MegaPhone Labs is expanding its programmer-based interactive TV play into the Internet cloud via an interactive mobile Web-based control that can be accessed on tablets, laptops and smartphones as well as a social media toolkit. The service previously required users to dial toll free numbers to participate in interactive programming experiences.
DialPlay, for now, takes the interactivity out of the service provider's hands and puts it with the programmer which can add an inlay of interactivity in its broadcast that goes across every medium to a viewer who goes to a Web-based url to authenticate and participate
"This is the idea of making programming itself interactive," MegaPhone Labs CEO Mark Yackanich told FierceCable. And for now that interactivity is restricted to programmers such as WNBC in New York and The Weather Channel. "No one ever went to a programmer and said, ‘We can connect you real-time to your audience; everybody sitting on their couches at home,'" he said.
This doesn't mean, he added, that service providers like cable operators won't eventually be part of the play but "we see the biggest benefit right now in the near term coming from the programmers themselves. We hope to partner with the operators (because) there's room on that screen for a lot of different interactive options."
For more:
- see this news release
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