In one of the largest social TV partnerships to date, ten local broadcast groups are announcing a partnership today with ConnecTV to power second-screen experiences in markets covering 76 million households. The long-term commercial partnership spans marketing, advertising, and for some partners, an equity investment in ConnecTV.
The partners make up a who’s-who list of broadcasters: Gannett, Hearst, Belo, Scripps, Cox, Media General, Meredith, Post-Newsweek, Raycom and Barrington. (The partners making an investment were not disclosed.) Their combined reach of 201 TV stations will provide a huge boost for ConnecTV, a new social TV startup that’s privately testing a free, companion TV experience for web and iPad that’s launching early next year.
“Our mission is for ConnecTV to be the social network that empowers entertainment, news and sports fans to share the greatest moments in television,” said ConnecTV Co-Founder Ian Aaron, the former president of Gemstar-TV Guide. ConnecTV says it will provide synchronized content and conversation across all programming genres, live or on demand. TV stations will promote the ConnectTV app as well as deliver local advertising and promotion into the second-screen experience.
“We were pretty quickly drawn to the nascent social TV space,” explains Roger Keating, senior VP of digital for Hearst Television, in an interview with Lost Remote. “We wanted as local broadcasters to find a way to really encourage and enhance the dialogue around our shows in a real-time basis.”
For example, if a viewer is watching the 5 p.m. news in Des Moines powers up the ConnecTV app and pushes a button, ConnecTV will automatically recognize and synch to the station’s newscast. Viewers will be able to interact with each other as well as see related content, promos and ads. Local sales teams will be able to extend their own ad campaigns into the ConnecTV experience.
Keating says the broadcast groups were “knocked out” by ConnecTV, in part because it works seamlessly across network, syndicated and local programming (and live sports, above). He also praised the strength of the startup’s management team. In addition to Aaron, Alan Moskowitz and Stacy Jolna are TV industry veterans — both were on the founding team at TiVo.
“The team at ConnecTV is thrilled to work with the leaders in local news and television across America as we bring to market an innovative and engaging second-screen experience for all TV viewers that works seamlessly across all programming genres and on all platforms,” Aaron explains.
In the history of local TV, the ConnecTV deal is a biggie. Long criticized for acting too slowly on major innovations, nine broadcasters formed Pearl last year, a joint venture to pursue mobile DTV. “We have a natural gathering point,” Keating said of the Pearl partnership, which resulted in the ConnecTV deal (all but Barrington are founding members). “For the first time we have a platform where we can go to a potential partner like Connectv (and say), ‘You need footprint? We can deliver the whole country.'”
Keating said broadcasters are well-aware of the dangers of fragmentation in local TV, and that’s why the groups are united in putting their weight behind the ConnecTV brand — they’ll promote ConnecTV directly, not some station-branded version of the app. “This is a departure for broadcasters,” he admitted. “We became convinced that it just doesn’t scale for someone to download show-specific or even channel-specific apps.”
To date, startups offering agnostic second-screen experiences have lacked the firepower to gain distribution. (With the exception, perhaps, of IntoNow, which was recently acquired by Yahoo). Today’s announcement makes ConnecTV a player right out of the gate, assuming its technology delivers.
As the second-screen space heats up, this is a smart move by local broadcasters who are not fond of seeing themselves left behind by networks, cable/satellite companies, syndicators, content-creators and startups vying for eyeballs. They saw a big opportunity with social TV, and made a big bet on it. “It’s something that’s really at the heart of the TV viewing experience,” Keating said.
Plus: See our recent reviews and coverage of second screen apps