TiVo (TIVO)

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TiVo CEO in talks to expand sales in Canada
Challenges are technological, not regulatory, executive said
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. Article Comments Marsha Lederman

Banff, Alta. — From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Published on Tuesday, Jun. 15, 2010 4:39PM EDT

Last updated on Tuesday, Jun. 15, 2010 4:41PM EDT


.The president and CEO of California-based TiVo, Inc. says the company is “in discussions with various players in the market” to bring the game-changing TV-viewing technology to Canada in a more significant way.

“I don’t know if [initially] everything we were evangelizing was being viewed as the real next [big thing] operators were going to have to embrace,” Tom Rogers told the Banff World Television Festival on Tuesday. “I think increasingly that’s being viewed as the case, so stay tuned. We’re certainly very interested in what we can do up here.”

When pressed afterward, Rogers would not say with whom the company was speaking in Canada. But he did say the problem with making TiVo more of a force in Canada was not regulatory, but technological.

“I would say there are complexities in the technology architecture of what differs from what we do in the United States and how it’s done up here.” Rogers pointed out that CableCARDs are used in the U.S. but not in Canada.

TiVo is a digital video recorder that allows viewers to record programs, pause live TV shows, access an on-demand video library, surf the Internet, play music and more. Most significantly, perhaps, it allows viewers to skip commercials, forcing advertisers to dream up new ways of getting eyeballs on their products.

The technology has become ubiquitous in the U.S., so much so that it’s common to hear “TiVo” used as a verb – as in “I’m going to TiVo [that is to say, record] Mad Men tonight.” The term has also become a fixture in popular culture, with everything from frequent references by Oprah Winfrey to a segment on The Simpsons in which the family installs a TiVo but Marge is overwhelmed by guilt at having skipped over the commercials.

In the U.S., Rogers said TiVo is working on its interactive capabilities, including developing technology that would allow a viewer who saw something they liked on TV (the example he used was a sweater worn by Jennifer Aniston) to click on it, learn more and place an order to buy it.

TiVos became available in most of Canada (excluding Quebec) through a number of retail outlets about two years ago, but not in HD – unlike other PVRs (personal video recorders) which already had a jump in this market. And unlike the PVRs offered through Canadian cable and satellite providers, TiVo charges a subscription fee. Rogers says the number of Canadian TiVo subscribers is “relatively small.”

He says Canadians are eager to have more access to the product. “We get e-mail about that all the time,” Rogers told The Globe.

“Ever since we were in retail up here we have been very interested in how we can expand our footprint, so we are certainly looking hard at how we can be more of a player up here.”

Don’t expect anything soon, however. When asked for a timeline, Rogers simply said he has nothing to offer “near-term.”