Monday, May 12, 2008
Wink CEO and confessed TVaholic Maggie Wilderotter is not interested in interactive TV that pushes couch potatoes onto the Web.
Nov 22, 1999 | You're kicking back with a beer, watching the Lakers game, when a little icon suddenly materializes in the corner of your big-screen TV. Using your remote, you click on the icon, and up pop the results of the Warriors game taking place on another channel; the scores appear in the corner of the screen, so that you don't even miss Shaq's latest play.
Or, you are watching TV ads when you see a spot for the new Lexus SUV. Up pops that little icon again; you click, and before you know it, a little menu of financing options and local dealerships is scrolling across the bottom of the ad. Another click, and you've sent a dealership your information and asked them to give you a call.
Nope, this isn't another pundit predicting the television of the future. It's what television-viewing has already become, thanks to a 4-year-old company called Wink Communications, if you happen to be one of the 150,000 people who live in Wink-enabled television markets. Interactive television is, in fact, already a reality -- and it is coming soon to 6 million more TV sets across the United States, for free.
Unlike other interactive television projects -- many of which have already failed -- Wink doesn't require special set-top boxes or Internet access. Instead, it uses the cable systems already in place, and embeds information into existing TV data streams. To buy a product, or get information, all the consumer has to do is use the TV remote to click on the icon that floats atop the show.
CEO Maggie Wilderotter, a 20-year veteran of the cable and telephone industries, has been charged with heading up Wink's ambitious projects. So far, she's managed to draw cash infusions from prestigious investors like Vulcan Ventures, Benchmark Capital and Microsoft. She's also signed deals with all the major networks, electronics manufacturers and cable companies. Not bad for a woman who describes herself as a "TVaholic."
Salon Technology spoke with Wilderotter about the past and present of interactive television, and just why consumers might want to buy recipes using their remote control.
Could you explain exactly how the Wink system works -- what gets those little icons on your screen?
We deliver a full end-to-end system for interactive capabilities -- we start with authoring tools that cable programming networks and TV networks can use to enhance video programming. Once they enhance their programs with the tool, it creates the application that travels in the data stream, in the vertical blanking interval or MPEG stream -- we basically marry it with the video. It goes out over satellite to a cable operation, or to a DirectTV uplink, and then the video is translated down to the customer, and the set-top box in the home makes sure that the data is displayed simultaneously with the video.
When you as a consumer click on something that you see that you like, or want more information, Wink will also collect all of the transactions that take place on these platforms and provide information and orders back to advertisers, merchandisers and programmers. It's a full system from start to finish.
What are some of the challenges in creating such a comprehensive system?
You need to have five different stakeholders all committed to using the system in order to really make it a business. You have to have cable and broadcast networks; you need to have distributors -- like cable operators and satellite operators. Wink is working with the top five cable operators and also DirectTV to deploy the service. You also need to have consumer electronic manufacturers working with you to put the software inside their devices, in set-top boxes and televisions.
And you need advertisers to enhance their commercials so that consumers can have the opportunity to buy products. All of those stakeholders have to come together simultaneously with their piece in order to deliver this whole system -- one of the big challenges has been to pull all those stakeholders together.
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