Contests

Samsung Electronics held its first "Free the TV Developer Day" at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, Tuesday. According to the company, the event was designed to bring together "notable leaders across the connected-TV ecosystem"; help developers better understand its Samsung Apps connected-TV platform (and its SDK), which it says is now available in around 120 countries; and support its "Free the TV Challenge" (see the article published on itvt.com, August 12th), a contest which it says will award $500,000 in prizes and is designed to encourage development of innovative interactive TV applications for the Samsung Apps platform.

Canadian broadcaster, Citytv, contacted [itvt] Wednesday to let us know about an interactive TV competition it is conducting around the reality TV show, "Hell's Kitchen." During the May 7th and May 14th episodes of the show, Citytv will display a special image at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen throughout the broadcast. Viewers will be invited to go to a dedicated "Hell's Kitchen" page on Citytv's Web site, identify the image from a series of choices presented through a drop-down menu, and submit their answer through an online form.

News Corp.-owned social networking company, MySpace, contacted [itvt] Monday to let us know that it is teaming with its corporate stablemate, Fox, on a user-generated video contest to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the satirical animated series, "The Simpsons." Riffing on the iconic couch gag that concludes the opening credits of the series, the contest invites viewers to create live-action videos of their own original couch gags and upload them to a "The Simpsons" MySpace page.