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Comcast's on-demand service ranges from karaoke to dating(Baltimore Sun, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Jan. 29--A Philadelphia nightclub party was where 28-year-old Jessica Scott made her video-dating debut. In front of a camera at the party, sponsored by the cable company Comcast Corp., she was asked about her worst date. Her ideal date. If she had a super power, what would it be and why? Then Scott set up a profile on Comcast's partner in the dating service, hurrydate.com. About a week later, her profile was on television, and the emails started flooding in. Scott found that watching videos of potential dates gave her a true sense of both their looks and personality. It's not like the Internet, she said, where singles may be tempted to post photos of their younger, slimmer selves. "You know that that video was taken pretty recently," Scott said. "You can tell right off the bat, you can tell somebody's character." This might not be what comes to mind when you think of television programming, but it's an example of how media companies are increasingly catering to the new way Americans use their television sets. On the most basic levels, viewers want to be able to watch their favorite programs on their own schedule, hence the popularity of TiVo and on-demand movies. Beyond that, though, media businesses are now tailoring new content, from exercise routines to karaoke, to an on-demand audience. On Thanksgiving, Americans ordered more than 100,000 songs from Comcast's karaoke on demand, a service that plays music while the lyrics are displayed on the TV screen so viewers can sing along. In the last year, viewers in the Maryland-Washington area have looked at more than 1.5 million singles' videos through Comcast's dating on demand service, where short personal videos of singles are aired on television and viewers can email someone they like through a partner Web site. "We have created an on-demand culture, and the quicker and better we can feed that demand, the more popular we're going to be with our customers," said Michael Ortman, vice president of programming for Comcast. It's a change that dates back a quarter of a century, to the invention of the video cassette recorder, said Robert J. Thompson, director of Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television. Before the VCR, "if you wanted to watch the Wizard of Oz with your kids and you missed it, you missed it. Until the VCR, you couldn't rent movies, you had to go to the theater," Thompson said. "The VCR really was the thing that changed everything. All of the sudden it allowed us to store television shows like we could store books." The problem with the VCR, though, was that most Americans never labeled their tapes, Thompson said. Even if they wanted to watch a program with the kids, they couldn't always find it. Enter the digital video recorder. With the push of a button, viewers can easily access the programs they want to watch. Thompson said such technology has refined an entitlement Americans have felt since the VCR came into play. And it will only continue, experts say. The digital video recorder company TiVo saw its subscriber base nearly double to 4 million in the third quarter of last year, from 2.3 million in the third quarter of 2004. And the company is taking entertainment out of the home, offering technology that lets consumers transfer video from their DVR to their laptops. And as Verizon Communications rolls out its new television service, FiOS TV, it's also offering karaoke on demand as well as an on-demand library of more than 1,900 programs, said Shawn Strickland, vice president of product management for FiOS TV. While the phone company was expecting less than a fifth of its new television customers to order a DVR with their service, it turns out that almost a majority of them are opting for the machine, Strickland said. "That has been a surprise for us," Strickland said, "and the concept of TV on your terms really resonates with consumers: The ease of recording, the ease of using the DVR to sort through all the choices in the system and provide a more personalized viewing experience." Experts say cable operators now must offer on-demand programming to be competitive. Some types of programming, such as music videos and fitness, benefit from being liberated from a schedule, said Josh Bernoff, a principal analyst who follows television for Forrester Research in Boston. Last week, for instance, Comcast launched exercisetv, an on demand cable network for fitness, sports instruction and motivational programming. The station, in which New Balance and Time Warner Cable are equity partners, lets viewers watch their favorite exercise video any time of day or night. "If I feel like working out at 6:22 am and the workout I want is the pilates workout that's not possible with a linear channel," Bernoff said. On demand also gives consumers access niche programming that might not otherwise garner enough viewers to merit a channel devoted to it, Bernoff said. Viewers in the Maryland-Washington area watched 129 million on demand programs last year through Comcast, the regions leading cable provider, compared to 73 million in 2004. "You're going to just see this really evolve," said Mark Watts, regional vice president of marketing for Comcast's Maryland-Delaware region. "It's all about the digital box and what comes through that box and giving customers choice and convenience." While Scott, the Philadelphia single, didn't find love through her dating on demand experience, she says viewing videos can be such a fun pastime that some of her married friends sometimes do it for entertainment. (And Scott did become friends with one of her video suitors.) Bernoff, the Forrester analyst, said he believes dating on demand is programming that typically acts as a time-filler. It's a low-overhead way to start something that could theoretically be the basis for a television show someday. "What you begin to realize is dating on demand is not about finding someone to go out with, it's about laughing at other people," Bernoff said. Eventually an even wider range of services will be possible, experts said, when television is connected to the Internet. A viewer watching a Sarah Jessica Parker program who loves her shoes, for instance, will be able to click something on their television set to find out where to buy them, said Andrew M. Schroepfer, president of Tier 1 Research, a Minneapolis research and consulting firm. If online gambling were ever to become legal, Schroepfer predicted, consumers will be betting on sporting events through their televisions. And viewers will have access to more video through their TV, as well as a powerful search engine (such as Google or Yahoo!) and data behind the programming, predicted Phil Leigh, senior analyst for Florida-based market research firm Inside Digital Media Inc. Someone watching a movie may be able to research where the story came from. If it came from a book, the viewer could find that book, research the author, find out if the author has written other books that were made into movies, and then watch those movies too -- all through their television set, Leigh said. "Everything that's happening on the Web -- every function, every feature, every service -- is going to be tried through television," Schroepfer said. There is still a ways to go before viewers fully change their habits. Only 10 percent of viewers have a digital video recorder, according to Forrester Research. In those homes, about 60 percent of viewing on the television with the DVR is recorded viewing, according to Forrester. Some analysts are skeptical that certain services will be as successful on television as they are on the Internet. Leigh of Inside Digital Media says that when television is connected to the Internet, viewers will find services like video on demand to be limiting because it will have only the programming that cable companies keep in their libraries. And Leigh says such services as dating on demand are already somewhat limiting because users still have to go to the Internet if they want to contact or learn more about a potential love interest. "If you find somebody that you like, it's common practice now to Google that person," Leigh said. "Well you can't do that from Comcast cable. You've got to do that on the Internet." |