Los Gatos, Calif.-based interactive TV company, ICTV, has tapped high-profile entertainment-industry figure, Nizar Allibhoy, to head a new "ActiveMedia Group" it has formed to encourage the development of Web-created/TV-delivered programming for its flagship ActiveVideo Distribution Network (AVDN) platform. Allibhoy, who will hold the title SVP and general manager of the ActiveMedia Group, was previously CEO of ClickStar, the online film distribution company co-founded by Intel and by actor Morgan Freeman’s Revelations Entertainment. Prior to that, he spent a three-year stint as a VP with Sony Pictures Digital, where his responsibilities included interactive TV, content distribution services, and the development of the company’s digital service platform and digital distribution products. Before that, he founded and served as CEO of AccelerateTV, an ITV infrastructure services provider that was later sold to RespondTV. His resume also includes stints at Time Warner Cable and at Intertainer. "While ActiveVideo is tailor-made for major networks to bring Web video to the television, there is a wealth of other programming that can be created internally or independently," Allibhoy said in a prepared statement. "ActiveVideo will allow a broader set of producers to deliver television quality video using standard Web authoring tools, creating an opportunity for operators to deliver programming and advertising that mirrors the diversity of the Web." Added ICTV president and CEO, Jeff Miller: "The ability of ActiveVideo to remove many of the limits on traditional programming opens the door for far more imaginative approaches to programming and advertising from entrepreneurial third-party content developers. Nizar’s extensive background across cable, the Internet and Hollywood will help him to identify new programming opportunities and to be the catalyst who works with in-house resources and innovative third-party programmers to make those ideas successful."
The new ActiveMedia Group, which will be based in Los Angeles, will provide resources and support for the creation of Web-based programming for the AVDN, which will be offered directly to network operators by ICTV. According to the company, the programming–which will complement a number of brand-name channels that have been already created for the AVDN (note: AVDN affiliates include AccuWeather and Reuters), as well as several channels that ICTV says are currently being developed by major media companies–will "cross the boundaries between network technologies and consumer devices, enabling the true three-screen viewing experience."
The ActiveVideo Distribution Network is a usage-based content distribution service which ICTV launched last year. ICTV touts the AVDN as enabling operators, programmers and advertisers to bring broadband video programming and advertising models from the Internet–including ads that are targeted, auditable and interactive–to linear television and VOD. The service is based on the company’s proprietary HeadendWare technology, and on a technology dubbed "InStream," which it obtained through its acquisition last year of Switched Media (see [itvt] Issue 6.60). According to ICTV, the AVDN is entirely standards-based (thus requiring no custom integration or proprietary development) and runs within existing Web and VOD infrastructures, acquiring programming and applications from standard Web servers, mixing it with live and VOD elements, and delivering it from the headend as MPEG video: it uses the on-demand return path to receive user input to control the programming it delivers and provide interactivity. It can easily be integrated with existing set-top box-based interactive TV technologies, the company says. According to ICTV, viewers can use their remotes to select an ActiveVideo channel from a standard EPG, and enter a "broadband experience" that integrates video, navigational elements, channel branding, banner ads, and links to multiple video segments. Screens can be manipulated to reflect personal viewing interests and purchasing preferences, and can also be powered by recommendation engines based on viewer preferences, the company says. Ads within this "broadband experience" are, of course, fully interactive, with features such as "telescoping."
Originally Published: April 16, 2007 in [itvt] Issue 7.26 Part 1
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