Mr. Ivan Seidenberg's Interactive Gambit - Simon Applebaum - MediaBizBloggers

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Verizon Communications chief executive officer Ivan Seidenberg comes off as sedate, cool and collected a corporate leader as they come. Don't let the exterior fool you. These days, Seidenberg's interior is mighty charged up. Mighty, quite mighty, in the direction of interactive TV.

Seidenberg let that focused interior seep through his relaxed being last week at Goldman Sachs' annual Communacopia conference in New York. "The PC and the TV are integrating at the fastest rate you can imagine," he told attendees around midway through his interview with Goldman's telco analyst. "The TV is turning into an interactive device...(and) sooner or later, you'll use your mobile device to control your TV. That's also coming up fast."

Had Goldman's analyst been quick on the draw to follow up and flesh out such comments – which he wasn't – more of Seidenberg's enthusiasm for ITV would have penetrated the audience. Still, there was enough to conclude that when it comes to FiOS TV, Verizon's multichannel overbuild now operating in more than 2.5 million homes nationwide (available to almost quadruple that amount), ITV is the chip FiOS is banking on for superiority over AT&T's rival overbuild U-verse, cable and satellite operators.

Both FiOS and U-verse have interactive features available, but FiOS is the furthest along of the two, thanks to "Widget Bazaar," the two-part strategy launched a few months ago. For part one, FiOS set up a group of applications across its platform, including social media powerhouses Facebook and Twitter. For part two, FiOS will upgrade its digital set-top box capability to accept services from independent sources, using the box in fashion similar to the iPhone applications store. In other words, getting FiOS' blessing to go through the box and direct to its customers, instead of making a deal with the overbuilder first. FiOS anticipates launching that part around the end of this year.

So far, "Bazaar" applications are getting millions of viewings, especially the Facebook and Twitter applications. So much so that FiOS increased the ways Facebook and Twitter could be utilized on screen weeks after their introduction, while company negotiators upped the pace of landing new "Bazaar" participants. "There's 50 things we have in negotiation right now," Seidenberg said during Communacopia.

As for U-verse, which has more than 1.5 million customers, AT&T isn't disclosing yet how it will counterplay FiOS, or whether a similar app phone set-top strategy is under consideration. Bet something will shake and shake soon. The last thing AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson wants is to be left in the dust of an interactive/Internet TV movement that appears to be gaining mo by the day. Too bad the Goldman analyst didn't follow up on Stephenson when he delivered U-verse generalities the hour before Seidenberg's appearance.

Bet also that cable and satellite operators also don't want to jockey for last organization standing on ITV. Cablevision Systems came out front last week with its Optimum Direct advertising venture, giving its three million-plus digital customers in the New York metro area the ability to call up product information, coupons or other offers on the screen while ads play now, and order products off the screen early next year. Canoe Ventures, the MSO-backed interactive ad/content venture, promises to get its first project running in a matter of weeks. And the operator rollouts of EBIF (Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format) and tru2way continues.

Within the next year or so, we'll witness either interactive TV's long-dreamed rise to mass public acceptance, or final, permanent banishment to the black hole of medium misfires. Nothing sedate about that, outside or in.

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Observations from the passing parade:

**Haven't seen former congressman Tom DeLay's Dancing With The Starsdebut this past Monday night on YouTube yet. It will get there, trust me, and when it does, it will be huge. DeLay's cha-cha to "Wild Thing" was must-see-to-believe live TV at its most...you fill in the blank.

**This year's Primetime Emmy Awards gained a million more viewers on CBS than its all-time low-rated 2008 edition, plus kudos for Neil Patrick Harris' hosting and the creative way it touched on a number of current industry issues in ways the public could understand. However, as Los Angeles Times correspondent Greg Braxton noted in his special recap, the show gets an F as a diversity showcase. Only one winner of color all night long, and three presenters of color out of 32 before the cameras. No excuse for this. Reminder: more than a third of this nation's population are people of color, and we're hurtling fast toward the era of a majority multicultural U.S. citizenship.

**My new favorite quote: "Get off the bench and into the game," from actor Harrison Ford, introducing Team Earth, a public/corporate outreach on environmental issues with organizations like Starbucks, SC Johnson and ePals aboard, this past Monday. Taking Ford's cue, it's time for venture capitalists and angel investors to get off the bench and into the game over funding new television programming and technology enterprises – especially enterprises owned, managed or aimed at people of color. And overtime for all sides of the TV business spectrum to get off the bench and into the game of advancing diversity.

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Simon Applebaum is host/producer of Tomorrow Will Be Televised, the Internet radio program covering the TV scene. Tomorrow runs Monday and selected Friday afternoons at 3 p.m. Eastern time/noon, Pacific time over www.blogtalkradio.com .

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Have a question or comment? Make contact through simonapple04@yahoo.com .

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