VOD View: Emmy Winner in the Canoe

Some notable Emmy winners—on cable and broadcast—were series with modest ratings. And one winner has never even been on linear TV. History‘s video series "Great Moments from the Campaign Trail" grabbed a Creative Arts Emmy for "Special Class, Short-Format Nonfiction." Those 15 videos reside at Elections ’08, a VOD channel that might be as significant as the Emmy win. Reaching 30mln subs, the non-partisan E08 is the first product from Canoe, the joint-MSO ad effort. In fact, E08 predates the now-formal Canoe Ventures; some MSOs in E08 ( Bresnan, Insight and Mediacom) are not part of Canoe Ventures, whose members are: Bright House Networks, Cablevision, Charter, Comcast, Cox and Time Warner Cable. The channel has picked up a few ads from state and local politicians and the Obama campaign, but has yet to attract a McCain ad. Still, MSOs see E08 as a major success in cross-industry cooperation. "We standardized the on demand platform across MSOs," said Vicki Lins, svp, marketing and communications, Comcast Spotlight. "It was a big technological milestone and a big on demand accomplishment." In addition, E08 is the first example of cross-MSO VOD reporting. Next for Canoe is " My Life on Demand," a VOD product going live soon targeting the health, wellness and pharmaceutical communities. The first product for Canoe Ventures under newly installed chief David Verklin is only "just being talked about," Lins says. It will be a creative versioning product, expected in 1Q09, and will be the next step toward "true addressability," allowing advertisers to segment national ads by demographics. It will be sold by programmers and "will let programmers, advertisers and Canoe work together to iron out the kinks as we approach true addressability." But back to E08 and that Emmy. "Give History credit. They produced fabulous original content and raised the bar for everyone," Lins says. History vp Mark Garner says producing the original content gratis was "a no-brainer for History… it was a sound strategic decision for our brand [and addressable advertising]… is the future of our industry."