The promise of interactive programming has been one of the key planks in Foxtel’s digital service. Since Foxtel Digital was launched, the pay TV provider has delivered a range of interactive program options, most visibly via its sport, news and weather channels.
The Fox Sports and Fox Footy channels are currently providing enhanced interactive content on selected live NRL, AFL and Super 12 games. Fox Sports has also delivered interactive content for cricket, basketball and the Australian Open tennis broadcasts.<[etk]>
The Weather Channel’s Weather Active option offers viewers tailored forecast options, from a 28-day rain check calendar to sunrise and sunset times that are accurate to the viewer’s postcode area. Over on Sky News, the Sky News Active service delivers seven additional news feeds to supplement the main broadcast, a service that has fundamentally changed the way the audience views news bulletins, according to Sky News CEO, Angelos Frangopololous.
“One of the problems of television journalism is having to decide which stories go on in which order, but having Sky News Active leaves it up to the viewer to decide which stories they see when,” he says.
Sky News is also able to tailor the content of the eight channels depending on the issues of the day. During the Federal election, Sky News used six channels to broadcast election content and has recently been running a channel covering the re-enactment of segments of the Michael Jackson trial.
Another key interactive tool for the channel has been voting, with subscribers prompted by a number of news polls during the day.
“It ties in well with ongoing breaking news such as the Terry Schiavo case—the voting questions evolve as the story evolves,” Frangopoloulos says.
While channels like Nickelodeon and MTV have also harnessed the technology for voting, most channels are still sizing up the best way to approach interactivity.
“There’s a whole range of things we are looking at going forward, but the channels will need to decide what interactivity complements their programming,” Foxtel spokesperson Brendan Moo says.
A good example of the sort of thing we can expect, according to Moo, is Channel V’s Band in A Bubble, which used a dedicated digital channel to screen a 24-hour feed direct from the plastic bubble in Melbourne’s Federation Square where Brisbane band Regurgitator was recording an album.
While interactivity can create new market opportunities—Sky News is already looking to sell its interactive news content into mobile telephony—the first step for most channels is developing content that is not just a tack-on to normal programming and actually works interactively,” Frangopoloulos says.
“For information and sport channels it is relatively easy to create interactive content. The challenge for other channels is to make interactivity that is relevant to the consumer, from both a technological and user perspective.”
