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As [itvt] reported in Issue 6.09 Part 3, Sky Interactive recently announced plans to roll out a new interactive TV portal later this year. The portal, which Sky says will be available through any Sky digibox, will provide access to a range of third-party Web sites–primarily from e-business operators, but also from non-profit organizations and even individuals–that have been adapted for television using Sky’s WTVML mark-up language (note: WTVML is an extension of WML that provides a content authoring format for interactive TV services; in order to address the requirements of ITV, it adds various TV-related functions and layout control through a series of extensions; Sky has made WTVML available as an open standard). Sky subscribers will be able to access those sites by using their remote control or keyboard to type in a URL, or by entering a "SkyKey," a numeric shortcode associated with a site; they will also be able to access sites via the portal’s listings pages and via a new search engine that it will offer. The portal will incorporate personalization features, allowing Sky subscribers to, for example, save their favorite links and access a list of services they have visited previously: each member of a household will be able to create an individual profile, where he or she can enter personal information to facilitate online transactions, using features such as auto-complete and auto-logon.

Testing of new services on the portal will be automated via the use of a "spider" that will check all sites for compatibility with Sky’s microbrowser and reject those which do not comply or which contain errors or broken links. Sky is hoping that, by making the testing process for interactive services on the new portal much simpler than the SSSL testing process which its satellite-delivered services must undergo, it will make it easier for third parties to come up with innovative interactive content propositions for its platform. [itvt] asked Sky’s technical alliances director, Ian Valentine, how the spider will work: "The spider ‘crawls’ its way around registered WTVML content on the Internet in much the same way that Google and Yahoo search engines crawl the Web," he explained. "The spider has the job in the Sky infrastructure of building indexes to be used in the new consumer search engine, and also checking the sites for errors. It has a set of ‘rules,’ which we may update over time, and which are designed to validate the integrity of WTVML sites as well as their performance. We are hoping that this check will ensure that consumers continue to have a ‘quality’ experience, even though Sky are not taking responsibility for the actual content of the sites, which remains firmly with the site owner."

On July 28th, Sky Interactive held a conference at the BAFTA Theatre in London for Web site owners interested in offering their sites on the new portal. The centerpiece of the conference was the launch of SiteControl, a Web-based site management interface that allows site owners to register, develop, test and launch their sites on the new portal (note: a more advanced version of SiteControl, dubbed SiteControl Pro, is scheduled to launch later this year). According to Valentine, SiteControl allows Web site owners to access their site on any Sky digibox while they are developing it: "Once the site is moved to ‘under construction’ using SiteControl, it can be made ‘discoverable’–which means that consumers can get as far as a splash screen, with the site description and entry points displayed," he explained. "Consumers can then save a link to the site. The site owners, meanwhile, can enter a PIN at this stage, which allows them to pass the splash screen to test the site using any live Sky box. Sky will also be making a PC-based emulator available for development purposes," he added. While Sky Interactive is not charging site owners to use SiteControl or to offer their sites on the new portal, it expects to generate revenues through various marketing and promotional services that it is offering–and the conference saw the unveiling of the rate card for these services: registering a SkyKey, for example, can cost anywhere from £2,500 to £25,000 (the shorter the key, the more expensive it is).

Among other things, the conference gave attendees an opportunity to register a SkyKey, and also provided them with a demo of the new portal’s interface and introduced them to the various providers of tools and other services they can use in order to launch their site on the portal. Those providers include Tamblin, which is offering a software tool, dubbed i-ZoneTV On-Demand, for developing and publishing WTVML-based content; ArtemisCorp, which has teamed with Microsoft on CMS.RAPID, a content management system that enables development, deployment and maintenance of WTVML-based services, and that is based on Microsoft’s Content Management Server 2002; and Azoth, which is offering WTVStudio, a desktop development suite and editor for WTVML-based sites (note WTVStudio will be offered in "Lite" and "Professional" versions that give site operators a choice between templated content formats and a more advanced editor with full preview and simulation capabilities; the "Lite" version will be priced £495 per year). Sky staff appear to be particularly excited about WTVStudio, as, unlike the other offerings which are targeted at businesses, it has the potential to open up WTVML development to individuals and the mass market.

Valentine told [itvt] that around 790 companies and organizations signed up for the conference (as the BAFTA Theatre seats only 230, Sky organized two sessions, and, according to Valentine, "thanks to drop-outs and people going on vacation" was able "not to disappoint too many people"), and that over 200 SkyKeys were reserved at the event. [itvt] asked him what kinds of attendees the conference had attracted: "The great thing is that this is the first time that interactive TV is reaching out beyond the confines of the ITV industry to the e- business community as a whole," he said. "Of course, the event did attract some TV agencies and similar companies, but it also attracted people who are e-business directors of large and successful companies, who had previously not considered interactive TV as a channel. So a lot of small and large site operators are now looking at the TV seriously as another route to market, which is exactly what we wanted to happen." He added that Sky Interactive set out to attract e-business professionals to the event by publicizing it in e-consultancy and other email newsletters targeted at the e-business space.

According to Valentine, organizations planning to offer services on the new portal range from taxi companies to the Financial Times’ online service, FT.com (note: Valentine told us that the terms and conditions for using SiteControl explicitly exclude certain types of content–for example, pornography). The latter, he said, plans to employ a business model that Sky is suggesting for the portal, wherein subscription-based Web sites can use premium-rate telephony to offer their content on a pay-as-you-go basis. A practical example of how that business model might work is provided on the informational site (betaskyinteractive.com) that Sky has created for Web site owners interested in offering content on the new portal: "A consumer hears that his cousin was in the paper last week. He logs onto the paper’s Web site to try and find the article, and discovers that the Web site on the Internet requires a subscription of £10 per year. He doubts that he will ever return and is disappointed. Then he notices that they have a TV version that does not require a subscription, as it is pay-as-you-go at 10 pence per minute. He enters the new portal on his TV and enters the URL or SkyKey for wtv.mylocalpaper.co.uk–the wtv and .co.uk are added with a single button press on a virtual keyboard. He then is prompted to go online at 10 pence per minute and the name of the paper is confirmed in the pop-up box. He is then taken straight to the paper’s standard splash screen and can search for and read the article about his cousin. The paper receives a small revenue share at the end of the accounting period."

[itvt] asked Valentine what other methods Sky will use to derive revenues from the new portal in addition to premium rate telephony and sales of SkyKeys: "One thing we’re doing is allowing companies to buy sponsored searches," he said. "As you know, the portal will feature the world’s first interactive TV search engine. So, if the consumer types something into the search engine and your site comes back, if you’ve bought a sponsored search, then you get to be at the top of the list. We’re also levying a fee for commerce. This will be a fixed fee, not a percentage-of-value fee. It will be a basket charge of 55 pence per basket. So if somebody buys something, only that fixed amount will go to Sky, whatever the cost is of the thing they buy. Our principle in setting the pricing," he explained, "is that we’ll only charge for things that take up fixed resources. So we charge for SkyKeys, for example, because they occupy some ‘namespace’: if you buy one of them, nobody else can have that number sequence; and also some of the SkyKeys will be broadcast, so they’ll take a bit of bandwidth."

[itvt] asked Valentine whether the new portal represents an incipient shift in Sky’s philosophy away from the currently widespread "walled garden" model of interactive TV, where ITV platforms offer a limited menu of services from a few providers, back to the open, "fenced prairie," "Internet-on-your-TV" model which had quite a few adherents in the early days of the medium, but which never proved particularly commercially successful. He referred back to a slide, entitled "Not the Web on TV," from the presentation he gave at the July 28th conference, in which he outlined seven key things that had changed since earlier attempts to offer Web sites via interactive TV (see figure 1 above), and explained that Sky believes the "fenced prairie" and "walled garden" models are actually complementary: "Existing ITV portals are themed around a clearly defined audience or a distinct proposition: in effect the broadcaster decides what the customer sees, just like television," he said. "These are, naturally, walled gardens, as the limited menu structures, and the need to control the proposition by the broadcaster, results in only a limited amount of services–say less than 100–being available at any one time. Putting the consumer in control, as we are attempting to do with the new portal, changes all that: they can choose an individual line-up of services–perhaps 5-10 per household–picked from literally thousands that could be available. So could an open platform that allows you to go everywhere coexist with the walled garden portal model? The answer is yes: the two models are actually symbiotic. Because you can simply do commercial deals to move things into more visible positions, like on the traditional portals. Likewise, if you have a service in a traditional portal, and the cost of being in that portal is not making that service viable, then an open system like the one we’re developing here means that that service doesn’t have to leave the platform altogether. So what we are creating here is a sliding scale of commercialism and visibility, so that different propositions can find their own level. [Note: Valentine told us that Sky anticipates that, because one of the goals of the new portal is to stimulate innovation in interactive TV, some of its services will, over time, migrate to other portals such as Sky Active, where they will enrich the existing mix of content.] What this also means," he continued, "is that you can have a platform where the best content percolates to the top. Since the Sky Active, UK Government and many third-party broadcasters’ portals are built using Sky’s WTVML standards, it’s easy for content to be linked to from anywhere, with changes being made to the portal line-up simply by re-arranging the links from the menus. So it’s not a question of either/or: it’s not walled garden vs. fenced prairie. Instead, our strategy is that we need a fenced prairie and we need walled garden portals, and they benefit each other because they are distinct and differentiated offerings. The walled- garden portals offer a smaller number of sophisticated services to specific audiences, while the fenced prairie can offer a much larger and diverse group of sites of lesser complexity. The fenced prairie is there for when the customer isn’t using our platform in TV mode, but as an interactive device to get to somewhere where they’ve already decided they want to go, and that has nothing to do with broadcast TV, daily viewing habits, or program association, etc. It has to do with one individual having a personal relationship with the Web site operator."

Nevertheless, Valentine cautioned, it is important to provide users of what he termed an "open/go-anywhere" ITV platform with the means to organize their experience, lest they become overwhelmed: "What we’ve come to realize is that an open e-business portal must be all about personalization," he explained. "We have to meet the interactive needs of our 7.8 million households by allowing them to create personalized lists of favorites, histories, etc., so that, even though there might be 10,000 services at their disposal, each household will have its own history, its own lists of favorites that they can come back to use over and over again."

Valentine also told us that he believes the new portal, because it will be built to open standards, could have an impact beyond the Sky platform: "As you know, the services on the new portal will be built in WTVML," he explained. "WTVML is an open standard, and anyone can implement the WTVML browser for other devices. So one thing that is particularly exciting is that what we are doing here could stimulate the development of a class of content–televisual Internet content–for a wide variety of non-PC devices. This kind of new, non- PC/sub-PC electronic society content will undoubtedly move beyond the Sky platform because we’ve set the public standards for it to do so, and there’s no reason why other device manufacturers can’t pick up those standards and offer access to this style of content. We’re in a situation right now where there is little interoperability between different devices because standards are lacking–which, in part, is because there isn’t a single pool of content that everyone wants to address. So we’re hoping that the new portal will allow something similar to happen with non-PC devices as happened with the PC when the Web came along."

URL: http://www.betaskyinteractive.com

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