EventReview

Cannes, France
January 23, 2002

[itvt] Issue 4.25 2/17/02

By Maurice Jacobsen for [itvt]

MILIA 2002: Cross-Platform Integration

MILIA bills itself as "The World's Interactive Content Marketplace." The 5-day event takes place at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, the same venue as the Cannes Film Festival. The Palais is a huge labyrinth of odd-sized spaces, auditoriums and exhibit halls, yet there is a unique intimacy to the whole affair which the conference organizers go to great lengths to encourage.

This year, attendees seemed to fall into one of 4 categories: developers and distributors of computer and console games, Internet/broadband content developers and service providers, people from the ITV industry (particularly developers of middleware and applications), and people from the mobile and wireless communications industries.

A 2-day program of sessions and panels, called "The Think Tank Summit," kicked off the conference. This program was divided into 3 themes: Wireless Media, Interactive TV/Broadband, and Interactive Entertainment (i.e. console and online games and applications).

The central focus of many of the panels and round-tables was cross-platform integration-the seamless meshing of content, enabling technologies and network distribution. The following are a few highlights from the event's nearly 30 sessions:

In a panel entitled "The Battle for the Living Room," Alain Staron, general director of French satellite broadcaster TPS, and Jasper Smith, CEO of OpenTV subsidiary, Static 2358, argued that interactive games will be critical to bringing about cross-platform integration. The fact that most ITV games use a phone backchannel has worked to their advantage, allowing them to generate revenues easily through phone charges (the billing infrastructure is already in place and users are accustomed to paying for phone calls). So successful has the model proven, according to Smith, that Static 2358 "will be looking to games creators to come up with 100 different products over the next year."

The theme of cross-platform fertilization was also stressed by Emily Nagle Green, managing director of Forrester Research, in a keynote address on the first day of the conference. She proposed that brands should "create multi-device strategies, using all existing distribution media-from ITV broadcast to mobile wireless." She backed up her argument by pointing to recent research that shows that "average consumers are using more media, but their usage is spread out over various communications media, the Internet, DVD, console games, etc."

"Managing Content for Multiple Platforms," a panel on the second day of the conference, tempered some of the optimism about cross-platform integration with a discussion of some practical realities. Charlotte Tookey, a consultant with TPTech in the UK, pointed out that "the content must be suitable for the appropriate delivery platform," while Eric Hegman, chief creative officer of Gruner & Jahr, AG felt that, because of the "limitations of the technologies, it is almost impossible today to use the same content on different platforms." However, he added that this will change as technology improves.

"Enhanced Programming for Digital ITV Channels" was a panel session especially relevant to ITV content producers. Charlotte Reece, development manager for ITV at Channel 4, together with her colleague Andrew Grumbridge, managing editor for interactive, outlined the primary criteria they use when analyzing programming for commissioning:

1. Does it promote the cutting-edge values of Channel 4?
2. Does the technology work for the viewer, enhancing the viewing experience?
3. Does the television program work on its own, without interactivity?
4. Is there a revenue stream?