--Comcast Offering Extensive Package of VOD Content for Obama's State of the Union
--Canada's Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium to Offer 700+ Hours of VOD Olympics Coverage
Multiplatform music video programmer, Music Choice, said Wednesday that its VOD service, Music Choice On Demand, generated over a billion orders in 2009, making it the number-one VOD network for the year. The company cited data from media measurement and analytics company, Rentrak, which it says confirmed that its service secured the most orders of any free or premium VOD service and surpassed all free VOD services for total unique set-top boxes accessing its content. The company also said that the data showed that the service accumulated more than double the orders of most other VOD music services combined, with nearly three out of every four music-related orders in 2009 being for Music Choice content.
Music Choice On Demand is currently available in around 42 million homes across the US. Its content line-up includes rock, pop, urban, Latin, country and children's music videos; themed video playlists; and original programming such as "Certified," a show that centers on friendly competitions between two high-profile artists, and that invites viewers to decide its winners. According to the company, an episode of "Certified" that featured a competition between Beyonce and Ciara for the title of "Certified Diva" was watched nearly 1.5 million times.
In other VOD news (note: see also "iN Demand to Offer Movies-on-Demand Category Dedicated to Black History Month" in this issue):
- Comcast announced Wednesday that it is offering an extensive package of on-demand news and informational programming around President Obama's State of the Union address and the Republican party's response (delivered by Virginia governor, Bob McDonnell). According to the company, the offerings include the State of the Union speech and the Republican response themselves, and special content from Bloomberg TV that highlights various topical issues, various of President Obama's speeches from his first year in office, and a biography of the president. The content is located in Comcast On Demand's "Top Picks" category in a folder entitled "Obama: Year One."
- Canada's Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium, a partnership between CTV and Rogers Media, said Wednesday that it plans to offer over 700 hours of VOD coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics in English and French--more than triple the amount of on-demand coverage that was available to Canadian viewers during the 2006 Winter Olympics. According to the consortium, the coverage will be available free of charge to all Rogers Cable, Shaw Cable, EastLink Cable, Delta Cable and Source Cable digital subscribers, starting February 13th with the Opening Ceremony. It will include coverage of all Team Canada hockey games, repurposed VOD versions of coverage from CTV, TSN, Rogers Sportsnet, OLN, V and RDS, and coverage of the Closing Ceremony. All coverage will be available within 24 hours of its original airing and will be available on-demand through March 31st, the consortium says: Rogers will capture and encode the live feeds from the participating broadcasters and then make them available to the participating cable operators.
