Broadcast veteran pitches carriers on interactive category 2 channel

Future "roadkill" on the digital specialty TV dial will likely create space for more experimental and interactive ventures soon, predicts Jeffrey Elliott, a broadcast veteran and head of new Category 2 digital specialty licensee Glassbox Television Inc. His company, which was awarded a licence late last year, is working to secure carriage agreements for its channel, which will focus on short-form content with an interactive component.While Elliott concedes that inking deals with cable and direct-to-home (DTH) satellite TV operators is difficult given a painfully slow start for existing diginets, he ventures that as some of the current crop fail, the carriers will begin taking risks with more innovative business plans. Glassbox is wholly owned by Elliott, with high-profile new media vets Brian Katz and Ronna Rubin on board as non-equity partners (for the moment). Elliott is well-known in the broadcast community as the managing director and guiding force behind NetStar Interactive, which launched tsn.ca and exn.ca in the mid-‘90s and is still considered a pioneer in the Canadian convergence industry. He continued to gain profile within the industry when he left NetStar to become senior VP of interactive with Canadian media giant Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc. Elliott says that although his well-known résumé has opened doors at unnamed cablecos and DTH companies, it’s still a challenge to convince those companies of the need to take risks on new content forms that take advantage of both two-screen approaches and the two-way interactivity built into today’s digital set-top boxes. "It is certainly helping us get in the door," he tells Canadian NEW MEDIA. "It is a very competitive marketplace right now, and I’d be lying if I said (winning a carriage agreement) wasn’t a challenge…This is something that I’ve been working on since 1994. It helps, but it hasn’t solidified anything yet. "Part of it was my timing – when I decided to go off and try this as to where other digital channels were going to be. But, to be brutally honest, I believe there’s going to be some roadkill, which is going to free up spectrum. You’ve got ExpressVu which is going to be launching a new satellite next December. As far as capacity issues go for the short term, I think that they are going to be short term because, if I were a betting man, I’d say come spring – unless there’s a major change – we’re going to start seeing some of the channels go away. Our strategy is to be prepared, financed, waiting in the weeds." Elliott remains hopeful that a cableco or DTH company will share his philosophy of "shared learning, shared risk, and shared reward." If it wins a carriage deal, Glassbox has promised the CRTC that it will launch a channel called Short TV. According to the company’s licence application: "Short TV will be a national English-language specialty service devoted entirely to short form films shot on film, video or created with computer animation. Short TV will showcase Canadian and international cutting edge short form films, from 1-40 minutes in length. Short TV will also be programmed to take full advantage of the interactivity that digital set top boxes create." The application goes on to note that programming will be drawn from most of the CRTC-defined categories such as drama, infomercials, reporting and so on. Content for the channel would be drawn from many of the same sources as a similar new venture, CBC Television’s ZeD (CNM, Nov. 29/01 and CNM Update, Jan. 30/02). Both initiatives are being touted as avenues for creators who don’t have access to traditional media to display their works. Thus, Elliott cites home filmmakers, students and others as likely creators who would be tapped for short works – predominantly humorous pieces, he notes. "There’s a 15-year-old kid sitting there in his basement somewhere, making something that’s really different, and we want to have a place where new media or interactive television producers can come and play and experiment and try things." Conceding that technological barriers exist to full two-way communication for the time being, Elliott likens interactive television to the same stage of development as the Internet in the mid-‘90s, and expresses confidence that the market for interactivity will grow. He doesn’t believe, though, that existing broadcasters will be the most likely to succeed in developing successful business models. He says GlassboxTV is being built from the ground up as a completely interactive channel, with the flexibility to adapt to new technologies and ways of doing business. "Are you going to take an HGTV and make it a completely interactive channel? I don’t think so," he says. "Some of this stuff – you’re going to make mistakes. You want to make them some place where you can control it, where you can understand the metric; you can learn from it, understand it, and it won’t affect the business that you’re growing." He adds: "I still find that most broadcasters are approaching interactivity as a bolt-on, secondary thing to their main project, or core business as they call it, which is broadcasting. I look at it that there’s a new paradigm coming, and that is that interactivity is fundamental and as core to this particular business – broadcasting – as anything. The days of uni-directional, one-way television, in my mind, are gone." In that regard, too, he sees parallels with the early commercial Internet, and says the demand for interactivity was proven even before most modems could beat 26.6 kbps. "If you provide a call to action on the television set, there’s an immediate response from your audience. Remember, back in 1995, that was all brand new. The experiment we did at the time was for the McCain’s Skins curling. Our commentator said, ‘send us an email if you have a question.’ We got 500 emails in 25 minutes," he says. "It’s so identical to the Internet in 1995, it’s scary. There’s no business model. Broadcasters are shaking a bit about the digital channels because it’s different. It’s not quite working out the way they thought it would. I would argue that, yes, it’s exactly like it was on the Internet in 1995. No one knew what a banner ad was. Nobody knew what the business model was, but everyone was pouring in millions of dollars." Elliott says Glassbox will be a pioneer to prove a business case for interactive television. "We really would like to be the beta-ville for an interactive channel in this country and allow people the opportunity to learn and understand what it means." In his interview with Canadian NEW MEDIA, Elliott is short on specific business details, but does reveal that the company has formed a partnership with Waterloo ON-based AdExact. That company sells products that allow targeted advertisements through the set-top box. Initially, Glassbox will concentrate on geo-targeted commercials. But, he notes, cablecos and DTH companies will also have to be brought on as partners to enable the technology.

Broadcast veteran pitches carriers on interactive category 2 channel

News | 02/07/2002 5:00 am EST

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