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EventReview
Milia 2003
Cannes, France
At the noisy, bustling, smoke-filled, multilingual, 3-day event, the future of interactive TV, broadband and mobile was debated in 3 different tracks. Delegates descended on the beautiful French Riviera from Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the US. However, not unexpectedly, MILIA's ITV focus remained Eurocentric.
Since the digital bubble burst, MILIA's once-massive attendance has dwindled somewhat. In response, last fall, MILIA organizers decided to reschedule the event, which originally took place every February, to run concurrently with the broadcast-buying bonanza, MIPTV. This, they hoped, would encourage the powerbrokers of traditional broadcast and interactive media to cross-pollinate under one roof.
On the bright side, not even the ongoing war could torpedo participants' desire to network, get down to business and strike deals. Like a good assiette de fromage, the sessions boasted a variety of offerings--some strong, some mild. The question on most participants' minds seemed to be that of how to monetize ITV.
Other than in the UK and parts of Europe, deployment of ITV programming has been fairly sparse. While households around the world may have spent $48 billion on digital TV last year, only 1% of that amount was spent on ITV. US panelists at MILIA were frequently put on the spot to explain to incredulous Europeans why the US's potentially massive ITV market is still in its infancy and will likely continue to move at an escargot's pace.
BSkyB, on the other hand, has no plans to offer its popular gaming service, Gamestar, on a subscription basis, according to Adrian Pilkington, head of games at Sky Active. "I disagree with Laurant," he said. "He'd be quite happy with 7 or 8%. I need 20-30% of the household base using my games. So, unless you think of a way for subscription to allow that, then you've failed and I don't think anyone's got it right." Nevertheless, he added that Sky is exploring other business models for gaming, and has high hopes for its "24-Hour Pass," which launched a few weeks ago.
One ITV gaming offering which has proven particularly successful is the UK bingo channel, Avago. In February alone, it posted £500,000 in revenues, and it is said to be growing by an average of 15% per month. Neil MacDonald, managing director of the Digital Interactive Television Group, the company behind Avago, surprised the audience with the revelation that a significant portion of the channel's audience is comprised of men and women in their 30's and 40's, who typically play between 10:00 PM and 1:00 AM. (Note: bingo is traditionally considered a game for senior citizens.) MacDonald summed up the secret of Avago's success thus: "The technology is complex, but the viewer experience is simple and community-building."
OpenTV's Regis St. Girons, who attends every year, told [itvt] that he was most interested in the new "tools that help people launch their services on multiple platforms." He seemed to believe that such tools will have a significant impact on the development of the ITV market: "Here at MILIA, people are getting to see an evolution of the market," he said. "It is now easier and cheaper to deploy services."
Ireland's emuse seemed to generate some buzz with its new, mass-market authoring tool, Modelstream, which is designed to put the creation of interactive applications in the hands of traditional TV producers, and which is now being used by Granada Interactive. Another tools company which seemed to attract considerable interest from attendees was Australia's ITV/World, which recently licensed its ITV management solution, In/Orbit, to the BBC.
While MILIA attendees probably took away a valuable new awareness of the international ITV scene--and had many opportunities to network with potential partners--attendance by traditional TV people seemed somewhat sparse, suggesting that a couple more early Cote d'Azur Springs may pass before the broadcast industry comes to fully appreciate the potential of ITV.
***
March 26-28, 2003
[itvt] Issue 5.02 Part 3 4/17/03
By Bridget Baiss for [itvt]
Despite the one-two punch of the sickly world economy and the war in Iraq, this year's MILIA, held last month in Cannes, France, carried on with elan. 
Outside the Conference
However, because of space limitations at the Palais des Festivals (where MIPTV was being held), MILIA was forced to set up shop an 8-minute stroll down the Croisette at the Noga Hilton. Regis St. Girons, managing director of OpenTV Europe, told [itvt]: "We hope next year the shows will be fully integrated. We have to educate the TV content people, and so we have to come to them more than they will come to us." The Long Road Ahead
Although, UK media analyst, David Mercer, delivered some optimistic forecasts at the show, predicting that consumers will spend 28% more next year on interactive TV services and that by 2008, digital and interactive TV will generate $160 billion worldwide, most panelists and attendees seemed to feel that the marketplace for ITV content and advertising still has a rocky road ahead of it. ITV Gaming
People listening to the presentation.
Pay-per-play ITV gaming has proven particularly successful in Europe, and is responsible for around 80% of ITV revenues there. Nevertheless, there was much debate at MILIA about whether a subscription model could prove even more successful. In the Netherlands, the Cartoon Network believes that its new subscription gaming service could bring in 90% of its overall revenues, according to Casey Harwood, commercial director of Cartoon Network UK. In France, Laurant Weill, managing director of Visiware, told the audience, his company's Playin'TV channel recently rolled out a subscription service in the belief that viewers will be willing to pay for unlimited access to its huge games library. The Importance of Mobile Interactivity
Clearly, program controllers across Europe and indeed the world are embracing mobile interactivity as an immediate way to extend their brand and remonetize their content. For many broadcasters, it is the best way to overcome the ITV technology gap: in France, where set-top boxes have been deployed in only 4 million of the country's 27 million homes, mobile-phone based voting on TV content has become the only way to implement ITV on a mass scale, according to Laurent Souloumiac, managing director of France Television Interactive. Such an approach has successfully been adopted, the audience learned, by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, and by Multichoice, Africa's only digital satellite broadcaster (serves households in 52 countries): while ITV-enabled set-top boxes are few and far between in Africa, mobile penetration is at 200%. The Case for 24/7 Interactivity
Bridget Baiss and friends.
Meanwhile, back in the UK, where much of the population at least has access to a red button, broadcasters are inching the art of ITV production forward. Granada has high hopes its long-planned 24/7 ITV service will drive revenue and increase market share, while saving on ITV production costs. Justin Judd, controller of Granada Interactive, argued that the cost of launching huge interactive formats tailor-made for particular programs has proven prohibitive for broadcasters: "The money should be going to TV production, and it's a matter of letting funders know it's not about technology or applications: it's about ideas." He stressed that Granada's planned 24/7 service is designed not to take viewers away from linear content but to address those moments of lull and boredom when audiences are prone to channel-surf elsewhere. ITV Tools Generate Buzz
In addition to sessions, MILIA featured a showcase of new ITV tools and applications. Awards
Laurant Weill wins an AFDESI award.
Wednesday night, just down the Croisette at the Hotel Gray d'Albion, the Association of French interactive television Developers, Publishers and Service Providers (AFDESI), in partnership with the US's ITV Alliance, threw an award show and dinner recognizing leading companies and people in the interactive TV industry. The show was charmingly hosted by Sarah Lelouch, daughter of celebrated French film director Claude Lelouch. Perhaps due to AFDESI's influence, many of the nominees were French companies. However, winners included such well-known international ITV players as OpenTV (whose "Wink Interactive" won the award for Best Advertising Service), NDS (whose "QVC Active" won the award for Best Tcommerce Service. NDS also received a Special Jury Mention for the "Ad Break Tennis" application it built for MTV), and BSkyB (which won a Special Jury Award for its overall service).
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