Turner involved with TWTV.
New Media Age, 19 February 2004
Cartoon Network owner Turner Broadcasting is stepping up its interactive TV strategy after taking on Two Way TV to develop a series of games featuring characters such as Bugs Bunny to run across its channels.
Turner, which also operates Boomerang and Toonami, will roll out several iTV games from next month, which it says will allow it to establish the extent of correlation between viewer use of such applications and any subsequent uplift in audience ratings.
Richard Kilgarriff, VP and director of channels at Turner UK, said the deal with Two Way TV represented the second in a three-phase enhanced TV strategy for the firm, which could see it moving with its advertisers into retail, through the red button, further down the line.
'This year is a big catalyst for eTV,' said Kilgarriff. 'The first phase was about making sure the applications worked but now it's about the audience taking the front seat rather than the developers.'
Kilgarriff said the first iTV game developed for Turner by Two Way, which launched quietly on Cartoon Network during Halloween last year, coincided with the channel seeing its highest weekly ratings in the last five years.
Although he doesn't attribute this directly to the iTV game, he said it was a factor that Turner was now keen to explore further, having contracted Two Way to develop a full suite of games on its behalf following this initial trial.
Two Way meanwhile, which was saved from administration at the end of last year after being bought out by principal shareholders Liberate, Scandia Media Invest and NTL Europe, has appointed the latter's COO Bob Schmitz as its new chairman.
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