to DBS, and in particular lost complete control of the pay-per-view business which they had previously "owned," they realized that they must find ways of generating more revenue from customers, and ITV offers just that. Mr. Stevens' main point was that the cost of rolling out these services was no longer prohibitive but also mentioned that "stand-alone" ITV devices (such as WebTV or AOLTV) asked too much of the consumer (box clutter, monthly cost, etc.) while a service like Cablevision's iO is now simply part of a digital package - the consumer gets it without choosing it. Mr. Krieger reemphasized Mr. Mitchell's point, saying operators needed to find new sources of revenue to keep Wall Street happy. After a short break the second panel convened. It was entitled "Video-on-Demand and Digital Cable Services," and was moderated by Frank Barbieri, partner, business analysis at Filter Media.

Tim Hanlon, vice president/director, emerging contacts for Starcom MediaVest Group, gave a presentation focusing on how agencies and advertisers view ITV. He began by noting that he is dropping the use of "ITV" altogether, feeling it carries too much baggage, leads to a lot of misconceptions, and is hard to define for clients. Rather, he prefers to look at it as "the evolution of TV" or as he calls it, "TV 2.0." Mr. Hanlon touched upon various ITV services, including EPGs, PVRs, VOD and Virtual Channels, but was most intriguing when discussing the issue of "addressability" to the set-top, particularly for advertisers. He mentioned, for example, the rotating, inserted ads shown behind the batter's box during Fox's telecast of the World Series, and conjectured that technology may soon allow for different ads or messages to be delivered at the household level, presumably based upon profiling data about that household. Mr. Hanlon was also enthusiastic about the EPG being an overall killer app for ITV, eventually serving as the gateway to PVR and VOD services. As far as what services are resonating with consumers now, he mentioned VOD, saying "people get this" and that once consumers see and use VOD and PVR, they don't go back. His message to advertisers is "Are you in or are you out?"-- the future is here.

Sharleen Smith, vice president of convergence, Oxygen Media, described how Oxygen had first been conceived of as a converged network and how founder Geraldine Laybourne had been committed to engaging its audience in a dialogue. Ms. Smith noted how in the early days of the Internet everything seemed possible - even though there was a lot less bandwidth back then and no one had figured out how to make money yet. She felt that for ITV to succeed, it must hark back to that atmosphere of innovation. Ms. Smith next demonstrated a prototype of Oxygen's Interactive Stripe, an enhancement that allows viewers to save information during a program. The enhancement was developed in "overlay mode" so that the linear video remains the focus of the viewer's attention and prompts to save information are unobtrusive. It was also developed to be used solely with a remote control; no keyboard needed. Ms. Smith concluded by emphasizing that when programmers are developing ITV applications, they must put themselves in the user's seat.

Alex Stevens joined the panel discussion that followed. Mr. Barbieri began with a question about broadband services such as MovieFly and Intertainer: if you look five years down the road, will entertainment be on the PC or the TV? The panel was unanimous in responding that both mediums do different things very well, and that was likely to remain the case - although there would undoubtedly be some crossover (Internet connectivity through TV, downloadable movies on the PC, etc.). Mr. Hanlon noted that introducing PC behavior to the TV (entering passwords, using a keyboard) would be more difficult for consumers to accept. When Mr. Barbieri asked Mr. Stevens if Cablevision was competing against itself (by offering broadband Internet access as well as television), Mr. Stevens replied that his customers have many needs, and Cablevision would like to able to provide solutions to all of them.

An audience member asked the most difficult question of the evening: what are the revenue models? Mr. Stevens believed tcommerce will be successful, noting the success the Discovery Channel had in selling videos after broadcast of programs -- he imagines a program-synchronous enhancement that allows buying with one click will be attractive. He also noted the recent launch of Music Choice's Wink enhancement that allows viewers to purchase CDs, and the potential of subscription gaming. And he noted: "Never write off gambling." Mr. Hanlon saw potential in VOD, SVOD, and perhaps in sponsored VOD, where a movie with an ad would be free or available for a much lower price than a commercial free movie. Mr. Barbieri asked how the revenues would be split up, and Ms. Smith answered by noting Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff's famous "Jennifer Aniston's Sweater" example, where revenue would potentially be split by the network, the operator, the talent, the producer, etc. Mr. Hanlon summed up by saying "there is money to be had out there." Mr. Stevens agreed, saying Cablevision was committed to providing these services, that they need content, programmers needed distribution, and how to split the revenues would eventually be worked out.

All in all an excellent overview for students by industry leaders who were, by and large, enthusiastic about the prospects of ITV. One hopes that more educational forums like this will be held to help spread the word as the industry continues to grow.

***



Copyright 1998 - 2004 [itvt] | Swedlow. All rights reserved