The Road to TVE

Time Warner CEO John Martin opened the Cable Show Tues by calling on the industry to unite around TV Everywhere. With the name TV Everywhere not officially cemented until Feb of this year, Mark Gathen, Cox sr, dir of video product mgmt, explained that the delay was tied to DISH trademarking TV Everywhere in ’09. Cox, DirecTV, Comcast and others challenged the trademark, and discussions occurred offline and in Feb. DISH finally abandoned its effort to trademark the name allowing the industry to move full steam ahead on creating messaging around the name. "As an industry, we have had a unified vision for what TV Everywhere can be, but we haven’t had a unified voice," AETN vp, distribution marketing Tracy Powell said, pointing to the inconsistency in verbiage, etc. During a later panel, CTAM showed off some results from its TVE working group, including a TVE logo that can be resized and adapted as an icon to run online, in print and other media. Wait, they’re already abbreviating TV Everywhere even though CTAM’s own research shows unfamiliarity of the service among many consumers? Not so fast. Mediacom svp, marketing David McNaughton said the abbreviation wouldn’t be used until TV Everywhere begins to really mean something to consumers. It is a rather long name, after all. Plus, "it’s a lot better than DOCSIS 3.1," he quipped. Poor DOCSIS. The technical spec’s mouthful of a name has been a running joke at the Cable Show, which was used to announce its new public persona, "Gigasphere." It was interesting to see just how many details this group contemplated—everything from whether the words "sign in" or "log in" appealed more to consumers (both were well accepted, but it settled on sign in because of its prevalence on the web already) and what types of icons are most friendly (a red key indicating the need to sign in and a green circle with a white check showing a successful log in). What happens when someone is unsuccessful in trying to authenticate? Distributors are working to make it easier to find passwords. For example, allowing a sub to search for the password by using their address and other info instead of a hard-to-find account number. Programmers are even lending a hand. Univision plans to operate its own customer service center to help with the TVE issue during the World Cup. "It doesn’t make sense to do it 24/7, but it does in particular instance of high volume and high demand," said Univision vp, audience dev, Greg Weinstein.