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Cable TV Continues To Advance

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By RICHARD MULLINS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 16, 2007

Cable companies in Tampa Bay are taking some cues from Google and TiVo to make it easier for viewers to find something good to watch on TV.

Both Bright House Networks and Verizon are launching new on-screen digital channel guides that work more like Internet searches than traditional scroll up/scroll down channel guides. The new guides still work with remote controls, but they let viewers type out names of their favorite shows and see where shows appear on any channel at any time, even in on-demand and pay-per-view libraries.

"The downside of having 600 channels is you have 600 channels to go through to find something to watch," said Robert Grann, a systems engineering manager with Bright House Networks who helped develop the company's new on-screen guide.

With these new guides, cable companies want to make it easier for viewers to sort through programs on those 600 channels, plus turn the basic channel guide into more of a moneymaking vehicle. Because normal pay-per-view or on-demand programs are parked very high on the channel listing, customers may never know a favorite movie or show is available.

Both new guides are free to customers and work on digital cable systems.

Bright House hopes to launch its new guide sometime in the first 90 days of 2008. Company executives are still discussing whether they will turn on the guide for all customers in the Tampa Bay area at once, or activate it neighborhood by neighborhood.

To create its new guide, Bright House collaborated with its partner company Time Warner Cable, and a key goal was to make on-demand programs "more readily available," said Sherisse Hawkins, a vice president in Time Warner's advanced technology group.

Verizon's new guide went live with customers this month in the Bay area and has some more elaborate features.

Viewers can type the names of actors, directors, shows or films, and the system starts searching live TV listings through about 10,000 movies on demand and the customer's own DVR library.

After typing the first three letters T-A-L for the movie "Talladega Nights," the system starts making guesses on what the viewer wants, offering Fox's "Talkshow with Spike Ferensten" and the Public Broadcasting Service show "Dragon Tales." Searching for the actor Christopher Walken produces 25 options, including "Balls of Fury," "We Own the Night," a "Hairspray" interview with Walken and "Sleepy Hollow."

"This is much more the way you get back results from your favorite search engine on the Internet, Google, Yahoo or MSN," said Verizon's director of consumer product development, Joseph Ambeault.

Over the next year, Verizon plans to add more content to its guide, such as Internet videos and more links to content stored on customers' own computers.

FINDING YOUR FAVORITES

Consumers can find a show by typing in a few letters, and the system finds the show for you.

Bright House: System can find shows by title and genre.

Verizon: System can find shows by actor or director name.

Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at (813) 259-7919 or rmullins@tampatrib.com.

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