Time Warner: We’ll Store Shows for Playback
'Look Back’ Service Would Allow Replays From Last 48 Hours
By Matt Stump -- Multichannel News, 4/9/2006 8:00:00 PM
Time Warner Cable is negotiating with cable and broadcast network programmers to expand its Start Over recording service to allow subscribers to replay television programs broadcast in the previous 24 hours or 48 hours.
Currently, Time Warner Cable subscribers in Columbia, S.C., can “start over” programs they have joined in progress, and watch them in their entirety. Time Warner, which records the shows on its own servers while they’re in progress, wants to expand that capability to as many shows as possible that are broadcast in the last two days.
The new service, contained wholly within the Time Warner Cable network, would be called Look Back. Time Warner Cable hopes to launch the playback feature next year.
| Looking Forward at 'Look Back’ |
|---|
| What it is: A network-based service that allows customers to play back shows they missed |
| Window: As many as 48 hours after the program originally aired. |
| How it works: Shows for which replay rights have been obtained are stored on servers at a cable system headend. Playbacks are sent to subscribers to digital services, as a stream of video bits. |
| Issues: |
| • Not all shows can be recorded for playback, because of contractual rights. |
| • Whether viewers will be allowed to skip ads hasn’t been determined. |
| • Some ads may become outdated and could be replaced, on playback. |
TOP-TWO HIT
“In our research, Start Over was the No. 1 thing we could do for subscribers,” said Time Warner executive vice president of product management Peter Stern. “Look Back was No 2.”
In Time Warner Cable executives’ eyes, Start Over has been a resounding success, introduced in November to 10,000 digital cable subscribers in Irmo, S.C.; and then to 25,000 subscribers in Columbia.
More than 70% of digital subscribers in Columbia use the service each month. In March, Time Warner Cable logged 1 million Start Over sessions, Stern said. With an average viewing time of 15 minutes per start over session in March, Time Warner delivered 15 million more viewing minutes for programmers, Stern said.
Those minutes are a boon to advertisers and a cable operator’s advertising revenues, because ads can’t be skipped in the Start Over system.
Time Warner plans to launch Start Over in another seven to eight divisions by year’s end, Stern said.
“The model we’re adopting is working in partnership with programmers to deliver solutions to our mutual customer needs and that support their business models,” Stern said.
“Start Over helps address the challenge posed by digital video recorders,” Stern said, since viewers can’t fast forward though the ads. “[Start Over] makes it easier to build loyalty for new shows and helps drive incremental viewership.”
Whether Look Back will also prevent viewers from skipping ads is a key question. Stern said the cable company hasn’t made a decision one way or another; It will be part of negotiations with programmers, he said.
Programmers say they’re interested in Look Back, as long as the ads are included and uninterrupted. “It’s hard to have a conceptual objection if it’s executed in a way where people can’t skip ads,” said Galen Jones, chief strategy officer of Court TV.
“It’s something we’re looking at,” said John Roberts, senior vice president of interactive and digital media at GSN, which is also sensitive to ad-skipping. There are often interactive features in GSN ads, Roberts said, and “we reward viewers for watching the commercials.”
A second issue involves program rights. Cable networks don’t necessarily own “Look Back”-type playback rights for all the programming they carry, Jones said.
“There are instances where we don’t have the right to allow the affiliate to do that,” he said.
But Time Warner today does not have Start Over rights for every cable network it carries on its channel lineup in Columbia, S.C., nor for every program on every Start Over network it has a deal with. The company only records and stores programs to which it has the content rights.
“In our conversations with programmers, they all share three major challenges,” Stern said. One is the threat posed by digital video recorders, which allow consumers to skip ads, he said.
A second challenge “is the difficulty in building loyalty for new audiences,” he said. A viewer who misses a program that everyone is talking about at work the next day has few options to legally see the “missed” episode, Stern said. With Look Back, viewers could see the programs they missed.
The other challenge is the general competition for viewership among so many program sources today, Stern said. Look Back would provide programmers another shot at developing an audience for their programs, he said.
“We’re trying to deliver solutions to all those challenges, trying to give programmers as many tools as possible, and that delivers more benefit to our customers,” he said. “If we deliver happy customers, it improves our value,” he said.
Some cable networks don’t carry ads, Stern pointed out, such as C-SPAN, Turner Classic Movies, home-shopping networks and premium channels such as Home Box Office, so ad-skipping isn’t an issue for them.
And in some cases, programmers may not want certain ads or promotions to run. If a network granted 48-hour viewing rights to a program, some tune-in ads in that program could be irrelevant by the time a viewer watches the program using the Look Back feature.
PROMO PROBLEMS
An ABC promotional ad for a Thursday-night program that runs during Lost on Wednesday, for instance, doesn’t do the network any good if the viewer doesn’t watch the show until Friday.
Cable-equipment vendors are working on software that would allow for the insertion of new ads in programming stored on on demand servers, but no one has yet rolled out that technology. Such technology could allow a programming to insert fresher ads inside Look Back programs stored on a server.
With Start Over, Time Warner Cable records, and stores on servers, all the programs to which it holds Start Over rights, as those programs are delivered via satellite to Time Warner Cable’s headend.
The programs remain on Time Warner Cable servers during the Start Over program window. After that window closes, the programs are deleted from the server.
Look Back would require Time Warner Cable to increase its on-demand storage capacity — and perhaps streaming capacity, as well — to handle 24 hours or more of programming.
But that is a small capital expense, Stern said, and would mesh with other company technology initiatives.
Case in point: switched digital video, where the programming on a network is sent to a customer only when requested. From an engineering perspective, a switched digital video signal streamed to the home is no different than a Start Over, or Look Back, video stream. “We need to engage in the same activities, so there is double the return on a single investment,” Stern said.
Currently, any Start Over program carries a “Start Over” icon on the screen when a viewer tunes in, alerting them they can start the program over, Stern said.
Look Back would require more communication with consumers on what’s available. How would a subscriber know that a Saturday night college football game was available for viewing on Sunday? Stern said the Time Warner Cable remote control has a “blue button” that subscribers use to access the company’s guide and other interactive and enhanced services. “The blue button can 'Start Over’ shows and will be able to access Look Back programming,” Stern said.
The current Start Over lineup includes: WIS-TV (NBC), WBHQ (WB), Oxygen, USA Network, CNBC, Bravo, Sci Fi Channel, MSNBC, CNBC World, Trio, MTV: Music Television, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Spike TV, 12 Fox Cable Networks Group channels, Cable News Network, TBS, Turner Network Television, Turner South, Turner Classic Movies, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Animal Planet, Travel Channel, Lifetime Real Women, Food Network, Home & Garden Television, Fine Living, Do It Yourself, OLN, The Golf Channel, G4, seven Home Box Office networks and eight Cinemax services.
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