OpenTV - Interactive digital TV (OPTV)

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ENHANCED TV: REVENUE&RATINGS iTV helps ABC and Discovery
stand out from crowded U.S. TV market

Must read IMHO..from the OPTV web site.....

http://www.opentv.com/company/news/newsletter/2003_q1/enhanced.html

ENHANCED TV:
DRIVING REVENUE AND RATINGS
iTV helps ABC and Discovery stand out from crowded U.S. TV market

Single screen interactivity - where enhanced content is directly linked to individual shows - is becoming so common in some European countries that old fashioned viewing could soon be a thing of the past.

However, many industry executives are unaware that the same services are starting to take off in North America.

Major networks such as Walt Disney Company-owned ABC have found that deploying "pro-sync" single-screen enhanced TV can help them win a bigger slice of the $53 billion TV advertising pie by giving advertisers new sponsorship opportunities, allowing advertisers to keep viewers more engaged with their ads, and possibly increasing ratings on
the network.


ABC engaged its iTV technology partner Wink Communications (OpenTV's interactive advertising subsidiary), to enhance the Bowl Championship Series in January - the climax of the college football year. It has also used Wink to enhance The American Music Awards, making it the first major network awards show to carry interactive content.
In another first, ABC enhanced the promotional spots for the awards program leading up to the show, which not only served to remind viewers to tune in, but also gave the show's sponsor - Coca Cola - additional advertising inventory.

The interactive AMA promos provided trivia about the featured artists, including the hosts, the Osbournes, and were cleverly branded to ensure viewers knew the show was being sponsored by Coca-Cola. Another new feature that debuted during the AMAs was the Coke-branded "attract icon", the on-screen button that lets viewers know that
Wink-enabled interactivity is available with the click of their remote control. The icon was reshaped to resemble
Coca-Cola's logo.

"It's the first time we enhanced a network promo with a sponsor's message inside it and the first time we've changed
the attract icon to simulate the sponsor's logo. By enhancing its ads in the AMAs, Coke was able to leverage its sponsorship dollars to achieve tremendous value," says John Gee, Vice President of Sales at Wink.

"This truly demonstrates Wink's unique ability to give an advertiser new branding opportunities thoroughly integrated
in and around the show it is sponsoring. It also gives our network partners an additional revenue source."

The promo spots also proved a hit with interactive viewers. The Wink Response Network showed that the rate of interaction was three to four times higher than usual and that the average interactive viewer tuned into the enhanced features for between 4.5 and 5 minutes each.

"Given the methodology Nielsen uses to credit viewership to a network, the longer you can keep viewers tuned in,
the better the chances are that network will experience an increase in ratings. And when every rating point can mean millions in advertising revenue, that's significant." says Gee.

For cable networks which claim to have been under-measured by the Nielsen ratings system, this could prove increasingly important.

Cable giant Discovery is among the iTV pioneers in the U.S. Its latest venture into interactivity, The Learning Channel's guerrilla home redecorating show Trading Spaces Live, became the highest rated hour in TLC's history.

"Discovery was the first to really look at interactivity in a major way to reinforce their brand with viewers and it's the network that always rises to the top of people's perceptions as the strongest brand," says Tracey Whiteley, Wink's Director of Advertising and Research.

NBC, CBS and many others are also investing in pro-synch enhanced TV. And alongside the likes of OpenTV and Disney, programmers such as ESPN, Turner Broadcasting System Inc., and Game Show Network are among the
major backers of the Interactive Television Alliance, a newly formed organization designed to spur growth in iTV

The pioneers are convinced that iTV is changing the TV paradigm. In the U.K., for example, viewers are switching to digital and interactive TV at more than twice the speed they bought videos or home computers - with nearly half of all homes now signed up to the digital era.

"Participation TV is here to stay, it's not a fad," says Ashley Highfield, Director of New Media and Technology at
Britain's BBC.

Highfield says the BBC's ‘Test the Nation' program, a national IQ test packaged in an entertainment format, was Britain's biggest enhanced TV show so far. Twenty-two per cent of the show's 9.1 million viewers participated either through their remote controls or on the Web. On the back of its success, the BBC is planning further event TV programs, which start and end with interactivity, including one that will commemorate the anniversary of the Second World War. The publicity will start months ahead to create an interactive community before the programs themselves are launched.

"It's a completely different way of looking at TV," enthuses Highfield. "And we're working on a feedback mechanism
for every program we broadcast, so you can find out about a program after it has aired. That part of the kit becomes available this year to all our producers."

Commercial broadcasters may feel envious of the millions the taxpayer-funded BBC is able to spend on interactive television. But in the big money world of American TV, where the quest for higher ratings and increased revenues is never ending, the smartest broadcasters are discovering that program-synchronous enhanced television can help achieve both: viewers can get closer to their favorite shows and advertisers can reach those viewers in ways no other medium
can offer.