Comcast's thePlatform Unit Sees Growth in TV Every
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TV Everywhere has gained traction in the media business in the last year, and video technology provider thePlatform expects more growth in this area as operators and programmers embrace the new business.
In the last year alone, the company has inked deals with programmers such as A&E Networks, for Lifetime, History, A&E, Bio and other networks, and expanded its reach with more NBCU Cable properties such as Oxygen, SyFy and Bravo, says Ian Blaine, CEO of The Platform and Senior VP of Comcast Converged Products, in this interview with Beet.TV at the VideoSchmooze event in New York last week.
"[Programmers] have customers connecting to them with all kinds of devices, so we have to make sure that works, and they are getting serious about TV Everywhere and how to engage their audiences with that," he tells us in this video interview.
Blaine doesn't expect any direct-to-consumer TV Everywhere offerings and believes most TV Everywhere subscriptions will be managed by operators. One of the challenges in the growth of TV Everywhere comes in the C3 ratings model, which credits networks for ratings within three days of a show being played back on a DVR, as well as live viewership. "You want that agreggate viewership to be collected, so you have a complicated process of publishing that video, and then after day four you may want to replace the ads with dynamic ads," he says, adding that the Platform works with vendors such as Freewheel, Auditude and Double Click to provision ads once the original commercials have been stripped out.
Next up, expect to see more live linear and live event programming via TV Everywhere as consumers demand that type of content, he says.
Daisy Whitney
http://www.beet.tv/2012/12/ian-blaine.html