Dear Readers:
This is the second installment of a two-part iTV Doctor PROFILE of Joan Gillman, president of media sales at Time Warner Cable. The iTV Doctor PROFILES series is sponsored by HSN.
Part One of our PROFILE of Joan Gillman covered her time on Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd's staff, her work at Internet start-up Physicians' Online, and her groundbreaking career at British Interactive Broadcasting.
Part Two picks up with Joan's work at Time Warner Cable...
Starting with a consulting gig at TWC's corporate office in Stamford in 2004, Joan immediately dove into interactive television, new products, multi-room DVR, VOD, the new EPG--even helping to bring the Mystro product "Start Over" to market. Peter Stern, Time Warner Cable's chief strategy officer, asked her to come and head up interactive television, advanced advertising and data. And not surprisingly, shortly after Joan got involved, the company's interactive television activities found a business model.
TWC was the early leader in iTV (certainly going back to Warner Amex's QUBE days, and Time Warner's Full Service Network). And when Joan joined them, TWC was interactive in over 5 million households. They ran the 2006 Olympics in seven markets, to 2.5 million households (in their SARA systems using technology from BIAP--now FourthWall Media), and had a parallel initiative, with voting and polling and advanced advertising powered by Navic, in the remaining systems.
Joan points out, "We had a fairly advanced local interactive television business. Go into any of our markets where we've had three or four yea
rs of interactivity...Talk to our local clients about measurability--they know what works and what doesn't work. They can evaluate engagement, they can refresh their message (without shooting a new spot) on a more frequent basis. They can even reduce direct mail costs."
"But we decided as an industry we had to move to an industry standard. When you are the legacy, and you have a sunk technology investment--a proprietary technology investment--and you have to make a transition to open-standard solutions, it's always harder than having done nothing. We had to take out the proprietary systems and integrate the standard (which is what we're doing now), so we can roll out standards and pick up where we left off."
Joan is a strong believer in the value of interactivity, both to advertisers (as evidenced by the real-world experience in TWC's local markets), and to programmers. For example, a programmer may think he can use interactivity to get from a 4 rating to a 4.5 if he can engage his viewers, get better audience flow through the night, etc. But he doesn't want to smack the viewer in the head, with everything being sponsored. He just wants to improve the consumer experience. How can Time Warner justify the expense of enabling that experience? "That's just a commercial negotiation," Joan states. "NBC pays to produce shows, they pay for cameramen, scriptwriters, talent search. They pay for the functionality to edit all that. Why is interactive any different? They make decisions every day that are disconnected from whether the ratings went up or down. They're paying for the service and the technology, the infrastructure, the employees, whether it works or not."
Joan has also solved one of the most vexing problems for interactive television advertising (and interactive enhanced content, for that matter): the industry hasn't quite figured out how to pause live programming when a viewer goes off-channel for long-form VOD content or a full-screen interactive experience. Generally, when the viewer returns to the live programming, she's missed a few minutes of the show she was watching. "No problem," Joan says. "All the viewer has to do is use our Start Over feature and the program restarts at the beginning."
In the interactive programming arena, Time Warner Cable is once again changing the rules. The company is running tru2way in New York City now (primarily with EBIF applications, however), and they're doing some pretty amazing things. Programmers are now buying tune-in advertising
that tunes, with one click, to the advertised program.
And that creates some interesting tensions. For example, it's one thing for a multi-network programming family to cross-promote shows from one channel to the next--they do it all the time within their own (network-owned) inventory. And the networks frequently buy advertising time from the operator (essentially buying back the local avails contractually provided on their own channels). And sometimes they buy time on competing channels, to promote their own shows.
But generally, those cross-channel (out-of-family) tune-in spots do not promote a competing program. Doing so would invite the viewer to leave Network Family A's channel to go watch Network Family B's channel. Generally verboten, or at least frowned upon. But if it's allowed, the viewer at least has to punch in the channel numbers.
But Joan has upped the ante, providing yet another weapon in the network tune-in wars: Time Warner Cable subscribers in New York City can be watching a program from Network Family A, see a tune-in spot for a program from Network Family B, and tune to that program with a single click (all subject to affiliate contracts with the programmers, of course). And that same application can take a viewer to a VOD experience with a single click--provided by any network family or any advertiser.
All of a sudden, channel loyalty and audience flow go out the window. It's all about what the viewer wants to watch now, and Time Warner Cable is knocking down the walls that have historically prevented the viewer from moving easily and intuitively from program to program. The interactive technology keeps the viewers in control, without forcing them to wade through the interactive program guide.
It's the most recent example of Joan Gillman keeping the customer out in front, and by so doing, keeping Time Warner Cable out in front.
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The iTV Doctor is *Rick Howe*, who provides interactive television consulting services to programmers and advertisers. He is the recipient of a CTAM Tami Award for retention marketing and this year was nominated to Cable Pioneers. He is also the co-author of a patent for the use of multiscreen mosaics in EPG's. Endorsed by top cable and satellite distributors, "Dr" Howe still makes house calls, and the first visit is always free. His services include product development, distribution strategy and the development of low-cost interactive applications for rapid deployment across all platforms. Have a question for the iTV Doctor? Email him at itvdoctor@itvt.com
