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Bob Hildeman
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“The TV Ratings Game:
What’s Behind Door Number
Three?” kicks off more than a
half-dozen sessions today at the
Destination Broadband Theater, 10 a.m. The
theater is sponsored by Ambrado Inc. and
Microsoft.
And what, pray tell, is Door Number
Three? The increasing ubiquitous DVR,
which is proving a valuable tool in not only
pumping up TV ratings for a lot of primetime
programs, but increasing “eyeballs on ads”
— given the conclusions in some studies that
nearly half the viewers of DVR-captured
content wind up watching the commercial
spots imbedded within them. This session
will be moderated by Bob Hildeman,
CEO of Streambox, who is hosting several
broadband theater sessions this week, some
revolving around the general theme of
ubiquitous video content.
“‘TV everywhere’ has powerful
implications for a wide array of emerging
media,” Hildeman said, including mobile
newsgathering. “Just as viewers will be
able to access television anytime — from
nearly any device — solutions such as our
Streambox Live are enabling broadcasters
to transmit video from virtually any location
using only a laptop or
mobile phone.”
VIABLE ALTERNATIVES
As low-bandwidth
devices become more
reliable in the years ahead,
Hildeman said, “These
streaming technologies
are becoming truly viable
alternatives for gathering
and encoding broadcastquality
video from the
field. Many of these ‘TV
everywhere’ devices
would be [technically] capable of video
contribution.”
Other sessions today in the broadband
theater tackle more IP media options
on the near-horizon, including “global
video content clouds,” 10:30 a.m., also
moderated by Hildeman and featuring Mike
Antonovich, president of Genesis Networks;
and a discussion of “When TV Gets Social,”
11 a.m., with Lisa Bennett, marketing
director for Kaltura, and ITV Alliance CEO
Allison Dollar.
“It’s a bit odd to discuss ‘when TV
gets social’ because television has always
been social,” said Dollar, who helped
coordinate several broadband sessions this
week. “From its earliest incarnations, the
‘electronic hearth’ has been a medium,
which gathered in the community, offering
a shared experience, and prompted opinion
exchange and passionate fan loyalty. The
‘collective experience’ of television became
our ‘collective’ unconscious, culturally
speaking.”
What’s different now, Dollar said, is the
same process is fragmented, transparent and
made public in real time with social online
interactions.
“And the public record of that social
interaction has come to be viewed as
‘content.’ The industry tends to lump
Facebook, Twitter, Ning, YouTube,
LinkedIn, MySpace and the many widgets
out there all together as though they’re
interchangeable. But they’re not,” Dollar
said.
For the television
business, integrating social
interaction tools into the
traditional “living room
experience” offers different
opportunities than simply
running ‘TV programming’
via broadband, she said.
“They’re related but separate
issues in the short term,
where social interaction
is wrapped in a brand
message — or prompts
a transaction resulting
in moving an advertised
product, the trigger point. That’s where it
really upends the whole game. For all our
focus on [devising possible] game changers,
consumer behavior has already leaped ahead.
And brands understand what truly seamless
interactivity means for them,” Dollar said.
FUTURE OF P2P
Another session targets the battle to
capture the world’s “the next billion media
customers,” 11:30 a.m., with GlobeCast
America President David Justin and David
Price, Harmonic’s business development
vice president. And the future of P2P (peerto-
peer) networks will take center stage for a
25 minutes broadband session at noon.
Dollar returns for a two-hour “Bits and
Bytes” series of case studies sponsored by
the ITV Alliancebeginning at 2 p.m., with
the day’s final event offering some straight
talk on mobile media, asking the question,
“Holy Grail or Holy Fail?,” 4:15 p.m.,
produced with the Mobile Entertainment
Forum.
On Thursday, attendees will have the
chance to view video highlights of the
week’s sessions and other events at the
Destination Broadband Theater.