TVplus, the social TV startup that took home the gold at the last Social TV Summit, will be working with Epix HD tonight (Sunday) to provide second screen content for the “Secret Policeman’s Ball, a star-studded celebration of Amnesty International’s 50th Anniversary.” Coldplay, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will be among the performers at the Ball airing tonight from New York City’s Radio Music Hall. TV plus will be, “providing the opportunity for the audience to have real-time access to informative interactive content about the evening’s performers as well as the history and mission of Amnesty International,” according to their release.
As we learned from TVnext, second screen content is still in its infancy. No user experience or app has become the standard for getting content making partnerships with the content providers extremely important to lure in new users.
Epix HD will be streaming the show live online and will be using this an opportunity to really push people to Epix with this tent pole as one of their originals. We recently wrote about STARZ using social for Boss and Spartacus and how the premium cable space is heating up. To stand out each player in this space must leverage social for their originals, which is exactly what Epix had done with their new TVplus partnership.