I’ve been thinking a lot about video on demand lately. I’ve also been using it. Both of which put me in a very committed minority.

Olympics or HD cable shows crowding your DVR? Nuke some recent ones and watch them on demand instead. Get to know where they are, because it’s universally acknowledged that VOD navigation is not very simple or intuitive.

A friend who, like me, is a fan of The Closer missed some recent episodes. My first thought was to email her a link to TNT’s TV-Everywhere app for viewing the show, but we both have Time Warner Cable, and Time Warner Cable doesn’t have a deal to offer it. Next thought was to ask if she’d checked channel 1012, the entertainment on demand site, and see if she had that and could do some catching up on Brenda Leigh Johnson’s end game. Her response: “Holy (deleted), never knew I had it but it appears I do!”

Cox Communications CEO Pat Esser was on an industry panel recently (video of the NECTA session here, via NECN; our coverage here), talking about some detailed customer research the cable firm had done on what people like and don’t like about their multichannel TV. “Video on demand,” he said. “Those who use it love it. Those who don’t use it, don’t understand it. We have more education to do.”

Amen to that.

If you do wander into the VOD territory on Time Warner Cable, it’s had some success getting celebrities (even Robert DeNiro) to pitch their on-demand wares, something IFC Films honcho Jonathan Sehring has lamented happens too infrequently (read this article from our On Demand Summit coverage from June). There was Bob Costas, the face of NBC’s London Games, last week, saying Olympics On Demand would have anything you happened to miss. Look that up, too: the listings are laid out helpfully, event by event.

Be demanding: try it out, and let your provider what you like or don’t. It’s worth a visit.

A version of this post appears in Monday’s Multichannel News.

Could personalized video billing help cable operators make their customers happy? That’s one of the things vendor Amdocs is looking into in relation to its sponsorship of the Cable Center Customer Care Committee (C5 for short).

Lisa Modisette, a vice president in the Amdocs Consulting Division, and Jana Henthorn, senior vice president of academic and industry outreach at the nonprofit educational Cable Center, mentioned video billing — an online video presentation of their current bill and what each charge means — as a possible enhancement of the customer experience. It’s being trialed by an MSO now and the goal is to reduce calls in to the operator.

How important is it to cable operators to cut calls in? Neil Smit, head of Comcast’s cable unit, said today a highlight of the second quarter was a 15% reduction in service calls a 9% diminution in repair phone calls. His goal is to reduce service-related truck rolls by 2 million and service related phone calls by 10 million this year versus 2009.

I think no one would disagree with the fact that we have a ways to go,” Henthorn (pictured, r.) said of cable’s customer-service reputation. “Part of the challenge of is that customers are no longer comparing us to other cable companies, they’re comparing us to all other service industries. We’re being compared to Federal Express - and being compared favorably to Delta Airlines. I think we are on the uphill track.”

C5 is working with 25 invited representatives from 11 cable companies on ways to improve that customer experience, through Webinars and in-person meetings. Last year, a customer-service expert from a different package carrier — UPS — came and shared lessons. “That was really well received,” Henthorn said.

Another C5 contribution Henthorn cited was presenting leading-edge research on customer effort, measuring how easy is it for the customer to work with your company. C5 brought in researchers to discuss it a year before the results were presented in the July 2010 Harvard Business Review. (HBR link here, subscription required for full article.)  “Our group had it early and were using to assess their customer-service effort.”

C5 is stepping up its activity, Henthorn said. “This is an active and engaged group,” she said of the participants, co-chaired by Comcast senior VP of customer-care operations Mike DeCandido and Time Warner Cable VP of operations and enterprise customer care, Andy Haines.

More MSOs are having executives focus on the overall customer experience, as opposed to just efficiently solving customer problems, Modisette (pictured, l.) said. “The number of organizations within an MSO that care about the customer experience are increasing,” she added, including commercial as well as residential units.

MSOs also “are investing in understanding who the customers are, should there be differentiation of service based on customer value or not,” she said. It’s an extension of the segmentation drilling-down that top operators like Time Warner Cable are already doing.

C5 is starting research on the value of customer retention through the enhanced customer experience — the return on investment, in other words. “We’re trying to deepen it and broaden it out,” Henthorn said.

And enhancing it, with innovations like seeing your cable bill in a video.

School’s out (for some) in N.Y.C., giving me a chance to make some TV recommendations.

I’ve been watching The Weather Channel, natch, and SportsCenter sent an anchor out to the parking lot in Bristol, Conn., to report on the snow drifts. Photo here.

I also caught the DVR replay of John Oliver’s performance at the Verizon iPhone presser, as noted earlier by Todd Spangler.

Fortunately I have some screener disks too and this gives me a chance to plug some new and returning cable shows.

In no special order I can recommend the new comedies on IFC, The Onion News and Portlandia. Especially Portlandia, a sketch comedy show with SNL’s Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein that’s on the gentle side of satire but very engaging and funny.

Justified on FX returns as one of TV’s best dramas, largely because of Timothy Olyphant as Elmore Leonard’s U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens and Walton Goggins (of The Shield) as his nemesis/ally, Boyd Crowder. And from the pilot episode that premiered last week here, before the snow returned (see this week’s Through the Wire), FX’s Lights Out is another winning drama, sensationally cast.

Oops, need to take a break and break out the toboggan. More later.

OK. I’ve seen the first three episodes of Shameless and am thoroughly hooked in, terrific performances, especially Emmy Rossum. I am going to succumb to the buzz soon and put in the Episodes DVD — getting very good notices.

I’m not in the Being Human demo — I shun anything to do with vampires since Buffy left the scene.  I did not watch the original on BBC America. I did enjoy the first episode of the new Syfy version, though. Still not sure, though, about any show that compounds having a vampire with having a ghost character.

And I belatedly endorse Discovery Channel’s Gold Rush Alaska, several episodes in and an established hit. Compelling stuff. Reminds me to check in on NGTV’s hit Alaska State Troopers. Anything to do with Alaska is in, apparently.

Time Warner Cable’s Wisconsin operations have close ties with the local National Football League franchise, the Green Bay Packers. Wide receiver Donald Driver has done ads for the system, and defensive back Charles Woodson has participated in local events, reading to kids, according to local communications director Stacy Zaja.

Comcast in Pittsburgh, meanwhile, loves the hometown Steelers, the team playing the Packers Sunday in the Super Bowl.

Before the NFC championship game won by the Packers, TWC gave away green and gold yard signs saying “G Force: Show Your Colors!” with the operator’s logo at the bottom.

The company had 15,000 made up, and demand was so strong it added a second order of 10,000.

Last week, Zaja and friends gave out thousands of signs saying “Go Pack Go!” (25,000 were ordered this time.)

The cabler also hung 12-by-20-foot banners of both signs (see at right) on a garage by its Milwaukee offices, hung by facilities and network techs using two bucket trucks during snow and wind, Zaja said. (For a nice local TV piece on the effort, from WFRV-TV (Channel 5), please click here.

Pressed for a prediction, Zaja went with the Pack, 20-17. “I think there’s going to be a lot of defense,” she said.

In Pittsburgh, “Comcast is an avid supporter of its local teams and we were a presenting sponsor for the Steelers’ pep rally at Heinz Field last week,” Bob Grove, director of public relations and community affairs for Comcast’s Keystone Region, said.

Crucially, he said the system was prepared to manage major TV events like the Super Bowl, and will have extra staff on hand to help with last-minute installation and other needs, and will have extra engineers monitoring the network.

“We feel confident most Pittsburgh fans are already well-equipped for the big game - especially since we’ve been to the Super Bowl three times in the past six years,” he said.

My call: I’d like to see the Packers win, but my instinct, were betting legal near me, would be to take the Steelers.

Now as for the over-under on 110 million viewers

Herb Scannell, overseer of BBC America among other BBC properties in the U.S., says the network is ready to spend the coin needed to increase ratings, diversify the program mix and generally capitalize on a moment in which “British culture is it culture.”

“I feel we’re in a good place,” Scannell, the former MTV Networks executive named BBC Worldwide America president last June, said this week. “We have a good base of an audience … There is an opportunity if we move the needle, so to speak.”

The channel’s ad-sales team has sold it thus far on upscale viewer demographics, such as percentage of homes with household income above $100,000.  Scannell wants to “keep that loyal audience, with the profile and psychographics, and get more.”

To break out of its ratings neighborhood — a primetime average of 0.1 or 161,000 viewers in 2010, near Style Network and Military Channel, according to Nielsen — Scannell said the BBC is willing to spend money on new shows and acquisitions. “In the next five years we are going to triple our program budgets. When I came here, I was very clear that if we want to play, we had to play. And that meant increasing the investment.”

“The investment will manifest in two ways,” he said. “We’re going to look at 4-6 unscripted shows per year. … And then beginning next summer, and then subsequent years, we’ll do a full-out drama, one to two every year.”

The new shows will come from BBC Worldwide Productions, under Jane Tranter in Los Angeles; from a variety of producers in Hollywood (”we are an open shop”); and from independent producers in the United Kingdom, in addition to the BBC shows that have been the network’s stock in trade, Scannell said.

Shows will be sized up by what Scannell called an IQ filter. The I stands for intelligence, innovation and irreverence, or what the Brits call cheek.

“We have traditionally been a place that has introduced talent,” Scannell said in an interview in a banquette booth in BBCWA’s posh new offices on Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan.”Going forward, we are going to be a place that nurtures, develops and makes shows with talent. I want us to be a safe landing place for people coming from the other side of the pond that want to break into the American television market.”

On the unscripted side, he’d like to develop shows that work with BBC America staples Top Gear (the original, not the BBC-produced version that has been renewed for a second season on History) and Gordon Ramsay’s Ramsay’s Best Restaurant, starting out. He wants them to be centered on personalities, someone who’s an expert in his or her field and has some of that irreverence, “a bit of swagger.”

As for dramas, a model he cited is Luther, the edgy Idris Elba cop show (see its tense opening moments here): BBCA is co-producing its second season. The shows will “be of substantial budget,” he said, and can be made either in the United States or the United Kingdom. “You can get a really quality drama for $1-million plus” over there, he said.

Drama series orders would start with 10-13 episodes, he said, not the 3-6 episodes more common in Britain.

Scannell said he’d like to see comedies along the lines of Whose Line Is It, Anyway?, with a talent roster that can come in and out.

Another priority is growing the BBC World News channel, which recently became the home of the former BBC America nightly news show, BBC World News America. The channel is distributed by Cablevision Systems, Cox and Verizon FiOS, and Scannell said he will be “aggressively” pitching it to more cable operators.

In addition to its being a global news channel that fills a niche at a time of intense global news, Scannell said its being pitched as an alternative to more ideological U.S. news channels. “We’re going to be a good deal for a cable operator. We’re a world news service. Our price is going to be a lot different than some of the incumbent news networks.”

And, of course, there’s the upcoming royal wedding to draw attention to the channel, both for its exclusive right to BBC One’s feed (to see what the Brits are seeing) and for related programming such as an original production, Royally Mad, centered on five “royally-mad” Americans going over for William and Kate’s big day.

“I think we are the home of the royal wedding,” Scannell said.

Cheek? Maybe. But a little royal madness might take a network a long way.