Analyst underestimates the demand.... Disney plans more
January 6, 1998
Nothing but Net
ABC 'Enhances' Fiesta Coverage --
For Those Who Could Reach Site
By DAVID SWEET
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION
Did the production match the hype? Walt Disney Co.'s ABC Sports thinks so.
At Monday night's Fiesta Bowl, ABC Sports, in conjunction with ESPN.com1, launched "Enhanced TV," described by Disney executive Kevin Mayer as "an interactive television project." The free Web service presented statistics, quotes, a running ticker and an interactive game coinciding with ABC's broadcast of college football's national championship game.
Users flocked to the heavily promoted venue, but thousands were turned away, including Mark Hardie, a senior analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.
"All I saw was a slide presentation," says Mr. Hardie, referring to a five-minute segment introducing the site. For about three hours the Forrester analyst tried to log on via his cable modem, unsuccessfully.
Jonathan Leess, co-executive producer of the project, says Disney cut access at about 100,000 users so all visitors would have the same experience. He says the site encountered a huge spike about 30 minutes before kickoff following an on-air promotion.
"This [the spike] blew our top off. That's where we believe we hit the home run," says Mr. Leess, whose group removed links and pulled promotions minutes before the game started. "I think the production was flawless. The people who called -- who got in -- loved it."
For a week before the game -- won by national champion Tennessee, 23-16, over Florida State -- Disney heavily touted Enhanced TV. Promotions aired during ABC and ESPN bowl telecasts. Links sprouted up at Disney-run sites, even news venue ABCNEWS.com2.
Routinely, sports sites present real-time statistics and play-by-play information to users who may or may not be watching the game on TV. Disney's idea depended upon the Web visitor following the game broadcast -- rarely was the score, for instance, readily available at the site. About 10 million U.S. homes possess Internet-ready PCs near a television, according to Mr. Mayer, Disney's senior vice president of strategic planning.
Push technology was the linchpin of the production. Football fans reclined while rule explanations, injury descriptions and various notes appeared on the site's home page, alongside promotions for ABC television shows such as "Nightline" and "Politically Incorrect."
Resource
ABC's Enhanced TV
etv.go.com website/index.html3
"We decided to use part of the PC screen as a low-bandwidth TV screen," explains Mr. Mayer, whose company broadcast 17 bowl games in the last few weeks on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2. "It's something TV producers would love to do if they had the real estate."
Some graphics were timely. A definition of "roughing the kicker" appeared after a Florida State player was penalized for the transgression. Seconds after Tennessee receiver Peerless Price scored a fourth-quarter touchdown, a note explained why he was named Peerless (his mother saw the word on a moving van and looked up the definition).
But glitches and poor decisions marked the Enhanced TV debut as well. For 15 minutes during the second half, a graphic about a quadriceps muscle injury dominated the home page. After visiting the Florida State statistics page, no button prompted a return to the main venue. And the scrolling ticker wasn't always timely: "No. 3 Ohio State grinds out Sugar Bowl win" appeared 72 hours after the fact.
Before the kickoff, Forrester's Mr. Hardie bashed the Enhanced TV idea.
"The [player] quotes are nothing new, and I really don't want them during the game," Mr. Hardie says. "Stats, every site has those. I don't think it's earth-shattering."
No pre- or post-game information was offered, not even a retrospective package for departing ABC announcer Keith Jackson. Nor was there video or audio capability.
"We tested video and audio, but all that did was bog down bandwidth," explains Mr. Leess.
About two dozen Disney employees, from ABC's control room in New York where the production took place, to data-input staff at the game in Tempe, Ariz., worked on the project. The idea was in the works for six months and had been tested during Monday Night Football games. Browsers of 4.0 or higher were required to visit the site.
Disney is considering a number of applications for Enhanced TV.
"It's clearly leveragable across other sports events and other programming across ABC," notes Mr. Mayer. "Sports is a natural, news is a natural. Anything where there's data richness it will work. For linear storytelling, it probably won't work."
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