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Earlier this year, news programmer, CNN, launched an OpenTV-built interactive TV application, dubbed "CNN Enhanced," on US satellite TV provider EchoStar’s DISH Network. Kevin Cohen, SVP of strategic planning and corporate and technology strategy at CNN parent, Turner Broadcasting System (TBS), and Joey Trotz, TBS’s director of product development, recently spoke to [itvt]’s Tracy Swedlow about the new application, about the complex development process behind it, about why they believe the app is significant, about CNN’s future plans for the app, and more.

[itvt]: You recently launched an interactive TV application for CNN on EchoStar’s DISH Network. Could you describe for us how the application works?

Cohen: CNN Enhanced was designed to enhance the viewing experience of CNN by complementing the linear network with a rich, multimedia environment featuring the immediacy and breadth of the worldwide newsgathering resources of CNN.com. This interactive production was designed specifically for the TV viewing environment and offers intuitive navigation of CNN.com stories, including photos and graphics, in a CNN-branded environment that integrates the network audio/video experience with continuously updating on-demand data.

 

Viewers can access approximately 30 stories at any given time via their remote control, as well as up-to-the-minute schedule and guest information, and can participate in votes and polls, all while watching CNN. Categories include Top Stories, US/World News, Business News, Tech/Science, Sports, and Showbiz/Health, with five multimedia stories per category. As new stories and updates are published throughout the day to CNN.com, a customized version of this information is formatted and published simultaneously to CNN Enhanced for EchoStar’s 11 million ITV-capable households. CNN Enhanced’s vertical/horizontal navigation of categories and content is unique among EchoStar’s ITV applications, and allows users to quickly and easily browse graphically rich stories on-demand.

[itvt]: In a nutshell, why do you think this application is significant?

Cohen: We believe it’s the most comprehensive 24/7 enhanced TV application on the largest ITV platform in the world. As new digital technologies create opportunities for viewers to access news and information from multiple platforms, including broadband, wireless and ITV, programmers have an opportunity to create cross-platform experiences for their brands. By creating an enhanced TV application, CNN has an opportunity to increase time spent viewing our programming, increasing ratings of our linear network, and potentially creating a vehicle to deliver enhanced advertising. In addition, the same navigation that supports these enhanced stories will also support the potential to deliver ad-supported short-form video off DVR hard drives.

[itvt]: What was the genesis of the application?

Cohen: It was a fairly lengthy process. We actually began discussions with EchoStar about producing an application around two years ago. So this has been a fairly long journey, and one in which we focused on many different types of opportunities. In fact, we had originally considered doing something that was more like what Sky News Active is doing in the UK. But we decided that we should walk before we run, and get an enhanced TV application up and running.

So we began a process in which we first of all got the internal approval to go forward, and to commit the funding necessary to get this project off the ground. Then we began the RFP process, choosing different vendors who were intimately familiar with the OpenTV platform and the EchoStar satellite system.

That whole process–from the beginning stages of closing in on a vendor to the actual finished product–took about 18 months. We wanted the application to serve primarily as an enhancement of the TV-viewing experience, and to really draw on the best of what CNN had to offer from a resource perspective. These considerations really drove our approach from start to finish. It was a very integrated approach, that constantly bore in mind how to bring all this supplemental data to the viewing experience.

[itvt]: Why did you decide to launch the app with EchoStar?

Cohen: Well, it’s the largest singly distributed interactive TV platform in the world. It has 11 million interactive TV-capable households. So, if CNN was going to really show its commitment to experimenting with interactive TV, EchoStar’s platform was the way to go. However, we also felt comfortable that the kind of application we were going to deploy on EchoStar was one that could be deployed on any cable platform. So that’s also been part of our goal here: to come up with an application design that would work on other platforms. We are currently having discussions about making this application available to cable operators.

[itvt]: Could you tell us more about the considerations that went into the design of the app?

 

Cohen: Well, what we’re finding, with digital technologies obviously being so prevalent, is that a fragmentation effect is happening. People have many different media opportunities that they can pursue at any time. They can go off and play around with virtual channels; they can go off into VOD; they can go off into other platforms. So what was important for us was to look at different ways in which we could increase time spent viewing our network. That was the most important driver for us: to be able to keep people involved with the TV experience, to ensure that they could access the information that is being published continuously throughout the day from all the great resources that we have at CNN.com.

A lot of people don’t realize the breadth of resources we have at work here. We have 36 bureaus around the world. We have 4,000 news professionals who are constantly out there contributing to this great brand that we have. So we’re drawing upon those resources to actually increase the amount of content that viewers have at their disposal–and we’re doing it in a way that really does enhance the TV-viewing experience.

So this application never requires you to leave the TV-viewing experience. You have the CNN linear TV channel available to you while you’re accessing additional data and images. So what the app does, among other things, is allow us to deliver multi-media stories. We felt that, if we could keep people watching our linear channel while providing them with access to all the various other resources that are available through CNN.com–and ensuring, of course, that those resources were formatted in such a way as to look good on television–this was something that was going to be valuable for our brand. We wanted to give people the ability to choose which information they wanted to receive while watching CNN.

Trotz: At CNN, we try to make practical and logical reuse of things that we create for one medium in others. There are probably several dozen syndicated products that use the feeds from CNN.com–whether those products are on mobile or on other Web sites or are RSS feeds or what-have-you.

 

We’ve essentially taken that same approach with this new interactive TV application–this approach of repackaging the content that we produce for CNN.com. The site has nearly 25 million unique users per month, and it’s updated every minute of the day. So we want to make that broad array of constantly updated content available to viewers on EchoStar, and–later, hopefully–on various cable platforms. And we want to do this in such a way that it’s accessible while they’re watching our bread-and-butter core product, the CNN US linear network.

[itvt]: What kind of usage has the application been seeing?

Cohen: Well, EchoStar is actually working on getting a better usage metrics system in place for themselves, and they’ve promised us that, when they know more about how the app’s doing, they’ll make sure we know. But, judging by the anecdotal reports that EchoStar has been giving us, their subscribers really are attracted to this particular application and are enjoying using it. I know I use it every day. I use it not just to catch up on the headlines, but also to delve into the individual stories.

Trotz: They’ve gotten a lot of feedback on the app through email, and it seems that viewers are really embracing it. Viewers recognize how much richer and deeper this app is than most of the applications–or, frankly, probably any of the other applications–that EchoStar has launched to date. This is because with most apps, the content is fairly static. With this app, the content’s updated literally every few minutes–so viewers return to the app constantly. It gets a lot of repeat usage throughout the day.

[itvt]: How do you promote the app to EchoStar customers?

Cohen: The way to get to it right now is through the DishHOME channel, which, by the way, EchoStar has indicated is now in the top five of all their channels.

Trotz: I don’t know if you were at the ITV Summit that EchoStar held out in Denver a few months ago, but they were showing a slide with information on their custom Nielsen reporting. The slide said that DishHOME or Channel 100–which, as you know, is their mosaic that lets you get to all their interactive services–ranked in the top five of all the networks carried on their platform in 6:00AM to 6:00PM viewing.

 

Cohen: So just being on DishHOME already provides our service with a lot of promotion. Once you’re on their mosaic, you can navigate to the news section and pull up CNN Enhanced. They’ve also been running interactive banners on DishHOME’s home screen: you can click on those to launch the application as well.

Trotz: We’re also working on triggered spots for EchoStar that will run in various local avails that they have.

Cohen: Both EchoStar and CNN have an interest in seeing usage of this application. Turning back to how viewers are able to find the app, what we’re working on right now is enabling "red-button" functionality for the app. So that, when you’re watching CNN, you’ll get a notification that you can press the "select" button to load up CNN Enhanced. You won’t always necessarily have to go through DishHOME to get to it.

[itvt]: What kinds of challenges did you face in developing the application?

Trotz: Well, we sent out an RFP to vendors in, I believe, October of 2004. Our intent was to launch in February of 2005. As you know, we ended up launching in January of 2006. There were a lot of things that resulted in that longer-than-expected cycle. We eventually had to give up, for the launch, the goal of the app having true red-button functionality, of being able to trigger the app off of the linear network. When we were trying to get the app out, we perceived various technical challenges that would have made it difficult to deploy that kind of functionality on the DISH platform. Now, they have new specifications and some new technologies that they’re bringing to bear in order to support that kind of functionality. But we just weren’t comfortable with implementing it in the way that we would have had to.

[itvt]: Now red-button functionality is obviously supported on the Sky platform, which also uses OpenTV middleware…

Trotz: It’s the same middleware, but, ultimately, it has to do with different software on the set-top boxes. So, for example, we wanted to trigger the application in the background whenever you came to the CNN linear network. There is no software on the set-top boxes to let that happen passively and still allow the viewer to use their remote to channel up and channel down like they normally would–and like I believe you can do on Sky.

Cohen: So viewers would have seen an error message if they were channel surfing, saying something along the lines of: "If you want to continue to change the channel, you will stop the downloading of this application in the background."

Trotz: EchoStar didn’t want that, and we didn’t want that either. The work-around would have been for viewers to actively launch the application, and for there to have been a long delay while the application launched. It would typically have taken around 30 seconds to launch, which would feel like an eternity to a viewer. Now, I think viewers might be more tolerant of such a delay if they’d actively gone to the ITV home page looking for ITV applications, but I don’t think they’d tolerate it on a linear channel.

So we’re now working very closely with [EchoStar's director of interactive TV programming] Scott Higgins and his team to overcome these problems and achieve a better user-experience. We believe that, as soon as the application is red button-activated on the regular CNN linear channel, usership should dramatically increase from whatever it is today.

Cohen: Another reason the application took a lot longer than we had originally anticipated was that it initially loaded up a lot more stories–and longer stories–than it currently does. However, we found that not all of the deployed EchoStar set-top boxes could handle all that content. It was really only after doing a lot of testing of the app and pushing the envelope with the folks at EchoStar that we got the application to a state where we could say, "This will be a good experience for any EchoStar customer who has an ITV-enabled set-top box."

Trotz: Initially, our goal was to have around double the amount of content in the application that you see today. If we were to port the app to cable or some other platform that could dedicate higher bandwidth to it–so to a platform that didn’t have the bandwidth constraints that satellite has–you would see us breaking some of the categories apart: US and World News, for example, would be separate categories, each with five, or even ten, stories. Likewise, we’d have a separate Showbiz section; it wouldn’t be combined with Health. And we might restore some other categories we got rid of, like Law or Politics. We ended up having to trim the application quite a bit. Ultimately, we were challenging the vendor, OpenTV, and the operator, EchoStar, to build an application that hadn’t been done on this scale before. It had a lot more content than any other app on that platform, and eventually had to be tuned.

I would say that it was maybe four months into the project that we started to see some prototypes. But we weren’t happy with the user experience. We are very, very close to the brand, and we have a strong sense of how responsively we want digital applications like this to behave for our users. It just wasn’t there, so we had to cut it back and trim it down.

The good news is that the new boxes that EchoStar has begun rolling out have a lot more memory in them than the old ones did. So as the old boxes are phased out, we hope we can tune the application to take advantage of that.

Cohen: One of the most difficult things with this project was making the decision to wait–to pull back and retool the application–until we felt that the user experience was as good as it should be. Even when other people were saying, "Well, it’s working the way that the specifications said it should," we would say, "Wait. It’s not good enough." So to keep holding back until we thought it was really ready–that was the hardest part.

[itvt]: One of the differentiators you claim for this app is that it is being constantly updated with new data. Were there any technological challenges you had to overcome to do this–if so, what were they and how did you solve them?

Trotz: This application represents a somewhat atypical architecture for EchoStar’s ITV applications, in order to support our goal of continuously updated content. One of the challenges was building the infrastructure to allow feeds coming out of CNN Center in Atlanta to stream from OpenTV hardware locally to EchoStar’s headend facilities in Wyoming. It was important to CNN as the leading news brand to have every opportunity to monitor and maintain the news feeds supplying data to the app, so this was a requirement from the start of the project. To support these goals, we have split the system between locations, with the CNN Enhanced data streams originating in Atlanta and eventually merging with the application itself in Cheyenne. I wouldn’t understate the challenges in supporting our goal of being non-disruptive to the advertising in our linear network as well, which required custom hardware and software to support signaling to the application when we were in a commercial break.

[itvt]: Who was responsible for the application’s design?

Trotz: The design was very much driven by our internal staff. The same designers who created the current look for CNN’s on-air graphics were very involved in this project. When we started this, that new treatment had really–I think–just rolled out on the linear channel. It uses very much the same color palette as the application: these subdued black-and-grey tones; a sort of subtle "CNN" in the lower third; our trademark red treatment of various fonts; and what-have-you. So the design was very much driven by the CNN graphics team.

[itvt]: Were other CNN divisions also involved in the development of the application, or, other than the design, was it largely done within your interactive group?

Trotz: No, it was really driven by a number of our business units, including the editorial side and the new business side. Also, senior executives like [CNN president] Jim Walton were very much involved, and saw this, and green-lit the treatment. They bought into the design. We didn’t, however, have a broadcast producer involved, because there wasn’t a direct tie to this program or that program that would have justified them getting involved on that level.

[itvt]: Why was the new business side of the company involved in this?

Trotz: Interactive TV efforts have been undertaken by the new business group, which reports up to the distribution arm of the company. ITV/ETV is seen as an extension of our linear network relationship with our distribution partners, which is why it’s traditionally been housed in the distribution side of the company.

[itvt]: Do you have any plans to add video to the application?

Trotz: That’s something that we would definitely like to deploy, though with satellite it would be difficult, because of bandwidth limitations. As you know, the satellite industry is looking at ways of offering video in applications by pushing it to DVR’s and delivering it out-of-band, perhaps using IP connections in their boxes. So video is absolutely where we’re going. But, in this environment, you have to walk before you run, and be realistic about what the platform will support.

[itvt]: Do you have any plans to offer advertising in the application?

Cohen: We currently do not have any advertising in it, but we are certainly in discussions with EchoStar and internally about how we would go about doing that. I think one of the nice things about this application is that it’s very clean, right now. We love the interface the way it is, so we’re going to have to figure out how to incorporate advertising into this application without impacting its usability.

Trotz: In fact, the application does have advertising: it has all the advertising that our linear network carries. A lot of people have focused on this, asking, "Where is the advertising?" But I think from an executive level, one of our priorities has been to make sure that advertisers on our CNN domestic linear channel are well-served by this application.

Here’s an example of how we try to ensure that the app supports our linear advertisers: the app allows you to go full-screen at any time. You can press the pound button to put the linear channel in full-screen mode if a story catches your attention and you want to take it out of quarter-screen mode. Now, when you go into full-screen mode, an icon appears that says something along the lines of, "To go back to the interactive application, press ‘Select.’" Well, that icon is suppressed when we are in a commercial break, and that’s because we want to avoid diluting the message of our advertisers wherever possible.

[itvt]: As well as news, the app offers two features called "Quick Vote" and "What’s On" respectively. Could you explain what those do?

Trotz: The "What’s On" functionality of the app is updated by our broadcast-integration group. It gives you up-to-date info about our shows. Typically, the program schedule in the "What’s On" feature will give you more data than you’d get from your typical electronic program guide (EPG). So it might say who tonight’s guest is on "Larry King Live," when typically the data distributed by the big syndication services to your regular, standard EPG on a given system is just going to give you some generic text about that show. It takes advantage of the fact that we’re sending data to the app continually, and updating it in real time, so it gets changed as new topics come up or when there’s special programming. It all gets reflected here instantaneously.

Quick Vote is an extension of the same voting mechanism that appears on the front page of CNN.com. CNN.com producers publish polls throughout the day that are topical to the news. So, for example, if CNN had done a story on mobile phone use while driving, you might get a poll that would ask: "Has multitasking ever made you a dangerous driver?" So the same poll on CNN.com’s home page is also published to the interactive TV application. At this time, the way it’s implemented is that you use SMS to cast your vote. Once you send in your vote, it’s aggregated for both the interactive platform and for CNN.com. So the votes of viewers on EchoStar are actually counted on CNN.com as well.

[itvt]: What was the thinking behind the "Quick Vote" feature?

Trotz: Interaction with editorial–especially in the news environment–is the holy grail. It’s one of the most important things that we can build into our applications–in fact, to such a degree, that we included it in this application, even though you have to use a different platform, mobile SMS, in order to realize it.

As you may recall, we did a two-screen interactive TV project a few years ago around the show, "Crossfire." When the discussions on the show were heated, we would receive hundreds and hundreds of comments every minute. So we know people want to talk back, and that’s absolutely part of our goal, here. Talkback is probably the original user-generated content. The more that ITV platforms can embrace that–and cable probably has an advantage in this area–the better. It’s certainly something that we’re going to try to include, as we look to take this application to other platforms.

[itvt]: What aspect of the application are you proudest of?

Cohen: I think what we’re proudest of is that it really delivers on what many of us in the industry envisioned many years ago: that we could have a viable product in the single-screen enhanced-TV space.

I think there was a lot of anticipation five or six years ago that the DCT5000 set-top boxes were coming and that they were going to provide this high-speed backchannel that was going to change the way we looked at interactive content. A lot of companies were betting their business model on those boxes coming out, but the boxes did not materialize. So people, I think, went in different directions for a number of years: they focused on VOD; they focused on DVR’s; they focused on two-screen PC-based applications. They really didn’t focus as much on single-screen enhanced TV. So I think that that’s really been the big success for us: to actually get this compelling application out there, that is true, single-screen enhanced TV. We really want to continue to push forward on this, too.

[itvt]: Turner has had a multiplatform strategy in place for some time now, correct?

Cohen: Yes, we look at our brands as each having natural extensions across multiple platforms. So we try to choose the right ways to actually achieve that for each of those brands. Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and Adult Swim perform extremely well in the VOD space. Right now, if you talk to the folks at Time Warner Cable, they’ll tell you that our animation programming is among their top performers of anything they carry. We’ve had a significant amount of interest from advertisers in being part of our VOD offerings. Obviously, in the broadband space, CNN is an extraordinary performer in terms of unique users per month. We’ve been in a lead position in broadband for many years, and we’ve dedicated a significant amount of resources to producing for that medium. We’ve also had a global presence in the mobile space for many years, now. In fact, when I was over in Asia–from ‘98 to 2000–I worked on getting deals up and running with NTT DoCoMo, SK Telecom and others in the marketplace. We’ve got many, many dozens of deals with carriers around the world, and we’re creating content to suit those platforms: WAP, SMS, and now mobile video, as well. We’re always trying to choose the right content for the right platform.

[itvt]: Are you developing any applications for the Microsoft Media Center?

Trotz: We have done some experiments on the Media Center–and I’ve led some of these in-house tests. Some of the design thinking that we use here is certainly inspired by some of the things that you can do in that environment. We think the Media Center’s a great platform to experiment on. We haven’t deployed a CNN product there yet. But look for activity from us on that platform in the future.

Turner has, however, deployed a Media Center-enabled application–actually, a Viiv-enabled application–for GameTap. It’s a 10 foot-compliant version of Turner’s broadband gaming service. So the company definitely has expertise and interest in that platform, and also in how it relates to Microsoft’s IPTV technology.

[itvt]: CNN was also on the Akimbo platform pretty early on, correct?

Cohen: Yes. We were probably the first major programmer to sign a deal with Akimbo. That was a couple of years ago. We licensed content to them for their service. They’re an interesting company. I think they now have several thousand different programs from around 200 different content providers. They really do serve a need in terms of aggregating content that’s very niche and that people would otherwise have difficulty finding. So we are definitely still having discussions with Akimbo about how we can continue to work with them.

[itvt]: What platforms are you most interested in right now?

Cohen: Well, as Joey just mentioned, we think the Media Center is a very interesting platform, because it manages to integrate video with data very well. It provides developers with a software development kit that lets them really take advantage of the horsepower of Media Center PC’s, and also provides a good, branded environment. So I think you’ll see us focused on doing more on that platform. Our goal is to offer more data, more interesting content, that reflects positively on our brands and that keeps people spending more time with our programming. So platforms that really lend themselves to that will be the ones that we’ll be looking at.

[itvt]: What kinds of interactive TV/multiplatform TV announcements can we expect from Turner in the coming weeks and months?

Cohen: We have some very exciting ITV/ETV projects in the works and will be happy to share them with your readers as we get closer to their launch dates.

URL: http://www.cnn.com

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