cable

Turner Broadcasting-owned cable channel, TNT, and NBA Digital, the new media arm of the National Basketball Association (NBA), will tonight (Thursday) present a special interactive edition of the show "TNT NBA Thursday," (airs at 8:00PM Eastern) that integrates TNT, NBA TV and NBA.com.

Here is a round-up of some of other recent interactive TV-related stories that we didn't have room for in this issue:

[itvt] has just published the first in a new series of columns from "The iTV Doctor Is In" columnist, Rick Howe. Entitled "The iTV Doctor: Profiles" and sponsored by HSN, the columns will profile various prominent figures in the interactive TV industry, starting with Joan Gillman, president of media sales at Time Warner Cable.

[itvt] is pleased to announce the schedule of sessions for EBIF Intensive (takes place at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on Friday, March 5th--i.e. the day after The TV of Tomorrow Show 2010). The schedule is included in full below, and a PDF version can be downloaded here.

[itvt] has just published a radio interview with Braxton Jarratt, co-founder and CEO of Clearleap, an Atlanta-based company which offers a technology platform for bringing Internet-sourced video content to television sets.

During Comcast's conference call with financial analysts following the release of its Q4, 2009 results, Wednesday, CEO, Brian Roberts, and COO, Steve Burke, provided a brief update on the status of its interactive TV deployments and plans.

"We will...continue to invest in our network, extending our technical capabilities even further, more widely deploying EBIF technology, for instance, to support interactive TV and advertising," Roberts stated in his presentation. "And through our newly formed Comcast Labs we will focus on extending and integrating IP technology in order to improve the customer experience, accelerate the pace at which we introduce new products, and expand our cross-platform experiences."

Clearleap, an Atlanta-based company which offers a technology platform for bringing Internet-sourced video content to television sets, and FourthWall Media, the interactive TV technology company formerly known as BIAP (note: for more on the company's rebranding, see the article published on itvt.com, October 26th), will today announce that they have partnered to create a video-centric, unbound EBIF interactive weather application featuring content from The Weather Channel.

Because the [itvt] editorial team is busy working on The TV of Tomorrow Show (March 3rd-4th in San Francisco) and on our new EBIF Intensive event (March 5th in San Francisco), we will be covering most stories in summary/round-up form over the next few weeks. Here is a round-up of the latest VOD news:

Because the [itvt] editorial team is busy working on The TV of Tomorrow Show (March 3rd-4th in San Francisco) and on our new EBIF Intensive event (March 5th in San Francisco), we will be covering most stories in summary/round-up form over the next few weeks. Here is a round-up of regulatory/government news for the past few days:

Canoe Ventures, the company tasked with implementing the US cable industry's plans for interactive and addressable advertising (note: its backers are Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House), announced Wednesday that it has appointed John Redpath as SVP and general counsel.

Canadian cable MSO, Rogers Communications, said Tuesday that it has expanded the content line-up of Rogers On Demand Online, its implementation of the "TV Everywhere" distribution model, via new deals with MGM studios, Corus Entertainment and E1 Entertainment (note: the "TV Everywhere" distribution model seeks, via authentication technology, to make programming that pay-TV customers have already paid for through their cable, satellite or IPTV subscriptions available to those customers on multiple Web sites and platforms, and thus aims to head off the threat posed to pay-TV services by the increasing availability of over-the-top programming--for some background on TV Everywhere, see the articles publishe

[itvt] is pleased to present "EBIF Intensive," a special one-day workshop/dialog event that will take place in San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on March 5th, the day after The TV of Tomorrow Show (March 3rd and 4th).

Bresnan Communications, the US's 13th-largest MSO (it has approximately 300,000 subscribers), announced last week that it has begun a trial of technologies that enable the dynamic insertion of advertising into VOD programming.

Canadian cable MSO, Rogers Communications, is claiming that Rogers On Demand Online Beta, its implementation of the "TV Everywhere" distribution model, is proving popular with its subscribers (note: the "TV Everywhere" distribution model seeks, via authentication technology, to make programming that pay-TV customers have already paid for through their cable, satellite or IPTV subscriptions available to those customers on multiple Web sites and platforms, and thus aims to head off the threat posed to pay-TV services by the increasing availability of over-the-top programming--for some background on TV Everywhere, see the articles published on itv

Savannah, Georgia-based Ligos said Wednesday that it has closed a deal with "one of the nation's largest cable operators"--which it did not identify--for a set of its EBIF-based ETV Mosaic systems, and that the operator will deploy the technology later this year (note: for more on Ligos's EBIF version of its flagship Mosaic EPG technology, see the article published on itvt.com, July 7th). According to the company, ETV Mosaic enables the creation and delivery of interactive presentations "for program guides and much more" on EBIF-enabled systems.