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By Shirley Brady
Another small operator, Susquehanna Communications, demonstrated its advanced-services savvy at the CTAM Digital Conference in Los Angeles last month. An ITV panel featuring the Pennsylvania-based operator and Buzztime Communications, its digital games partner, shared some promising results on the stickiness of that content. Buzztime's digital games channel-also available in Time Warner Cable's Portland, Maine, system and Comcast's Baltimore market-attracts younger families with kids. Skewing male, about 90% of players are 18 to 54; 60% have some college education; 51% have household incomes of $50,000 or more; and 24% registered to play thanks to word of mouth.
Over in CTAM Digital's new media lab, conference-goers jammed booths to get a walk-through of the latest advanced services. While a demo of Cox's FreeZone ad-supported VOD service in San Diego attracted attention at the Concurrent booth, Susquehanna also impressed visitors with its SusCom Broadband Plus service. The premium content was highlighted in a demo at Synacor's booth; Synacor is SusCom's broadband aggregation and content partner. Synacor recently added 19 new providers (including the NHL, American Greetings and Encyclopedia Britannica Online) to a roster that already features content from ABC News, Disney Family Fun, The Weather Channel, GameBlast and more. Since Broadband Plus launched in three SusCom markets last August, it has seen a 40% sell-in rate to new customers in York, Pa., and 60% in Williamsport, Pa., exceeding its 30% sell-in goal. Nearly 15% of all HSD homes passed in the three launch markets have signed up for the premium content (which costs $8 above the $39.95 cable modem service), helping Susquehanna hit its December 2003 target for the offering eight months earlier than planned. SusCom is currently relaunching its broadband portal with Synacor and is rolling out Broadband Plus to additional markets this year.
Sunflower Broadband, which in December was named CableWORLD's independent cable operator of the year, and an old hand at wireless (hot spots), is adding Sprint PCS wireless voice and PCS vision services to its voice, video and data offerings. The Lawrence, Kan.-based companies will send separate bills to any of Sunflower's 35,000 customers who sign up for a bundle with Sprint, which is also in conversations with other national cable operators. Time Warner Cable in December struck a deal with Sprint and MCI to add local and long-distance phone to its bundles, making Sprint service available to customers in 17 of its telephony markets.
Building on the buzz of WrestleMania XX (see page 8), World Wrestling Entertainment is finally opening up its video vault to create WWE 24/7, its first SVOD offering for cable. The "hall of fame" showcase features about 20 hours of content per month with a weekly refresh rate of 25%, and will retail for $6-10. The content highlights more than four decades of wrestling history not only from WWE's own events, television productions and home videos but also from libraries the company has acquired from other national and regional promoters, including World Championship Wrestling and the American Wrestling Association. Subscribers can check out never-before-seen footage of classic old-school wrestlers such as Antonino Rocca, a 1950s legend with a devastating double leg kick to the head. (Nice touch: A percent of profits from the monetizing of the vintage footage will be shared with the retired stars.) WWE 24/7 is adding original programming, newer footage and modern packaging to make the retro material feel fresh. The SVOD offering, spearheaded by SVP Tom Barreca and his team, is available immediately along with free on-demand and customized broadband content. The new service will also be promoted on Spike TV's Raw and UPN's Smackdown. "We want to do for SVOD what we've done for pay-per-view," says Barreca. "We want to help the cable industry pave the way and be one of the bigger entertainment brands to step into the SVOD space."
Ready for BOD? Bollywood on Demand, a VOD service now in the works from New York-based [212]Media, features a mix of movies, TV series, music videos, news and lifestyle programming from India, home to the world's most avid moviegoers. The content is not available on any linear networks, and [212] would market the service on behalf of cable affiliates. The company is pursuing two distribution models as it gets ready for prime time: SVOD and revenue share, minus the operator's production and marketing costs, and free VOD with a per-subscriber fee.
Are you testing, launching, expanding or just plain creatively marketing VOD, HSD, HDTV, DVR, ITV, VoIP or another cable acronym? Drop a line to .
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