Through the Wire
by Todd Spangler and R. Thomas Umstead -- Multichannel News, 3/9/2009 2:00:00 AM
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Think you're up to speed on Alexander the Great? A&E Television Networks' History is hoping to draw in aficionados of the ancient world's most notorious conflicts with the launch this week of an interactive application on Dish Network.
The application is tied to History's premiere of Battles BC, an eight-episode series profiling military leaders including Hannibal, Caesar and David (of Goliath fame). AETN has promoted the show, which premieres on Monday, March 9, at 9 p.m. ET/PT, as featuring CGI effects in the style of 300, the movie recounting the Battle of Thermopylae.
History's ITV app, developed by Ensequence, features factoids, photos and quizzes and lets viewers set their Dish DVR to record upcoming shows on the channel. An interactive prompt will pop up for viewers within 2 minutes of tuning to History, and the application also will be accessible from Dish's ITV menu on channel 100.
“What we've done with the application is synchronized elements with the show,” said Mark Garner, AETN senior vice president of distribution marketing and business development.
Another angle: The ITV app lets viewers get more information about two of Battle BC's advertisers. The sponsors prefer to stay unnamed until the shows air, but Garner said they're in line with the theme of the show. (Our guess: catapult manufacturers.)
When will AETN bring this capability to cable? Garner said the programmer is awaiting broad commercial deployment of support for Enhanced Binary Interchange Format (EBIF) on set-tops — so an ITV app can be created once and sent to millions of homes.
“The ubiquity of deployment is an obstacle,” he said. “The investment and interest in this [on cable] begins when you get scale.”
Sexy 'Beaches' Package! But Is Camera OK?
The Wire was psyched to get the recent promotional kit from Travel Channel for Bridget Marquard's Bridget's Sexiest Beaches, a Thursday-night series starting March 12.
Along with the postcards of bikini-clad Bridget, there was a cool waterproof camera loaded with 27-exposure film, complete with the requisite logos that make it a keeper.
But then a Wire correspondent keenly observed a “2008-08” marking on the camera. Means the sell-by date was last August, no?
Travel Channel's James Ashurst checked for us and said that's when the camera was made, not an expiration date.
We're ready to snorkel and snap with confidence!
Cool Giveaways, Part 2: Nat Geo's Genealogy Kit
Ad sales executives attending National Geographic Channel's one-on-one upfront presentations will receive an unusual parting gift: a genealogy kit.
The kits — backing the September special tentatively dubbed Where On Earth Did You Come From? — will let recipients submit a swab of DNA taken painlessly from their cheeks to a lab to determine the ancient migration paths of their ancestors, according to the network.
Individual results will be sent directly to the participant, and they then have the option to contribute those findings to Nat Geo's Genographic Project, a five-year anthropological research study led by the network and IBM to map how humankind populated the planet. Meanwhile, Nat Geo will compile an anonymous and general overview of the migration paths of the ad-sales community that could find its way into the network's genealogy special, according to network officials.
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