From May 21-23, companies across the nation came together to exhibit the latest in product and service innovation, all displayed at the infamous, The Cable Show.

With almost 13,000 attendees and over 250 exhibitors, The Cable Show is described as “the only place where you’ll find this many industry leaders, luminaries and decision-makers.”  Among these companies itching to reveal their latest and greatest, was Crawford Media, a provider of video, film, audio, and interactive media solutions worldwide.

The company has been up to a lot lately, having sold its satellite services to Vision only a couple of years ago and having integrated its creative solutions with Nexidia (News - Alert), a provider of dialogue search technology for media and entertainment industries, earlier this year. TMCnet’s Erik Linask was fortunate enough to speak with Steve Carlisle, director of sales and marketing at Crawford media, where he elaborated on how the company is now expanding their content enabling initiative through what he calls “companion programming.”

Having been in the business for over 30 years, Crawford Media “came out of the sky and came into the ground with a lot of fiber connectivity,” but still offers “a full range of creative services” as well as operates “one of the hipper data centers in the country.” With an abundance of connectivity and services, the company is now focused “on what’s happening at the edge of content enablement.”

But what is content enablement?

Carlisle provides a good example, explaining, “For instance, if you’re sitting in your home watching cable, our interest is in providing content extensions for what you’re watching. It may be content that is playing in-synch with what you’re watching or programming, or it could be a social media application that helps drive viewership to that moment – to that appointment with television, maybe such as an event.”

In other words, considering what it is that can supplement and enhance the user’s primary experience – whether it’s from a social media platform or from another content consumption perspective. We do live in a technologically booming day and age, yet there is a solid client base who prefer, and more importantly are only familiar with, traditional methods. Needless to say, concerns about the distraction of an inclusion of a second screen have come into play. Crawford Media, aware of this issue, addresses it with practicality.

Carlisle puts it best when said, “I think it depends on the viewer. For people who are used to consuming media in a singular environment, it probably is. Demographically, I would say that the younger folks who are consuming media today consume it in a very different way, and for them, it’s normal…to be interacting with a number of screens and different things. We used to all be in our living room for a social event around television, now that event seems like it’s expanded, so I think it’s dependant on the viewer.”

This perspective definitely makes sense. If you’re elderly and have only just become accustomed to managing one television screen, it would be blatantly unrealistic to begin utilizing a second. Conversely, our young and technologically affluent generation is accustomed to an exceptional amount of multi-tasking every day, most times not even realizing it. One thing is for certain though; this new advancement certainly isn’t about your grandpa’s cable TV anymore.