Two MTV Execs to Head Sling Entertainment Group
By Tom Steinert-Threlkeld -- Multichannel News, 11/30/2006 12:31:00 PM
Sling Media, which now defines itself as a “digital lifestyle-products company,” plans to begin building applications and services that allow users of its hardware to interact with the TV shows and Internet content they throw from TV to PC to mobile phone.
To get that effort started, the San Mateo, Calif.-based maker of the Slingbox hired two former MTV Networks executives, Jason Hirschhorn and Ben White.
Sling cofounder Blake Krikorian said he expected the pair to deliver “new wickedly cool experiences for consumers,” but he gave no hint as to what they would be. The company makes a box that sits between a television set and a high-speed-Internet connection, which is then used to shuttle content to other devices.
The services, though, are likely to attempt to “unify” the experience of watching video whether on a TV, handheld device or computer, Hirschhorn said. Viewers “don’t distinguish where they watched Laguna Beach. They just watched it,” he added.
Consumers in Great Britain will get the first chance Friday to buy cellular telephones that can receive their home TV channels using Sling’s technology. Sling’s partner is 3 Group, a division of Hong Kong’s Hutchison Whampoa communications company. 3 Group is building mobile networks in 11 markets worldwide, reaching about 175 million people.
“Usage is changing, revenue models are changing and we want to be an innovator in that space, a catalyst in that space and a partner,” Hirschhorn said.
He would not discuss what applications might be in the works for marrying TV content that moves over the Internet to computers and mobile phones using the Slingbox, or from the Internet to the TV using the Slingbox.
But he said the first results of Sling’s newly formed Media Entertainment Group could be announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January in Las Vegas.
Hirschhorn, who was chief digital officer at MTVN, and White, who was vice president of digital media there, are the heads of that new group.
Among likely first steps in making Sling Media interactive could be giving users the ability to bookmark and annotate the shows, movies, news and video clips they watch, and to share what they saw and think with friends.
But Hirschhorn declined to say whether such interaction was in the works, adding that the company plans to work with distributors and content creators in respecting copyrights as programs get slung about or shared.
More than 100,000 Slingboxes have been sold, but the company has not updated that figure since January. Among Sling Media’s investors are Hearst, a magazine and newspaper publisher; Liberty Media, which owns interests in a variety of TV-programming companies; and EchoStar Communications, which operates the Dish Network satellite-delivered pay TV service.
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