Eva Longoria, Carlos Mencia Join Sí TV’s 'Take the Lead’

Sí TV has recruited top talent for its “Take the Lead” campaign: Desperate Housewives’ Eva Longoria and Comedy Central’s Carlos Mencia appear in new public-service announcements with positive role models for the next generation of Latino leaders.

“I embrace the opportunity to be able to give other Latinos a platform and a voice,” the South Texas-born Longoria says in her 60-second spot.

“I really take to heart that responsibility of representing not only my community but giving back to it,” she says, after saying her mother inspired first her older sisters and then her to attend college.

“I’m lucky, I want to be like my dad,” Mencia, who was born in Honduras, says in his spot, also an interview with someone holding a Sí TV mike.

“I want to inspire the little white kid from Oklahoma as much as I inspire the little Latino kid from Laredo, Texas,” he adds. “I think that when you work hard, and you apply your craft and you wait for the opportunities to come and you take advantage of those opportunities, that you’ll be successful.”

Earlier PSAs — available at www.sitv.com/take-lead — feature such “Latino Leaders of Today” as CNN anchor Rick Sanchez, U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D.-N.J.) and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

The English-language cable channel aimed at Latinos also is pairing Latino leaders of today with those of tomorrow in a mentoring role. The effort kicks off in California, with state senators, business leaders and a news anchor signed on as mentors. Six young “mentees” will be selected from applications on SíTV.com.

As the campaign moves beyond California, 19 million-home Sí TV will work with affiliates to pick mentors and mentees and co-brand the PSA campaign, officials said.

MSO Vet Gallagher Backs ITV Startup

Bernard Gallagher, who was CEO at former cable operator Century Communications before it sold out (to Adelphia Communications) in 1999, will be at The Cable Show in Washington, D.C., this week with his new firm, iCueTV.

It’s a television-commerce provider and, yes, Gallagher invested in it, even though his memories of promising interactive-TV projects that went nowhere are still fresh.

“Every attempt at interactive TV, going back to QUBE, has failed,” he said, referring to the Warner Cable project in Columbus, Ohio, in the late 1970s.

What’s different this time? He said iCueTV will work on existing set-tops, including baseline DCT-2000-type digital boxes.

He also said cable systems now are “pushing” for interactivity, something they couldn’t and didn’t do earlier.

iCueTV demonstrated at last year’s Cable Show, in New Orleans, and will be in the itaas booth this time. It expects to be deployed in about 40 million TV homes soon after the convention, Gallagher said. iCueTV will be paid based on transactions.

Gallagher said he brought in a couple of other investors after teaming up with company president Michael Huegel two years ago. The Cherry Hill, N.J., firm — a 10-minute drive from Comcast in Philadelphia —has about 25 software developers on staff now. The application has been vetted and tested at most cable laboratories and iCueTV is working with content distributor Comcast Media Center.

“We want our platform to be available in as large a universe as possible,” he said.

If it does go big, maybe this really will be the year of interactive TV.